Tag: separation

An open letter to separating parents on your parent-child relationship

On By BarryIn After Separation, During Separation, Open Letter, Parents

Every child is unique and so are their needs during a family breakup!

Without getting into the more complex part of your child’s make-up, the obvious factors at the time of separation are the child’s age and gender identity.

Other factors may be of more importance:

  1. The existing relationship each parent has with their child.
  2. The degree of turmoil prior to the parents’ separating and the duration of that turmoil.
  3. The trigger for the separation is often a trigger for a pre-teen or adolescent.
  4. Often one parent in an unhappy marriage has separated themselves from their spouse for some time within the intact marriage. The family has had fewer positive times together.
  5. A parent may have lost track of their child (ren) in the lead up to the separation e.g. not attending extra-curricular or school events.
  6. Non- diagnosed or unattended or misunderstood signs of depression may have isolated one or both parents from the children.

The above factors present a problem for each parent.

 A critical factor is that many mothers may see themselves as the primary parent with the temperament, skills and on the job parenting experience. This is especially true for mothers with young children.

Few fathers take paternity leave to the same extent as mothers. Each family sorts out their parenting role within the intact family. Shared, equal parenting is getting closer for the modern family; but in the world of separation the perception is often found through a mother’s eyes.

A mother has a difficult choice depending on her view of the parenting world for her family. Does she believe that her child’s father is an integral part of their child’s healthy development at every stage of childhood, even in a two home, changed family?

 This question needs to be asked of every mother at the time of separation. It is the question that must be on the table prior to or at the time of separation.

Remember that the research suggests strongly that shared parenting that comes close to a minimum 40% parenting time optimizes best outcomes for a child. It is the pillar that builds strong, cooperation between the parents by maintaining supportive, involved parenting by both parents, within a safe and secure family setting.

Many separating fathers face their own dilemma. Some dads have been involved parents, fully sharing in their parenting role. Other dads, because of the nature of their employment, begin their day early in the morning or complete their work day at unpredictable times. Other fathers simply have taken the lead of their partner (mother) in the parenting role that they played in the intact family.

I believe that the role a dad played prior to the separation has limited relevance to the post-separation role of shared parenting. Unless the father has been an absentee parent or has little interest in being a shared parent, he can acquire the parenting skills to be an effective parent.

There are many parenting programs for fathers and mothers to be effective parents in an intact family or in a two home family.

Separated parents must recognize that everything changes i.e. every parenting relationship and to be honest every significant, family relationship. Your parenting life is incredibly complicated and for many dads, it is often even more complicated. There is often doubt in the social service network in your skill set and/or temperament to be a co- parent to your child.

This is especially a factor if your current parenting role is challenged; or if you are creating a changed parenting role given the changed circumstances.

Children are faced with uncertainty once the separation is confirmed to them. Many parents fail to have this conversation with an agreed to, no-fault explanation. I suggest that you compile an anticipated list of questions. These questions are likely different for each child and for each gender. Remember the children’s questions may seem off the wall, selfish and even judgmental. In doing this exercise and engaging in this necessary conversation with the children, problems can be identified that may change the details of your parenting plan, currently a work in progress.

In our section on telling the children, it is possible that the outcome is silence, tears, reflection, anger, etc. Age and gender may play a role in the child’s reaction or non-reaction. Each parent’s emotional state may also influence the reaction. This can be for a child a very isolating and lonely time. A time of embarrassment and failure.

I remember that my feelings were that I was a failure as an intimate partner, as a father and aa a provider. Many children wonder if their last failure to do what they were told or their teen rebellion were responsible for the family breakup.

Included are supplementary readings on children’s developmental stages, etc., to help understand children’s differing reactions.

Mental Health Concerns for Children

Studies indicate that children from separated families experience mental health issues at approximately 3 times the incidence rate within intact families. It is further evidence that parents must recognize the risk to their children of all ages. Separating/separated families have a greater responsibility to make parenting plans that maintain or restore calm and predictability to their children’s lives within a two- parent framework.

One constant in most children’s lives is the school. It may begin at the toddler stage (daycare) or the formal beginning of school. Teachers in your child’s life have more direct contact + observation time with your child than most parents. They can be a significant other, providing a window into your child’s life; i.e. making/losing friends, changes in behavior; isolating, bully or victim, sadness, etc.

Teachers, coaches and other care providers should be informed of the changes taking place in your home. Set up a regular opportunity for information sharing re: your child and confer with other possible sources of support within the school or community.

Privacy or our own embarrassment may paralyze us from doing what is in the best interests of our child. The truth is that taking the recommended steps is in your best interests as a caring parent.

 A separated parent must work even harder than parents in an intact family. Our time with our child is significantly less for any number of reasons i.e. 40-60% parenting time; work longer out of financial need; travel time with children; rebuilding your own life as an individual; etc.

Children need their parents on their schedule, not ours. In an intact family that need is met by mom or dad. In the separated family the available parent is unlikely to encourage the child to phone the missing parent; nor are they likely to tell that parent later that their child reached out to them.

Resource Recap: Telling the Children – tips from Judith Wallenstein

On By BarryIn Before Separation, Parents, Resource Recap

The book What about the Kids by Judith Wallenstein and Sandra Blakeslee is a good place to start when unpacking the personal impact of separation. See my notes on telling the children that I recorded while reading and using this resource in support group facilitation.

  • This conversation raises the curtain on the changed family, therefore it requires careful thought.
  • Call two family meetings rather than one to make sure each child has a chance to understand what has been said.
  • Just as your life will never be the same after the breakup, divorce is a critical turning point for each of your children.
  • Even the littlest ones sense the difference.
  • If you want your children to feel protected and secure, you must provide that security and protection for them.
  • Most children want the marriage to be preserved and feel better protected by two-parent families.
  • Many children are content in a marriage that the parents find unhappy or unfulfilling. They don’t know or don’t care if their parents are sleeping in different rooms, beds, or haven’t communicated for a long time.
  • Some grown children of divorce confess with embarrassment that they still hold wishes that their parents would get back together.  
  • Holidays, neighbours, etc. are cherished memories that last many years and are brought up when grown children reminisce on when speaking frankly about their parents’ divorce.
  • The most important thing to do is to tell your children what is happening in the family before it all comes apart.
  • Tell them about your plans before you separate, that way they have preparation and support from you once they wake up and realize one parent is gone.
  • If your children are five or younger, it is best to tell them a day or two before you separate.
  • If your children are school aged, a few days to a week before will help them assimilate what you say.
  • Adolescents often know before the parents even tell them, but you should still tell them at least two weeks before. This way they have the opportunity to talk to their best friends about what is happening and figure out what it means for them and what happens next.
  • Your goal is to assure them that you’re looking out for their best interest starting from the beginning.
  • Chose a quiet time when you and the children have plenty of time to talk.
  • Plan to tell your children when both you and your spouse are home for the next few days or the weekend.
  • If you and your spouse can’t cooperate, tell the children separately taking turns, going one right after the other.
  • You owe your children the gift of civility and cooperation at this transformative stage in their lives.
  • Grown children of divorce often fear being too happy. This fear is related to the feelings they experienced during their parents’ divorce. The stun of the divorce made them then embed in their minds the kind of fatalism about the fragility of relationships.
  • Your children will always remember how you acted in this juncture in their lives.
  • You must spell out differences that your children can understand.
  • Telling the truth doesn’t mean you scapegoat or deprecate each other to your children.
  • Stay cool when telling your children and explain to them that during divorces people often get upset and blame each other.
  • Tell your children that you tried to fix the marriage and didn’t just act impulsively, irrationally and foolishly. Explain to them that you tried very hard.   
  • Be honest and show respect for the gravity or the situation because this gives your children permission to show their hurt and anger about the situation. This is crucial because it allows them to cry.
  • Your children will do anything to not rock the boat more in the situation. They love you and wish to care for you, and realize it is a crisis for at least one of you.
  • Explain to them that you will always have a family, it will just look different.
  • You owe your child the honest expression of your feelings and the freedom not to be a soldier in your battle.
  • Your job is to educate them about right and wrong and help them express their anger and sorrow along with yours.
  • If your child is ten of eleven and there has been an infidelity, if you have the courage to do so simply tell them that their mom or dad loves another person more and they cannot live together any longer. Leave out details like, “they have been sleeping with someone else”.
  • Let them tell you about their worry of losing you, about strange ideas of being put in a foster home, and not having funds for college, etc.
  • Try to help them say what they’re scared of or relieved about.
  • Describe to them what your plans are in terms of where the children will live and plans about custody and visiting.
  • Ask them about their ideas and comments and promise to take them into consideration.
  • Be sure to make them not feel like inanimate objects which are simply distributed between two homes.
  • Maintain whatever stability that you can help preserve to help them adjust to the inevitable changes.
  • Tell them that these changes, although sad, can be a growth experience for you and your child.
  • Be sure to tell them your decisions, ask for their opinions, said you’re sorry, and laid out what is about to happen.
  • Be sure to clearly lay out what will happen for life in the post-divorce family – considering where they will live, when they will see each other, etc. 

adult child and elderly mom on beach

Older Children and Separation

On By BarryIn Before Separation, Children
adult child and elderly mom on beach

The Forgotten Children in a Family Separation

Older children are a growing and somewhat forgotten age group. Many separating parents wait until their children grow to a certain age (late-adolescence or early 20s) to make the separation a reality. They expect their ‘adult’ child to be able to accept and manage the separation. After all, these young people are rarely at home and often appear remarkably independent.

I would advise separating parents to take a few moments and make a list of all the disruptions and concerns that your child will likely have to accept or endure from your separation. Below are a few possibilities, though they don’t exhaust the reactions of this group. Recognize that the optics of the separation may play an important part in their reaction , such as who appears responsible for causing the separation and who is the ‘victim’. The concept of ‘no-fault’ divorce is unlikely to find quiet acceptance here.

A family unit that has only known being intact, even through considerable parental unhappiness, is all that the children have known. For some parents at this stage there is a defiant ‘I have been unhappy long enough by remaining in a loveless marriage, it is my time to find happiness’ position. That is not an unreasonable feeling but one also needs to be sensitive to where your children are on this parental ‘failure’. Otherwise your search for personal happiness may be cut short by guilt and loss.

Anticipating Challenges

A parental split rarely if ever goes as planned in what I would call an ‘adult’ or ‘no-fault ‘way. In addition there is the added likelihood that families with two or more mid-adolescent children may see the children live with different parents. The intact family can often become the ‘splintered family’ with many unintended outcomes that can become too long-lasting. Regaining an enduring life-long parenting relationship may have to be accomplished within limited, reduced opportunities with your child. Different perspectives among older children can cause serious rifts that can be long-lasting.

This is a reminder that every relationship is tested by the way parents separate. Unintended negative outcomes are more likely to endure when older children are no longer under the same roof because there is less together time to repair the damage and to work it through. In addition each sibling relationship within the intact family has its own history based on age, personality, parental connection, etc.

Planning to Tell the Older Children

Below is a partial list of reactions. Please compile your own list for each child and if possible bring those lists together as parents prior to a more formal separating conversation with your child. Reactions are very individual and may include many mixed reactions:

  • Older children often believe in ‘rescuing’ the ‘wronged’ parent.
  • Older children often blame one parent and see the other parent as being abandoned.
  • Older children may also decide to live their life separate from one or both parents.

When discussing the plan to separate with your older children, please consider these points:

  • Offer older children a grown-up, age-appropriate explanation that is honest without defamation.
  • Let your grown children know that they are not expected to take sides in the separation process.
  • Let your children know that the shared history you have built together as a family will not be forgotten or dismissed.
  • Find ways to manage family events and include extended family and grandparents.
  • Plan in advance how matters such as inheritance, education, and financial support will be managed so that any practical questions can be answered.

Mediation: An Introduction

On By BarryIn After Separation, During Separation

Relationships that do not end peacefully, do not end at all. 

– Merrit Malloy, The Quotable Quote Book

Our work at Kids ‘n’ Dad is about supporting families to navigate through the grief and loss that is part of every family breakdown. There are many possible triggers in the traditional legal journey, that has recently been described by a brave, community lawyer as blood-sport. She is now a strong advocate for Collaborative Family Law.

Since 2008, Kids n Dad Shared Support has advocated for an approach that placed a collaborative approach at the forefront of strategies to arrive at a two parent and two extended families shared, custody settlement for matters pertaining to a family breakup.

There are different forms of mediation, each with different wrinkles in how it is practiced. You need to be thorough in your interview of any practitioners of this form of support. Do your homework.

 There are resources identifying community supports.

At Kids ‘n’ Dad, we clearly have a ‘bias/perspective’ in what we advocate as the most desirable set of outcomes. Many mediators or parenting co-ordinators have their own set of bias/perspectives on best outcomes. Again, each parent, together if possible, should seek out human resources that are supportive of their parenting goals.

It is important to do your homework prior to going to mediation in order to be prepared for the emotionally draining task to reach a family centred settlement.

While we at Kids ‘n’ Dad strongly support shared parenting (40/40default minimum), it is possible that this is not going to happen. This does not mean that mediation is a failure. The process of negotiation and seeking fair compromises is worthwhile for parents and children.

We have a caveat to our shared 40/40 parenting. Out of mediation, each parent should have a level of certainty that they have the access time, parenting tools, flexibility and support of the other parent to own (thrive) their relationship with each of their children.

Please review the Resource Hub . Read the other sections to support your efforts to build inclusive family relationships.

Lessons from A Separated Dad’s Journey to Create A Dad’s Home

On By BarryIn After Separation, Before Separation, During Separation, Fathers, Guest Post

The following guest post was originated through conversations between Barry and a dad who at time of separation had two young children and shared parenting. The dad established a blended family. Below is a summary of the dad’s thoughts, concerns, and lessons from his journey.

Thoughts on finances, nutrition and health

Finances: consider initial issues – budgeting, paying bills, paying mortgage/rent, child support/spousal support, transportation; financial issues lead to mental health issues and relationship issues;

Try to avoid eviction which could result in interrupted parenting; credit rating issues, visa debts, etc.

Changing residences is common for a dad – difficult to parent in these circumstances; think residence through; what makes sense for you and your children; what can work? You want to establish a ‘stable environment’ if possible.

Can you afford a RESP if you have a young child?

Dietary: cooking skills- balanced meals, making interesting/healthy, school lunches; do your different children have special dietary needs? Part-time access dads too often eat out. You must learn to shop effectively, within a tight budget probably.

Home Health Care: What do you need in your new home with the children for everyday care. Think it through and if necessary, ask friends if this is not an area of strength. What are basic first aid needs for your children? Sore throats; insect bites, pink eye; bad falls; taking the child’s temperature and knowing what is alarming or a dull to normal range- or what steps to take to bring the child’s temperature down- when to go to emergency; etc.

Does your medical cabinet have all the necessary supplies to manage the day-to-day crisis? Are you competent?

Attend medical appointments; communicate info to the mother; make sure she knows that you want reciprocal information flow. Take a first aid course. Introduce yourself to your pharmacist. Read their brochures! Read labels on use of meds – children’s Advil, polysporin, band aids of every size, on and on it goes. Get advice from different sources.

Many separated dads now have infants and toddler age children. Many may have played a full role, others may have a limited role in the intact family based on any number of reasons; you must gain a comfort and competence level for the sake of your child and the parenting challenges you may face, going forward.

Don’t be hesitant to ask for help from any number of people with experience over many parenting years. There may be a fear within you about displaying a lack of knowledge; HOWEVER, you need this to be the long-term parent in your child’s life. Find trusted people in your life; work at filling in gaps in your parenting resume; be proud of yourself.

Early Stages (Hopefully) Mental Health

Do not be afraid to ask a trusted friend for their observations on your behavior. What do they see in you? You want them to be honest; you should not be hostile; process the feedback.

Most of us can handle the days and nights when we have our children. We feel like dad again! Unfortunately, when your parenting goes badly (not perfect as we envisioned), there may be several days each week without the children- the not-so-good experience can linger.

The possibility of an additional problem may depend on how you manage the days without the children. Behaviors can be harmful to you in the short and long run. Today the internet provides alternatives from on-line dating to gaming to…? The only pattern to life is the days with children, and days without the children often outnumber the first option.

Reckless behavior can be costly and lead to unpredictable parenting and a difficult parenting relationship with the mother.

GETTING IT TOGETHER IS A DIFFICULT BUT NECESSARY TASK IN THE EARLY MONTHS OR EVEN YEARS.

Your parenting life is not on pause and recognizing such as early as possible starts you down a path on building positive steps into your life.

  • 0-5: Practical steps: Doctor’s appointments; before school and after school appointments; early   years centres; YMCA; Community centres, play groups -inexpensive programs; parent-child swim; etc.
  • 5-12:
    • Find opportunities to be involved in your child’s extracurricular life through coaching, volunteering, school trips, etc.
    • Attend all teacher open house activities; Report cards and interviews; read daily planners for all the days; access school web site; stay on top of educational issues; be aware of any learning difficulties as your child progresses; find a pattern of fun and skills activities that you and your children will own for a lifetime.
    • Do the best job possible at maintaining or rebuilding a co-operative flow of communication with the child’s mother. There is a lot going on in two households for your children; if you can harmonize certain routines, life can become more predictable for everyone;
    • Each parent is different and may have very different parenting styles. You both likely know those difference from your time together. It is possible to employ that awareness into managing your parenting. e.g. use of video games, appropriate films, etc.
  • 12-18:  THE FUN/INTERESTING (???) TEEN YEARS:
    • The issues change during the pre-teen and adolescence years. Our own teen years sometimes influence how we handle discipline over the common challenges of these years: drugs, tobacco, alcohol, dating, motivation at school.
    • Peer relationships take precedent over family relationships. It is the natural order BUT for a separated dad who may have less parenting time to begin, it can feel like a loss of influence and oversight.
    • Adolescents in a two-home parenting scenario may go back and forth- not on the parenting schedule but on the kids’ schedule. It takes effective coparenting to stay in control of parenting decisions. It takes a different kind of parenting- keeping communication lines open- knowing their friends-recognizing troubles or mental health issues-preparing them for the next stage of post- adolescence life.
    • Remember the teen years in an intact family are also the ‘fun years’; so, don’t blame yourself or the other parent or the separation for every bump in the road.

Just do your best. Do what you need to do to be the parent you desire to be!

See the Resource Hub for more support.

Resource Recap: What about the Kids by Judith Wallenstein and Sandra Blakeslee

On By BarryIn Resource Recap

The book What about the Kids by Judith Wallenstein and Sandra Blakeslee is a good place to start when unpacking the personal impact of separation. See my notes here that I recorded while reading and using this resource in support group facilitation.

Introduction

  • After a divorce, you find yourself feeling alone, confused, in a state of shock. You struggle to get out  of bed each day, and must deal with your whimpering, red-eyed children who haven’t slept.
  • A divorce can be described as technicolour. What lies ahead?
  • A marriage licence makes any kind of marriage possible, and a divorce sets in motion the post-divorce family.
  • How will you and your spouse get along after the breakup?
  • The first challenge is to get your life under control, to literally restore yourself and rebuild your social supports.
  • The second challenge involves you and your children. You must prepare them for the breakup and to support them through the crisis.
  • The third challenge is to create a new relationship between you and your ex-partner.
  • All three challenges begin the day you decide to divorce and lasts until death. It’s for this reason that divorces can be so hard and have no benefits.
  • If you meet all three challenges, you open yourself up to new opportunities in life and put the disappointments of marriage behind you.
  • The turning points are numerous, the danger points are unexpected, but so are the opportunities.    
  • Many things change when you divorce and go to college graduations, weddings, visits with grandchildren, etc.
  • Parenting is always a hazardous undertake.
  • Parenting in a divorced or remarried family is harder. You are blinded by emotions and events out of your control.
  • How could a child not be affected by the major changes that divorce and remarriage bring?
  • Divorced families are altogether different from intact families.
  • Your relationships with your children change the day you separate.
  • Crisis peaks when divorce papers are filed.
  • Does an outgoing personality help?
  • If you’re in the thick of a crisis, you can look up specific ideas about your three-year-old who won’t go to bed, your eight-year-old who is having trouble at school, or your fifteen-year-old who is angry all the time.
  • One reason divorced families have problems is because most people don’t have the help that they need.
  • If you’re a child of divorce, your own journey down this road will be complicated by your earlier life experiences.
  • Stay cool when telling the children; avoid the blame game but take responsibility for the breakdown.
  • Be honest and recognize the gravity of the situation; this allows children to begin the process that they must inevitably go through without feeling guilty or responsible.
  • Explain to them that they will always have their family- the family will change though.
  • Encourage them to say what they are fearing, or questioning-children are often very pragmatic and as they reach adolescence can be judgmental.
  • Provide the short- and medium-term plans; but be prepared for pushback- especially from preteens onward.
  • Consider their feedback seriously- appreciate their input- be receptive but don’t forfeit your parental responsibility.
  • Try to maintain routines in the short-term plans- commitments to activities, etc.
  • Try to be appropriately positive about your joint commitment to ensure joint parenting in some form.
  • Be pragmatic with an element of flexibility- it can be overwhelming.
  • Remember your children are very different and have different parent child relationships. Children may desire different parenting arrangements and even split with their siblings.

Take Care of Yourself

  • Parents can’t help their children until they’ve thought about themselves, about where they’re coming from.
  • Once you’ve decided that it’s really over, you’ll have set into motion the task of becoming a different person, and to your surprise, a different kind of parent.
  • Your decision to divorce not only marks the end of a marriage, but the formation of a new kind of family.
  • What you’re feeling today is probably not going to be relevant to your life in three, five, or ten years from now.
  • There are steps you can take to ease our immediate pain, but the really hard work comes one day and then one year at a time with changes that ricochet into your life and into the lives of your children.
  • You can’t become an effective parent until you’ve regained your footing and begun to repair the damage done by the failed marriage and the inevitable stresses of the divorce.
  • How far or fast it all happens depends on how you respond to the challenges and frustrations that lie ahead.
  • If you get caught up in the image of having failed in your marriage your parenting will be burdened.
  • If you find yourself raging at your husband or wife, it doesn’t matter if you’re right. What matters is being enraged will eclipse your ability to be a good parent. It clouds your judgement and makes it hard to take care of your children or see your children as being separate from you. You have different needs and priorities at different ages. It also makes it harder to be a compassionate parent.
  • In a normal situation, only one partner wants to get a divorce.
  • Divorce creates two separate single parents with two homes, two sets of furniture, two refrigerators, and separate insurance policies.
  • You are responsible for the well-being, discipline and entertainment of the children under your roof.
  • Co-parenting after divorce is not the same as within a marriage.
  • Divorce forces you to become a new person.
  • A birth certificate didn’t turn you into a parent, you remade yourself into a parent.
  • You find yourself waking up in the middle of the night to carry out new and unfamiliar duties.
  • Many psychological changes occur over time in both you and your ex-partner. After weeks, months or even years, of feeling shaky and bewildered, there comes a psychological moment when you become this new person.
  • You are a new person when you finally stop feeling like a failure, and you feel free, even hopeful, and can make decisions without trembling inside.
  • At some point, every person must face up to the hurt and disappointment that go with a failed marriage and the continuing tensions of the divorce.
  • In a divorce, it’s letting go of the memories collected over many years of being together.
  • Mourning loss is a process that takes time. But you must know that after divorce you enter a new attachment with your former partner, one that is not born of love but one that arises from the role of co-parenting.
  • Divorce is the end of love and the persistence of attachment.
  • As human beings, we’re blessed and damned with memories.
  • Before you can give your children the attention they need, you need to gain control of your own emotions in general.
  • People who have been wonderful parents and rarely raised their voices in anger slam doors on their children, cry in closets, and erupt in anger over nothing in particular.
  • Your children often remind you that you have big responsibilities, and that is the last thing you want to think about. Many children are terrified by the change in a parent’s behaviour.
  • In your weakened condition, you are called on to be wiser than you’ve ever been before.
  • The more chaos, the crankier your children become, the more they scream at each other, and the more you’re going to lose self-control.
  • Men and women face different challenges when telling the kids.   
  • If you’re a man who never took care of your kids day-to-day, welcome to Home Economics 101.
  • Whether you do or don’t get along, the ties that bind you together still hold.
  • You have financial obligations with less power.
  • Your task is to make the most of a part-time role that you share with a woman who is no longer central in your life.
  • You cannot decide on an impulse to take the kids to Disneyland.
  • You can’t suddenly decide to change their schedules, diet, or bedtime.
  • If you’re a mother, you also continue to be responsible for your children but you’ll have less power in deciding how to raise them.
  • It won’t do any good to tell the something if you are worrying about it in your mind.

On Anger

  • If you’ve been betrayed, you may feel ashamed and wounded.
  • Many people find that anger makes them feel good. It can make you feel righteous, if not saintly. You can first use your anger to mobilize yourself.
  • You may enjoy blaming the other as arch villain and this can block you.
  • You’re free to organize your new life as you see fit.
  • Anger can persuade you that you’ll do things differently this time around.
  • You can regain self-control and understand the roots of the fury that had spilled onto your innocent child.
  • You can’t help your children make decisions after if you’re driven by rage.
  • No one can overcome your anger for you. Most people let go of anger to regain control.
  • If you’re alone and unhappy while your ex-partner is dating other people, your mind can turn any relationship into a torrid romance.
  • If you are the victim of jealous fantasies and threats have been made against you, you are urged to take them seriously and seek protection from the police.
  • If your energy goes into how hurt you are, how can you gather the strength to move forward in your life?
  • Anger blocks the kind of self-scrutiny that you need in order to change. 
  • There is no substitute for what you say to yourself.
  • Most people can help make the transition to the “new you”.
  • Being a good parent during this transition helps diminish the grief, guilt, and tremendous upheaval that divorce causes.

Setting Routines and Structure

  • Children must feel safe going back and forth between homes.
  • The must learn to master the calendar, going to and from houses.
  • The ability to do so depends on how quickly the household is restored.
  • Routines are disrupted after the divorce. Bedtime often becomes hit or miss.
  • Many school-aged children get themselves up in the morning, make lunch, take themselves to class, clothes don’t get washed regularly.
  • A suggestion box is a good way to share ideas and make sure everyone’s thoughts are heard.
  • A chores and rules chart is a good way to keep track.
  • Orderliness is important.
  • Young children miss you and don’t understand why you’re always gone.
  • They must understand why you need money and why it’s important for you to work.
  • If you work more hours than before, explain to your children that you’re more available to work more now and that you need the money.
  • Regular bedtime is very important.
  • People who have experienced radical changes in their lives make transitions difficult.
  • Rituals aren’t expendable just because you feel pressed for time.
  • Rituals such as kissing your child good-bye are important.
  • Children have to know who will be home for dinner, and what hour dinner is at.
  • Child who worry about rituals can’t sit comfortably through class.
  • They may be worried, having observed your frantic pace of life.
  • Assign chores to each child and reward them.
  • Provide pleasures to offset the pain of the breakup.
  • Asking older children to help with younger ones is ok, as long as you realize that they are still children too.
  • Make sure the lines of discipline are the same across both parents.
  • Reduce conflict by arranging after-school activities for each child.
  • Keep an eye on younger children.
  • After a divorce, older children are often given power to exert over younger children.
  • Dinner represents a time of coming together of the family. It should not be a dreary time, or a time of watching tv.
  • Try to get up early enough to help your children get ready for school.
  • Children of divorce often show up at school without lunches or proper clothes for the weather.
  • Strict control is more important after divorce but harder to enforce. This is the time to rein in your child.
  • Each child should know your cell number and how to reach you in an emergency. This relieves anxiety.
  • Tell them that if anything ever goes wrong, you’re only a phone call away.
  • The need for structure addresses both parents. Both of you must provide this kind of help, however, only one of you may be able to provide this.
  • Feeding your children before they leave is very important.
  • The only person you can control is you, not your ex.
  • Set aside intimate time to spend with just you and your child.
  • It is very important to bring some pleasure and fun and laughter back to the family.
  • Make a habit of stepping back and asking yourself how your children are doing in this new life.
  • Do not berate yourself.
  • If you’re honest with yourself, you may realize that in the chaos of the divorce, you overlooked your children without meaning to.
  • Many children live in distraught worlds of their own while their parents are too wrapped up in their own problems to notice.
  • Have you left them on their own?
  • Is there any real pleasure in their lives?
  • Children of all ages have fantasies of reconciliation right from the beginning.
  • “Mom smiled at dad when he dropped me off last night. I bet that means they like each other.”
  • Young children feel cut off by divorce and fantasies help them feel whole.
  • All efforts to restore routines after divorce bring needed stability to your children’s lives.
  • It’s important for them to have a sense of order and regularity.

A New Kind of Father

  • Divorce transforms the experience of being a mother or father. The fundament nature of parenting shifts.
  • These changes are different for men and women.
  • When marriage ended, no one told you what it would feel like to be a father in a divorced family.
  • You must understand the changes to enjoy the new chapter of your life.
  • This road is less predictable than you ever imagined.
  • How do you go about being a good father?
  • You always knew exactly who you were and so did your children.
  • Fathering post-divorce is different because you don’t have the supports you had in the marriage.
  • After divorce, you’re in a vacuum.
  • “How central am I? What does being a divorced father mean? What does being a co-parent mean? Am I a playmate? A Dutch uncle? A friend or guy who helps with the math homework? Who sets the discipline? What sets the goals?”
  • You may have to learn to divide your time between your second marriage children and your first marriage children.
  • “Divorce calls for a total redefinition of who you are as a father and challenges you to come up with a plan for how to maintain or surpass the relationship you had with your children during your marriage.”
  • In an intact family, you didn’t have to define your role.
  • If you had a very close relationship with your children before the divorce, you must work it out with your ex to make sure this relationship continues.
  • Your lives may demand change and flexibility.
  • Even if you weren’t ‘close’ with your children before the breakup they still cry for you. Closeness is a dangerous term for it implies a certain judgment about a parent’s relationship with their child. It is a term that would eliminate many fathers from their children.
  • Post-divorce you must consider the relationship you wish to maintain with your children.
  • You have the choice, and in the first few years after a divorce you have to renew your relationship with your children- in many ways for a dad it is a cross roads where hopefully you will do whatever is required from you to be the dad that your children require of you in these changing circumstances.
  • “Your relationship with your children is not dependent on how much time you spend together based on the divorce settlement.”
  • “Your relationship is only measured by how much your child feels your love, your commitment, and what you’re able to bring to that relationship.”
  • “An Indian legend that says the father’s job is to carry the child to the top of the mountain and face the child away from home toward the bigger landscape. That’s poetic but its only true if the father carries the child carefully and does not drop them on the climb.”
  • Organize your life so that you give the plan priority.
  • When the children are in their early years, the decisions that govern your relationship aren’t the same when they grow up.
  • A mother and father under the same roof are different than a mother and father under separate roofs.
  • Parents in a reasonably, positive intact relationship carry out daily dialogue about their children.
  • Conversation must cease between you and your ex about whether to correct the children or ignore grandma after a divorce.
  • Mothers, more so than fathers, interpret what children want inside of an intact family.
  • Mothers often play the go-between between young children and their fathers.
  • Developmental stages in your child’s life effect the tenor of your relationship.
  • They want their moms around.
  • A father may lose access to parts of his children’s lives because their mother no longer shares a home with you.
  • Fathers may sometimes take on the role of the mother with great sensitivity and heroism.
  • A father can play a significant role in the lives of their daughters even in their daughter’s adolescent years. Some experts suggest otherwise. But, it can be done provided the commitment is made to play that part in their life. (Recommend seeing the film: Eighth Grade)
  • Observe your children carefully.
  • Spend simple down-time together.
  • “What mistakes can you make? The most common one is that you can give up too soon. As an experienced father, you must learn new skills and just be there.”
  • Lots of fathers make no changes after their divorce. They expect children to fit into their lives and spend time together in the easiest way possible.
  • Shared activities have results.
  • Some fathers didn’t ever have the experience of a role model fatherly figure.
  • “What defeats many fathers is their thin skin.” When they suffer defeat, they lose their jobs. Some become easily discouraged and back away from the fathering role. “I have nothing to offer.”
  • Your child’s need for you is in no way diminished by your divorce.
  • If you lose your job, don’t let it translate to the loss of a relationship with your child.
  • You children are a priority and you can’t compromise.
  • Children never confuse their father with their stepfather.
  • Some fathers attempt to remain close with children, but end up experience feelings of loss.
  • A comment in a support group from a separated dad: “I think you’re saying that despite your great efforts, you all share the fear that no matter what you did, no matter how hard you tried, you still felt in danger of being marginalized.”
  • “Man of the house” can’t be recreated after divorce in a joint custody case.
  • Some fathers bounce in and out of their children’s lives. Some return to court to assert parental rights and blame ex-wives that their children don’t want to see them anymore.
  • If you don’t visit your children, you owe them an explanation as to why.
  • Start to rebuild a relationship with your children which takes into account the changes in their development.
  • “The greatest gift you can give your child is a sense that you’re a “forever father” who’s deeply committed to parenting.”
  • Your children both need you and need to grow away from you.
  • “The main purpose of parenting is to help children grow into independence.”
  • Your centrality in your children’s lives never diminishes, even as they move in and out of adolescence.
  • The father-daughter relationship in intact and divorced families serves as the template for a daughter’s view of men.
  • “Will you protect her? Are you willing to make sacrifices for your relationship? Do you respect her ideas? Do you have confidence in her abilities? Have you told her how proud you are to be her father?”
  • Fathers provide sons with a template as to what it means to be a man.
  • You must feel secure and sure with how important you are in your children’s lives.
  • Your role doesn’t disappear when your child enters adulthood.
  • Father-child relationships tend to grow apart as they age, way more so than in intact families.
  • Building a forever relationship is a generational journey if you get it right.

The picture on our Web Site captures the hope for every dad- separated or intact-it doesn’t change. It is about holding your child’s or grandchild’s hand, sometimes firmly and other times lightly, protecting and encouraging, educating and inspiring.

To love and be loved is the greatest human gift. The strange aspect of a separation with children is that it clarifies what is most important in our lives.

A New Kind of Mother

  • Motherhood after divorce changes profoundly your view of yourself, your children, the kind of care that you provide; and the day to day stresses create a whole new parenting environment;
  • Most mothers are aware of everything going on in their child’s daily life;
  • ‘your children remain an integral part of your psychological make-up’;
  • In the intact family, when they are with their dad, you likely feel they are continuing to be in your care; you receive a run down of their outing from your parenting partner and/or the children;
  • Post-separation this information flow may be non-existent from the other parent;
  • Children may view your questioning as intrusive or worry that it is part of the separation conflict between their parents;
  • Serious negative outcomes for children and parents occur when children sense the conflict all around them;
  • This questioning can be heightened once the dad thinks about or initiates dating; the ‘great fear’ about a parent having a diminished parenting role appears more real;
  • You are unable to provide the full-time care and awareness of everything child, as you likely provided in the intact family;
  • There is an ‘aloneness’ to parenting in a single parent home; it is a shared response of mothers and fathers, who must continue with life when the child is with their other parent;
  • Absent from the new mom’s house, dad’s house scenario, is the emotional support that is part of the intact, parenting partnership; often, the breakdown of an intimate relationship begins in the intact marriage with the loss of emotional support;
  • The loss of this support in the intact home (aloneness) is unlikely to change in two homes, at least in the early months, years;
  • Parenting is challenging and joyful; support may now be found from different sources- parents, friends, new relationships, etc.
  • ‘In the end it comes from you and no one else’.
  • Very few separated parents are satisfied with their parenting in the short term; mothers tend to judge themselves in the immediate time frame, in part, because our lives tend to be lived on a day to day basis;
  • Their will be a time when you will look back at your parenting journey and see your successes through your children.
  • If each separated parent recognizes their similar parenting journey in their changed family, the opportunity to regain a cooperative and supportive partnership becomes a possibility.
  • The ‘guilt burden’ is found in many mothers and may continue for decades; divorce is not the cause of all the perceived problems of your adult children;

‘Try to forgive yourself for your real and imagined sins of commission and omission. Try to be a gentler person with yourself. Take pride in the enormity of your accomplishment. Whatever your aspirations, you can’t do it all. Give yourself a break from your self-accusations.’ (Wallerstein)