Resources by Audience

We recognize that every role and relationship is affected by the process of family separation, and it is our hope that everyone in the family can benefit from family renewal.

Click on the headers below to expand sections for more information.

For Parents

“I like to see him (his son Karter) before the game,” said the Raptors star point guard. “It makes me whole. He doesn’t watch the game out there. He watches in the back. For me, I tell him I love him. He tells me good luck. We have a talk. You’ve got a good thing like that going. I give him a kiss. You have that in your life, what have you got to be mad about. You go out and do your job with ease.” – Excerpt from the Toronto Sun Dec. 25, 2014

Talking About Fathers

Kyle Lowry captures the transformation that becoming a dad brought to his life. It changed and balanced his priorities – it brought true meaning for the rest of his life.

Every dad understands his words and can relate to the transformation that takes place.

Talking about fatherhood is complicated because of the many roads and relationships that may have brought us to becoming a dad. Different histories and family dynamics can bring different challenges during the separation process. However, we all share a common fear: losing our relationship with our child.

Supporting Fathers

We at Kids ‘n’ Dad recognize that the continuation of that father-child relationship is crucial. In this section there will be an opportunity to hear the words of fathers engaged in the everyday struggle to be an effective and loving parent.

Please listen and understand the challenges. Listen to be an inspired parent that provides your children with the best of yourself in order to nurture the best in your child. Listen to learn the tools necessary to be an effective parent and how you can acquire those needed skills. Listen to know that you are not alone in this journey.

I have yet to meet a dad who with the right support cannot be an amazing dad…for a lifetime!

The greatest gift that you can give your child is a sense that you’re a “forever father” who’s deeply committed to parenting. – Judith Wallerstein: What About the Kids

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When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. You are connected to your child and to all those who touch your lives. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.Sophia Loren

Experiences of Motherhood

Sophia Loren shares a common experience of motherhood, as many mothers have felt their needs and priorities reorganized by motherhood. For some, this is a joyous transformation. Sophia Loren traveled a painful road to motherhood, having suffered two heartbreaking miscarriages before her first son was born. Despite these pains, she has said, “I believe that motherhood is the greatest role of my life. Nothing, not even winning an Oscar, can compete with the pleasure and sense of accomplishment it has given me.”

Still, a person’s relationship to motherhood can be complex, often made more complicated by the societies and systems in which we parent. Only recently has our society come to recognize the needs of women separately from their family roles. Even as more career settings seek to better include women, family role expectations are slower to change. Whatever else she may do, a mother parenting within a mixed-gender partnership often feels the need to take on the greater part of homemaking and parenting tasks. Even in same-sex partnerships, disparities in roles and expectations can present challenges in parenting—both together and apart.

The experiences of motherhood are unique to every mother, yet family separation present new challenges and concerns to all mothers. As roles and family dynamics change, so do we.

Photo of Woman and Her Children Lying on Bed

Supporting Mothers

Kids ‘n’ Dad recognizes that every mother comes to family life and separation with a unique set of needs. These needs as mothers also connect in complex ways to the needs of children, partners, and extended family.

In this section, we hope to connect you to resources informed by the experiences, challenges, and insights of other separating mothers. These resources can help you to see your own situation with new perspective and remind you that you are not alone in your struggles. Reading with an open mind can also help you discover new skills and insights as you work towards finding the best way forward for yourself and your separating family.

Family structures may change and evolve, but motherhood is forever!

Photo of Woman and Her Daughter Laughing

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Telling the children

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Telling the children launches your family into uncertain territory, where every relationship is under stress and risk.  This may not feel like a step forward, but if done together in a no-fault approach, you have taken a step toward family recovery. 

– Barry Lillie, Kids ‘n’ Dad founder

Parenting Plan

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An essential test of a good parenting plan following a separation is how the agreement preserves all the essential relationships that help children thrive through the years and become happy and resilient young adults, fully capable of entering loving relationships. 

– Barry Lillie, Kids ‘n’ Dad founder

Alienation

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Forgiveness

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Forgiveness is less about freeing the other parent from what you perceived they did and more about freeing yourself from the restraints that make our lives less joyful, less purposeful and less loving. 

– Barry Lillie, Kids ‘n’ Dad founder 

Families do come in all shapes, in every from, and are sustained and strengthened by the enduring love of each parent to their child and their child’s child. 

– Barry Lillie, Kids ‘n’ Dad founder

For Family and Friends

Photograph of Happy Children

How do you answer the question about a missing dad or mom?  How do you answer questions about why there are no paternal grandparents in the grandchild’s life?  The questions are more than just a question; they require an answer/explanation that provides an adult understanding that supports our children and our children’s children to navigate life. 

– Barry Lillie, Kids ‘n’ Dad founder

Helping Children Through Separation

Separation is a difficult time for children of all ages. It is important that parents keep the needs of their children in mind as they navigate the challenging emotions and processes of separation. However much anger and frustration the parents may feel towards each other, it is important that each parent remembers that they love their children more than they resent the other parent.

Co-parenting during and after separation requires that parents work together to safeguard their children’s needs:

  • Children need to know they will be welcomed, cherished, and supported within both homes.
  • Children need to be supported by both parents in developing meaningful, nurturing relationship with each parent.
  • Children need to know they will not be brought into any tensions that may arise between parents, which includes hearing, observing, or being part of their parent’s arguments or problems with one another.
Black parents lecturing upset daughter at table

What Children Need to Hear

Children of different ages and stages will need age-appropriate support from both parents when the family navigates separation. We hope that the resources on this site will help your family during this process.

Whether they ask or not, children within a separating family need to hear some important messages over and over again:

  • They still have a family.
  • They will have two homes: one with each parent
  • Both parents will always love them and take care of them.
  • The kids did not cause the divorce. This is an adult problem.
  • They will be made aware of any decision that will affect them. Their feelings will be acknowledged and considered. However, the adults will make the decisions based on the children’s best interests.
  • They will never be asked to choose one parent over the other, to act as a messenger or as a spy.
  • They will not be treated as another piece of property to be fought for, bargained over, or seized.
  • They will have the financial support of both parents.

Related Posts

Further Resources

Children of divorce learn to cope with these inconsistencies and instability, but by the age of 10, I no longer wanted to deal with it.  I didn’t want to live in two different homes with two different bedrooms, different clothes, different toys, different friends and different rules.  I was a 10-year old caught between a rock and a hard place. 

Leigh-Ann Smith, Published June 5, 2013, Globe and Mail

Roles, and Relationships

Separation is a time of change, not only for the nuclear family, but also for their wider circle of family and friends. Special occasions and holidays may suddenly seem like puzzles to be solved. Friends and family may not know what their role can be in the changing family structure, and treasured relationships in the lives of parents and children alike may seem jeopardized.

While the circumstances of every separating family are unique, there are many common experiences of roles and relationships to consider. By considering the family’s wider support system in the separation process, parents can better prepare to find a way forward that maintains these important relationships for the wellbeing of their child.

Grandparents: The Forgotten Story

Grandparents often suffer a triple loss when their child goes through a separation. Grandparents feel their child’s unhappiness and despair; they may see their child-in-law become a stranger to them; they often are denied or have limited access to their grandchildren.

A grandparent can go overnight from being an integral part of their grandchildren’s lives to an afterthought at the precise time that children need them most.

Many grandparents suffer the same feelings of despair and loss as their child. Often grandparents become divided over what to do and their relationship suffers. They become victims of physical illness.

Children often lose the sense of their two family heritages and more importantly “who they are” when this relationship becomes distant. Grandparents can provide the connections during this time of turmoil.

Grandparents affected by separation observe the joy of other grandparents and may feel powerless. It challenges all of their beliefs about fairness and our judicial institutions.

We at Kids ‘n’ Dad believe that every Parenting Plan must recognize the unique role of grandparents in ensuring positive outcomes for children. Legislators and judiciary must support children in maintaining this source of love. Child poverty can be mitigated when the love and resources of grandparents are part of a child’s life. For many children, especially teens, there is a sanctuary of calm and stability offered by grandparents – a place of unique love. No one has the right to take that from a child or a grandparent.

Related Posts

  • Open Letter: Separation and Grandparents

Further Resources

Twenty-three years later most of my weekdays begin by taking my three- and four-year-old grandchildren (the boys) to homecare and JK.  I then often journey to my other daughter’s home for joyful moments with my 21-month-old granddaughter.  On a really good day I drive my almost 16-year-old granddaughter to dance.  As she leaves and says, “Thank you Grandpa”, my eyes almost always mist over.  

– Barry Lillie, Kids ‘n’ Dad founder