We can cite research all day long about how important it is to maintain a healthy, honest, and cooperative approach to prepare your children for divorce. But your children’s hearts, spirits, and well-being should always be the guiding force. 

Using a divorce mediator, rather than a traditional lawyer, can create a more seamless, conflict-free arena for divorce decisions. The less conflict and animosity there is, the easier it will be to prepare your children for a divorce.

Seven Things You Can Do To Ease Your Children’s Divorce Experience

If you are heading towards a divorce, there are several things you can do to help prepare your children – and support them through – an experience that will be excruciatingly painful, no matter how well you do your job.

Always always always take the high road

First and foremost, you absolutely must “take the high road” at all times. Children deserve to have an individual and independent relationship with each parent without that being tainted by the other parent’s story. This isn’t always easy, but it’s essential.

If you want to support your children’s emotional health and create a robust and healthy foundation for future co-parenting (more on that in #4), you must put any reactive, spiteful, or angry feelings toward your spouse to the side whenever you’re speaking in front of, within earshot, or directly to your children.

Anything you say that is insulting, vengeful, or disparaging about their other parent hurts your children. Period. The interpersonal issues that led to your divorce have absolutely NOTHING to do with your children, and it should stay that way.

Remember that you’re still a family even if you’re not a couple

One of the great misconceptions about divorce is that you’re no longer a family. Any divorced couple can tell you that’s not the truth. You may not want to be with your spouse anymore, but you will always be a part of each others’ lives if you have children together. That also means that any future partners of yours or your partners will also become a part of your “family.”

Holding this view of the extended family model is one of the best things you can do to keep that “high road” or “big picture” perspective we talked about above.

Invest in an experienced family therapist

Family and child/adolescent therapy can be an essential foundation for preparing for a divorce – and maintaining the healthy co-parenting relationship that will carry your children through the divorce and into their young adult years.

People mistakenly believe that therapy that doesn’t save the marriage is a waste of money. If you have children, we believe therapy is a crucial foundation for couples and their children because it helps families cultivate communication skills, co-parenting agreements, and how to assess their children’s needs above what each parent wants or sees as “best.”

Create a co-parenting plan

We can’t speak highly enough about the benefits of a co-parenting plan. These agreements can evolve and change with the family’s needs. 

This cooperative plan honors the commitment to your children’s well-being as well as your own. Co-parenting plans fare best when they’re viewed as “living documents” that can be revised as life inevitably changes. 

Most co-parenting plans incorporate:

• Reiterations of the current child custody/visitation plan or related co-parenting schedules.
• How changes in visitation/vacations/holidays should occur.
• Common house rules that keep things consistent from household to household (essential for helping children transition back and forth).
• How disagreements between parents will be resolved.
• Etc.

Working with your family law mediator or therapist can help you create a customized co-parenting plan that supports everyone’s best interests.

Present the news and general plan together to prepare your children for divorce

Remember that no matter how amicable the divorce may seem from your end, it will still turn your children’s world upside down. Even the “best” of divorces are traumatic for children and affect them for the rest of their lives. 

With this in mind, you must present a united parenting front – even if you can’t be a united marital front – when it comes to communicating about the divorce with your children. 

What to say – and not say – largely depends on your children’s ages, so we recommend reading Today’s Parent’s post, How to tell kids about divorce: An age-by-age guide.

Your ability to maintain a united parent front, regardless of how separate or fragmented your relationship is, makes a tremendous difference in your children’s sense of trust and stability.

Practice healthy communication strategies

Your ability to co-parent absolutely rests on a foundation of healthy communication. However, using healthy communication strategies with your children is also important. Depending on your child’s age and feelings about the situation, the latter may be harder than you think.

Children experience hurt, anger, and blame, and they are apt to vent that right onto you. Again, a good family therapist can be a godsend. However, be prepared to remain calm and non-reactive if your children:

• Blame you for the divorce.
• Seem sullen and angry.
• Say hurtful things to you, like “No wonder dad/mom wanted a divorce. I wouldn’t want to be married to you either.”
• Continue processing the divorce for years afterward as their age/awareness brings up new feelings or awarenesses.

The best thing you can do is continue encouraging them to be honest (albeit respectful – you don’t have to become a whipping post by any means!) about their feelings.

• Help them put words to their complicated thoughts and emotions.
• Reassure them that nothing about the divorce is their fault.
• Do bring your ex-spouse into the equation (scheduling a family meeting if necessary) if you suspect manipulation or one-sided information is coming to the table so that everything remains transparent between households. When your kids see that they can’t play one side against the other, they stop trying.
• Avoid the tendency to “fix.” There is nothing that can be fixed, so just being present with their emotions, validating that they’re normal and expected, and just listening is the best thing you can do.

Focus on stability between households (more than exact routines)

The reality is that there are two separate households now, and they cannot possibly be “the same.” So, the goal of the co-parenting agreement should be to establish some core values/rules/consistency that provide stability – but that honor the reality of a two-household family.

Areas we recommend prioritizing consistency:

• Bedtimes/wake times (especially for school days).
• Tech time/screen time limits.
• Natural outcomes for certain actions so that consequences are fairly standard between households.
• Protocols for hanging out with friends/sleepovers, etc. (like needing 24-hour notice, or communicating with the friend’s parents ahead of time, ensuring each parent knows when a child will be staying elsewhere, and so on).

Resist spoiling a child, being more of a friend than a parent, or the urge to “win” when it comes to who’s the better parent or has the better household. These temptations do far more harm than good, and there is ample research to support that.

Gerard A. Falzone Helps You Prepare Your Children For Divorce

We understand that most parents prefer to scaffold a divorce that does the least amount of harm to their children. However, the more stressful and emotional things become, the harder this can be. 

The Law Offices of Gerard A. Falzone have always prioritized divorces that utilize mediation or collaborative divorce methods to help parents and children create a healthy road ahead. Contact us to schedule a consultation and to begin finding healthy ways to prepare your children for divorce.