6. If you must divorce, vow to not let your “irreconcilable differences” keep you from making amends, if at all possible. If two people have tried to do all within their power to make a relationship work and it’s still not working (after a lot of hard work), agree to disagree and be united as a set of “mutual parents” who love their children and work maturely and responsibly when it comes to jointly raising your children.
7. “Moving Your Happily-Ever-After-Back-And-Forth” isn’t fun for any child! Visitation is not an easy chore for children. Living out of suitcases, going back and forth, forgetting one shoe at Mom’s house, attending two different churches, having two separate sets of friends (one set at mom’s house and one set at dad’s house) is not easy. Put yourself in your child’s shoes. Try not to disrupt your children’s lives. If they are taking music lessons or playing sports, they need a visitation schedule that doesn’t interrupt this. Try to keep things as “normal” as possible for your children. Arrange your schedules so that they can continue to cultivate their talents.
8. Continue Bonding with Your Children: It may sound trite, but it’s true. Divorce does not have to be an awful experience for your children. In fact, if both parents can agree to make their personal visitation time a priority to focus on building a deeper, personal relationship with their children by consistently engaging with them, children may begin to look forward to their personal time “one-on-one-time” with Mom and Dad! I have heard a child say, “My dad spends more quality time with me now than he did before my parent’s got divorced!”
9. Disneyland Goes Both Ways: Both parents should share an equal opportunity to have fun with their children. You’ve all heard the term, “Disneyland Dad” or “Disneyland Mom” where one parent goes overboard to win their child over with excessive gifts, adventures, vacations while the other parent is left to the dutiful chores of laundry, doing homework, and disciplining all alone.
10. Work together: to make a plan so that your children can enjoy time at Mom’s or Dad’s while setting consistent expectations for “lights-out-at-bedtime”, “getting-homework-done-after-school”, setting boundaries for media choices, phone time allowances, gaming time, etc. If one parent is consistently setting guidelines and keeping boundaries while the other parent lets the child “get away with everything,” this creates a huge emotional imbalance in children.
11. Diet and Nutritional Choices: Children that have special dietary needs or restrictions need guidance at both places where they reside. Respect those needs and work together to make sure that your children have a balanced diet at both homes. If one parent is serving soda pop with every meal while the other parent is encouraging their diabetic child to “Drink more water!” this can become an emotional tug-of-war for the child.
12. Only Make Promises You Can Keep: Don’t be over-promising to win your child’s approval and then consistently let them down by breaking your promises. If you promise to take your child to dinner with just you, keep your promise.
13. Don’t invite your new girlfriend or boyfriend along to visitation activities just to surprise your child. (Another article will be devoted to Dating Practices when your children are still vulnerable.)
14. Raised on Religion…or not? What religious practices do you hope and expect your child
to be raised on moving forward? This is a huge denominator when one parent has chosen to break their marital covenants and even deny their mutual faith in common. Will the children be encouraged at one home to attend church while at the other parent’s home, children may be encouraged to trample values that once-upon-a-time
were held dear by both parents. Religious practices and expectations should also be addressed as a couple and agreed upon in writing set and in motion in the court decree.
15: Let’s face it. Kids don’t want to hear bad things about either one of their parents. They seem to recognize that they are a part of both parents. If one spouse makes the other spouse out to be a failure, children may subconsciously wonder if they too are destined to fail? For this reason, children will oftentimes do all within their power to protect the parent who appears to the child, to be “the victim”.
16:There is so much more that I’ve learned in conversations with my children in their adult years. Primarily, I have realized the importance of both parents nurturing their parents by creating a place where your children can feel safe enough to express their feelings. Encourage open and honest conversations with your child. Support their tender feelings. Remember, their “happily-here-and-now” has been displaced too. Children do not have the wisdom gleaned through life experience to adequately deal with their emotions at this vulnerable time of their lives. They need both parents to come together and help to recreate a new version of what happiness is….here and now.
