Eight Easily Forgotten Tips for Protecting Your Kids Through Divorce
Eight Easily Forgotten Tips for Protecting Your Kids Through Divorce
from custody and visitation to making sure they are not to blame
Kids are often traumatized when their parents go through divorce — the divorce, after all, isn’t just happening to the adults, it’s happening to the entire family.
Kids deserve hearing the truth from their parents about what's occurring in their lives, yet we can easily forget the basics of communication when going through something as emotionally challenging as divorce.
In his new book Divorce Solutions: How to Make Any Divorce Better, divorce attorney Ed Sherman offers a few simple, yet easily forgotten tips on how to tactfully explain your divorce to kids:
- Tell kids the truth using simple terms and explanations. Tell them where their other parent has gone.
- Reassure them that they will continue to be taken care of and that they will be safe and secure.
- While kids will see that parents can stop loving each other, reassure them that a parent’s love for a child is a special kind that never stops.
- Spend time with each child individually. Whether you have custody or visitation, the most important thing to the child is your individual relationship with him or her.
- Kids feel responsible for causing the divorce. Reassure them that they are not to blame. They may also think it’s their responsibility to bring their parents back together. Let them know your decision is final and will have to be accepted.
- Divorcing parents often feel guilty and become overindulgent; offer your child love, but also limits.
- Continue to parent your kids; don’t turn them into adult companions. Seek other adults to fill your own need for companionship.
- Avoid situations that place kids in the impossible position of choosing between parents.
Click the following for further articles and resourceful tips on Kids, Family and Divorce.
Comments
Post new comment