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Everything You Need To Know: Talking To The Kids About Your Divorce
December 5, 2023 By Melissa Lenon, LMFT What to tell the kids and how to tell the kids are pressing questions on most parents’ minds when it comes to divorce. And for good reason! Your children will remember this moment, how and what they were told, for the rest of their lives. It’s understandable that parents are afraid of their kids’ big emotional reactions in the face of already feeling guilty about the divorce. Parents, rightfully so, expect their children to be upset, tearful, angry, sad. Parents often anticipate being blamed or feeling ashamed. On top of all that, parents have to figure out how much detail to tell the kids and how much to tell them about the reasons as well provide reassurances. Telling your kids about your separation or divorce can be overwhelming for parents as well as kids. It is fraught with traps you want to avoid. It also offers places where you and your child can build trust and security. For all those reasons, we (the CA Collaborative Divorce authors of the blogs) provide nearly everything you need right here. We will capture succinct guidelines in an easily digestible format that divorce experts agree on. You don’t have to get this perfect, but you certainly want to get it ‘good enough.’ Navigating what and how with a divorce professional in mental health yields tremendous relief for parents and a path that is carefully crafted for your kids and your divorce/separation circumstances. These professionals who work only with the adults in a divorce are called divorce coaches. A child specialist works with both parents and children but focuses on the kids. Many families use both in navigating telling the kids and beyond. There are two organizations you can reliably find highly qualified divorce professionals:Collaborative Divorce in your state (for California, www.cdcal.com) Association of Family and Conciliatory Courts (AFCC, www.afccnet.org) Whether it is what or how of telling your kids, remember that LOW conflict is king. There are dozens of studies that show parental conflict is closely associated with the children’s well-being: where there is high conflict, there is low well-being and where there is low conflict, there is increased well-being. In fact, kids fair the worst with high conflict between parents during and after the divorce. In the following 2 blogs, you will learn, in a condensed format, from the best of the best in the field of divorce about:
How Do We Tell The Kids About Our Divorce? – Part 2
December 8, 2023 By collaborative staff - l.b. It’s taken months or years for you and your partner to decide the next step is divorce. As adults, you’ve had a lot of time to consider and process this change. This is not the case for kids – even if they’ve seen a lot of fighting and know things are rough between their parents. Because your kids are likely in such a different head space than you about the parent problems, one of the best things you can do for them (and yourself!) is to take time to prepare and plan for telling them about the divorce. The ‘How’ sets up the ‘What’ to tell the kids (What to Tell the Kids is the second blog of this series). Here are key elements of the planning/preparing phase of telling your child(ren) about your separation or divorce:
Here are some helpful do’s and don’ts that apply to ‘How’ to tell you kids in the actual conversation with them. Do:
HOW you tell the kids has everything to do with setting aside blame, shame, acrimony, and mistrust to focus on what the next chapter will look like, each parent modelling better behavior and working together in telling the kids about the divorce. Overall and throughout your divorce, protect your children from conflict between you and their other parent: research indicates that children fair far better with low conflict between parents than high. This can be particularly hard when creating your divorce story and telling the kids together. However, you made it to this blog and a web site that helps parents get a better divorce – you are on the right track! This article was a collaboration of expertise and contributed by Melissa Lenon, LMFT, Sharon Clark, Ph.D, Jane Eular, Esq. and Cinda Jones, CFP, CDFA. What Do We Tell The Kids About Our Divorce? Part 3 December 11, 2023 By collaborative staff - l.b. Understandably parents belabor or avoid thinking about or preparing what they are going to tell their kids. So often, parents are just trying to survive the relationship turmoil and it’s tough to find the internal or external space to plan what you are going to tell the kids. Fortunately, much is written about this topic and many experts agree on traps parents should aim to avoid and the guiding lights to steer this conversation. Guiding Lights what to tell kids about divorce 1. Share your carefully crafted divorce story specific to the age and stage or your children and your family’s circumstances. 2. For children under 6 years old, be sure to use short sentences and concrete words. 3. Reassure your children you will always be their parents, love them, care for them. 4. Emphasize the divorce was not caused by them in any way nor is any of this their fault. 5. Let them know this was a hard decision made by parents because of serious problems. 6. Share the interim agreement about living arrangements and parenting time. 7. Emphasize you want them to have a loving relationship with both of you. 8. Let them know that you each will be okay and will make sure your children are okay. Additionally, your kids will want to know what the separation or divorce means for them. The two of you will want to have a sense of the following and note to the children if any of the arrangements are temporary: What happens next When the separation will happen (the number of days or weeks) Where each of you will live Where they will live How they will see each parent and for how long Who will care for them What will happen with schools (any changes) How they will see their friends How activities will be affected Traps to Avoid 1. Including adult details including finances or affairs. 2. Blaming or degrading your co-parent. 3. Asking your children what living arrangements they want. This places too much pressure on kids. They are welcome to offer their needs and wants but decisions are shouldered by adults. 4. Suggesting your child has to choose one parent over the other. The vast majority of kids love BOTH parents and suffer if pulled into alignment with one or the other. 5. Sugar coating a separation if the plan is for it to become divorce. NOTE: Divorce coaches and/or child specialists help you develop your divorce story and cover the details of what to tell the kids. Visit www.cdcal.com for more information about child specialists and divorce coaches. Additional Resource: “What Should We Tell the Children? A Parents’ Guide for Talking About Separation and Divorce,” Joan B. Kelly, Ph.D., with assistance from Mary K. Kisthardt, J.D. https://www.guidetogooddivorce.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/resources_texasdivorcelaw_What-Should-We-Tell-the-Children.pdf This article was a collaboration of expertise and contributed by Melissa Lenon, LMFT, Sharon Clark, Ph.D, Jane Eular, Esq. and Cinda Jones, CFP, CDFA. Scared To Divorce: Is This The Last Christmas (or Diwali or Hanukkah)? November 3, 2023 By Beth Proudfoot, LMFT For parents who are considering divorce, the prospect of having to change holiday traditions can be daunting. From the time the kids are very small, many parents love to create traditions for religious and civic holidays. Repeating those traditions by having the same foods and activities can be deeply grounding and fulfilling for children and parents alike. When you divorce, change is part of the package, so at least some of these traditions are going to be disrupted. Below are a few ideas for avoiding the Ghost of Holidays Past both during and after your divorce. Divorce and Holidays Keep doing the holidays together post-divorce. Many families handle this well and children love having both of their parents attend events involving them. The secret is to create an excellent Parenting Plan during your divorce which covers who will host the holiday events, which extended family members will be invited (or not!), how you’ll share responsibility for gifts and more. Couples who choose a Collaborative Divorce process will get help from Communications Coaches to create a plan which works well for the children and the parents. Take a “Dates Don’t Matter” attitude. For couples with ongoing conflict, it can be just better to create new traditions in separate households. With two homes and only one holiday date on the calendar, though, it’s hard. Many parents create an “every other year” plan, with holidays alternating between Mom’s house and Dad’s house on even and odd years. This doesn’t have to mean that there’s no holiday at the other household. What if every year the new tradition is that the kids have the holiday on the date on the calendar with one parent and ANOTHER version of the same holiday a week later with the other parent? Not very many children would object to this plan. It’s hardest on the parent who will not have the children on the calendar date of the holiday. There are ways to deal with this. (See #4.) Slice the day. For parents who live close in proximity it can definitely work to split holidays. One parent has a few days before and the morning of the holiday and the other has the afternoon of the holiday and a few days afterward. The advantage to kids: two holidays! The advantage to parents, they get to celebrate with their kids on the actual holiday date Plan to use the time wisely when your kids are with their other parent. Learning to share parenting is often the hardest thing about divorce. Giving up half of your precious time with your kids can be heartbreaking. I don’t want to minimize this. It’s awful. And. Eventually, wise parents come to accept that the “guilt free childcare” that happens when their kids are with their other parent frees up much-needed time. They use this time to get other stuff done so that they can be fully present when they are with their kids. So, on that date on the calendar when others are celebrating the holiday, use the time to wrap presents, get the laundry done, pre-cook some meals and meet with your single friends who are feeling lonely. Divorce means that new traditions will need to be planned and established. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be liberating and fun to let go of traditions that never worked and embrace new things to eat, see, and do. If you are planning to divorce in the next year, no need to be scared. However, it is important to set things up so that you and your spouse can solve all the problems that will need to be solved, including how to handle the holidays, with respect and dignity. The Divorce Options Class is one way to get more information about how to do this. BETH PROUDFOOT, LMFT is a Collaborative Divorce Communications Coach and Child Specialist in Northern California. Her website is www.bethproudfoot.com Filed Under: Blog, Collaborative Divorce, Divorce Options® Tagged With: Children, Co-Parenting, Collaborative Process, During Divorce About Beth Proudfoot, LMFT Beth Proudfoot is a seasoned child therapist and parenting coach with a current focus on working with couples in Collaborative Divorce, either as a Communications Coach or as a Child Specialist. She is an accomplished motivational speaker and former host of the cable television show, "My Family, My Self". Beth’s Profile | Beth’s Website |
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