Coping With Divorce-Supporting Your Kids

In Dr. Phil’s book, Family First: Your Step-by-Step Plan for Creating a Phenomenal Family, he lists the most important needs of children while their parents are going through a divorce. Dr Phil advises:  Your overall goal should be to meet all of these needs, in order to minimize the price your child has to pay for you and your ex being unable to sustain your relationship.

Coping With Divorce: Communicate:

Only talk to the child after you’re certain of your plans to live apart with both parents present. Try to minimize your feelings of anger, guilt, and loss and present a unified front in the decision that’s being made. Fit the discussion to the child’s age, maturity, and their temperament, making sure that you leave room for their questions and feelings.

Coping With Divorce: Keep Schedules And Routine Regular:

In a time of a lot of sad changes and upheaval, put in efforts to assure that the children have solid and predictable schedules and routines to give more of a sense of security and familiarity. “With the loss of a family leader from the home, children will check and test for structure, so be sure to give it to them. They need structure more than any other time in their lives, because this is when things seem to be falling apart for them.” Children long for continuity, routine, and tradition. Although the family has changed, you can still keep as many traditions and routines the same.

Coping With Divorce: Spend Lots of Face Time:

Make sure the child has access to both parents if possible, and that they still feel like an integral part of what’s going on even when things are changing. Find unique strategiesthat will comfort the child in this time of transition. “Post a timesharing schedule where the children can see it. Even children as young as 12 months can follow along with a color-coded timesharing schedule where days with one parent are red, days with the other parent are blue, for example. They can even help “check off” the days as they go by and thereby know where they are in time and when they will see the other parent again.

Coping With Divorce: Keep Their Role As Child Secure:

A child needs to still be the child through a divorce; their world is small, and needs to be protected from adult problems they can’t understand or solve. They seem like a good person to share with, because they are very involved in the situation and really see what’s going on, but they do not have the problem solving capacities as an adult and will only develop stress coping disorders. Children should not be burdened with situations they cannot control. Their emotional energy needs to be put toward their childhood development stages—not your divorce. So keep all signs of conflict, heated discussions, and legal talk away from children. Confine your suffering and negativity to therapy sessions and in conversations outside the home.

Coping With Divorce: Stay Positive:

No matter what age a child is, he or she will have more difficulty adjusting to divorce if there is continued conflict between parents.” Divorce will be just one factor that is changing in their life. “Other factors that add to this difficulty include: loss of contact with a competent, non-custodial parent; financial stress; a change of address; loss of continuity in school and home routines; psychological problems in the custodial or, non-custodial parent; and blurred boundaries between the parent and child.