Children and Divorce

When you first get married you are convinced that you will be together forever. However, sometimes things do not go as smoothly as you think, and unfortunately at time divorce is the only option. Divorce is especially difficult on both of the involved parties, but it can be horribly devastating for any children who are involved. There are things that you can definitely do to ease their difficult transition through the divorce process. The important thing to remember is that they are scared and confused, and that they need to know that no matter what they will have two parents who love them more than anything no matter what happens.

In the United State over fifteen million kids have experienced divorce. Divorce is incredibly difficult for all parties to navigate, and it can actually bring out the worst of everyone. It is quite common for parents to try to reassure their kids by lying or obscuring what is going on. For some parents they may be tempted to spoil or buy their kids affections throughout the divorce process. Or even in some cases parents may be so focused on trying to move on that they can forget about their children's needs. All of these things are really normal, but they are also things that you want to do your best to guard against. Actions like these can actually confuse the kids and even do more harm to their emotional state.

Parents need to realize that just as they are suffering the loss of a relationship, so are their children. However, in the eyes of a child that loss can be severely multiplied. They are not only losing the family structure that they have always known, but they will also be losing time with both parents and the security that they once had. This can bring about all sorts of emotions on the half of the child including abandonment issues, or even a drop in self esteem.

To prevent these negative side effects it is very important that both parents spend time developing a logical and agreed upon plan of how to deal with the divorce proceedings so that the children are taken care of. One of the biggest bones of contention in divorce proceedings is the custody arrangement. Determining a custody arrangement can be very sticky, and it is important for both parents to work together to create a solid plan of how your custody schedule will work. Kids thrive on structure and routine, and since you are interrupting their current routine you will want to take care to ensure that the transition is as smooth as possible.

The first thing that you need to do is to outline how much time the children are going to be able to spend with each parent. The time does not need to necessarily be equal, but you do want to take care to make sure that the time that each parent gets to spend with the children is quality time. In general you want to make sure that you are allotting blocks of at least three hours to spend together. Visits that are shorter than this tend to leave everyone feeling unsatisfied and can lead to frustration.

You will also want to outline specifically how you will hand off kids from one party to the next. Though in the beginning you may feel like you can simply hand over the kids from one parent to the next be wary of this. Often, tensions can build and these handoffs can be where those hostilities come to light. You do not want this to happen because the kids will be witness to it first hand. Instead, it is often a good idea to try to plan handoffs into the schedule so that one parent drops the children off at school and the other parent picks them up from school.

You will also want to make sure that your kids know how they can get into contact with either parent if they need or want them. As a general guideline it is a good idea to try to set up a window of time where a scheduled phone call from parent to child can happen. Again, through this process you may feel tempted to try and keep constant communication going with your children. However, that is really not necessary. Typically one call a day is more than sufficient.

Divorce is never easy for anyone to handle, but by taking some simple steps in the planning you can ease it for all parties involved. Just remember to hug your kids and let them know that you love them no matter what. Knowing that they are loved will help them weather the transitional storm.