Helping Children After Divorce

A separation or divorce is a highly stressful and emotional experience for everyone involved, but children often feel that their whole world has turned upside down. At any age, it can be traumatic to witness the dissolution of your parent’s marriage and the breakup of the family. Kids may feel shocked, uncertain, or angry. Some may even feel guilty, blaming themselves for the problems at home.

What your child wants from Mom and Dad during a divorce

• I need both of you to stay involved in my life. Please call me, email, text, and ask me lots of questions. When you don’t stay involved, I feel like I’m not important and that you don’t really love me.
• Please stop fighting and work hard to get along with each other. Try to agree on matters related to me. When you fight about me, I think that I did something wrong and I feel guilty.
• I want to love you both and enjoy the time that I spend with each of you. Please support me and the time that I spend with each of you. If you act jealous or upset, I feel like I need to take sides and love one parent more than the other.
• Please communicate directly with each other so that I don’t have to send messages back and forth between you.
• When talking about my other parent, please say only kind things, or don’t say anything at all. When you say mean, unkind things about my other parent, I feel like you are expecting me to take your side.
• Please remember that I want both of you in my life. I count on my mom and dad to raise me, to teach me what is important, and to help me when I have problems.

Source: University of Missouri

You can dramatically reduce your children’s pain by making their well-being your top priority.

Your patience, reassurance, and listening ear can minimize tension as your children learn to cope with unfamiliar circumstances. By providing routines your kids can rely on, you remind them that they can count on you for stability, structure, and care. And by maintaining a working relationship with your ex, you can help your kids avoid the stress and anguish that comes with watching parents in conflict. With your support, your kids can not only successfully navigate this unsettling time, but even emerge from it feeling loved, confident, and strong—and even with a closer bond to both parents.

COURSE: Helping Children After Divorce

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Let the Kids SPEAK

Listen. Encourage your child to share their feelings and really listen to them. They may be feeling sadness, loss or frustration about things you may not have expected.

Help them find words for their feelings. It’s normal for children to have difficulty expressing their feelings. You can help them by noticing their moods and encouraging them to talk.

Let them be honest. Children might be reluctant to share their true feelings for fear of hurting you. Let them know that whatever they say is okay. They may blame you for the divorce but if they aren’t able to share their honest feelings, they will have a harder time working through them.

Make talking about the divorce an ongoing process. As children age and mature, they often have new questions, feelings, or concerns about what happened, so you may want to go over the same ground again and again.

Acknowledge their feelings. You may not be able to fix their problems or change their sadness to happiness, but it is important for you to acknowledge their feelings rather than dismissing them. You can also inspire trust by showing that you understand.

Seek support

At the very least, divorce is complicated and stressful—and can be devastating without support.

Lean on friends. Talk face-to-face with friends or a support group about any difficult emotions you’re feeling—such as bitterness, anger, frustration—so you don’t take it out on your kids. If you’ve neglected your social circle while being married and don’t feel you have anyone to confide in, it’s never too late to build new friendships.

Never vent negative feelings to your child. Whatever you do, do not use your child to talk it out like you would with a friend.

Keep laughing. Try to inject humor and play into your life and the lives of your children as much as you can; it can relieve stress and give you all a break from sadness and anger.

See a therapist. If you are feeling intense anger, fear, grief, shame, or guilt, find a professional to help you work through those feelings.

Take a Class such as “Helping Children after Divorce” (HCAD) parenting class.

About the (HCAD) parenting class.

The HCAD class is a multimedia Parent Education and Family Stabilization Course designed to educate users about effective strategies for parenting after divorce. The program reviews strategies focused on parent-related challenges (e.g., co-parenting and stress management), as well as parenting strategies to help reduce the effects of divorce on the well-being of your child.

The HCAD program was developed by Dr. Stephen Mayville. Dr. Mayville is a licensed clinical psychologist with training and experience in providing behaviorally-based treatment for adults, children, and families. This unique and comprehensive parenting program offers the learner a convenient choice of video or text-based materials.

In addition to the video and text materials developed to meet four-hour court requirements, extra materials are included to help you on your new parenting journey. The HCAD program comes with audio downloads, an eBook on reward systems, and includes a bonus video class on the ins and outs of healthy step-family functioning. This bonus course will not increase time to complete court requirements, and a customer who purchases the course now will have access any future materials and improvements to the course free of additional charge.

The program is well suited for individuals in need of fulfilling a court-ordered four hour parenting class. It is quick, convenient, provides an immediate certificate of completion, provides more bonus materials than your typical parenting course, and is very competitively priced. It is a DCF-approved Florida parenting class, yet it is suitable for parent education court requirements nation-wide. The program is also a good fit for anyone in search of comprehensive parent education that addresses the unique challenges of divorce.