MenuParents who separate impose a tremendous change to their children’s core foundation. For divorce kids, statistics are clear that while some will eventually benefit from seeing their parents flourish in new relationships, several divorce kids will be affected by the breakdown of their family for their lifetime.
Parents: You have several choices if you are thinking about how to divorce and ways of protecting your children from the impacts of divorce:
- Think twice before you make the decision to separate. With amazing breakthroughs in brain science, (For more, read “The brain that changes itself”, by Norman Doidge), there is now a possibility that people can alter their behaviour in ways that old models of intervention could not achieve. There are now ways for people to take their marriage to a place of more joy and happiness than people could imagine (An amazing such program can be found at www.nextltd.com). What if there was a way to prevent your children from becoming divorce kids? Don’t you owe it to your family to at least try?
- Talk to your kids in an appropriate and mature manner. How to talk to your kids will depend on their ages and level of maturity of course. And the first rule is that no one should speak ill of the other partner in the presence of the children. This would deeply affect them and their ability to heal from this traumatic event. Divorce kids benefit from their parents being civil with one another. If you need further guidance on how to divorce and how to talk to your kids, there are several excellent services that your lawyer or doctor could recommend. It is strongly suggested that you receive professional guidance on how to talk to your kids about the subject of separation, affairs, incompatibility, etc.
- Select collaborative family law or divorce mediation instead of court to resolve the legal issues in your separation. Why is the use of collaborative family law and divorce mediation aimed at protecting your children? Because these systems permit parents to work cooperatively to find financial and parenting arrangements that work best for their children and their family. Several practitioners of divorce mediation will suggest that the parents work with collaborative family law lawyers during the mediation process to enhance the chances of peaceful and creative resolutions. In contrast to collaborative family law and divorce mediation, the court system is an adversarial system where parents have to hold rigid positions and where lawyers must “defend” their clients’ positions rather than working collaboratively with the other side. How to divorce by protecting your children is entering into a legal system where you will be open to compromise and be responsible for the well being of every member of your family during and after the legal separation.
You can see that protecting your children requires a tremendous degree of maturity and support from various professionals. People who believe they know how to divorce without external help may involuntarily create harmful situations for their children.
For more information please contact Nathalie Boutet.