How to Help Your Children through a Divorce
A divorce can be a devastating event not only for you and your spouse but also for your children. While you cannot hide your divorce from your children, you can minimize any negative impact it may have on them. Be open and honest without providing details of the divorce or any negative comments or emotions that you may feel towards your spouse. Use the below tips when helping your children through a divorce.
Maintain routine
Established routines allow stability and contribute to emotional, behavioral, and social development in children. During a divorce, your children are probably living in two households and acquainting themselves with two sets of household rules and routines. Work together with your spouse to keep the children’s routines as similar as possible between the two households.
Share Memories
Indulge your children in happy or funny memories you have of your partner. This can open the door to communication with your children. Open communication with your children can boost their self-esteem and confidence. Allowing your children to acknowledge the change going on in their lives can also be therapeutic for them.
Support Your Children’s Relationship with Former In-Laws
Encourage and be supportive of your children’s relationship with your spouse’s family. Having a relationship with extended family members may have a positive effect on your children’s cognitive development and behavior. Also, several studies have concluded that children who have grandparents involved in their lives are kinder and more supportive to others.
Don’t Be Afraid to Get Help
If one or more of your children are exhibiting hostility, aggression or depression, enrolling in and completing counseling and other support programs can help address the behavior now before it gets worse. Even though you have done all you could to help your children through the divorce, sometimes professional help is necessary to help your child cope with the changes going on in their lives.
Hire a Divorce Attorney
Hiring a divorce attorney to protect the interests of you and your children is a good plan. Your divorce attorney will be no stranger to cases involving children, so make sure to also get his or her advice on how to make the divorce a smoother process for your children (Source: Rutter and Sleeth Law Offices).
Providing emotional support to your children to help them through your divorce can have a significant impact on them. Knowing that their parents still care about them and are working together to maintain routines, schedules and consistency in their lives will allow them to see that their roles in their parent’s lives are still intact even in times of major change.