Going through a divorce, no matter whether it is amicable or not, is very difficult and it will take everything out of you emotionally. This is made even harder when there are kids involved, as I have recently learned. In fact were it not for the amazing team at Marrison Family Law, there is no way that I’d have got through it. I had only lived in Colorado Springs for a year, and states in the US have a collection of different laws when it comes to family law, and you need local lawyers who understand it all, which these guys really did. When there are kids involved in the divorce, everything becomes more difficult and the focus is on them coming through as unscathed as possible. To ensure that this is what happened with mine, here is what I did.
No Bad Mouthing
As tempting as it can be to talk bad about your soon-to-be ex partner, it is absolutely essential that you never do so in front of the kids. However wronged or maligned you may feel, that is the kid’s parent too and they need to decide how they feel about them, it is not your place to put those thoughts in their heads.
Normality
Something else which seemed to work really well was keeping the kid’s lives as normal as we possibly could. This meant still attending clubs and seeing their friends, and making sure that as little changed in their lives as possible. We made an agreement that we’d let the kids stay in the family home until a decision was made about their future, which also seemed to help. In Colorado Springs the judge makes the custody decision when the parents can’t decide, but prior to that it is down to the parents to work it out. Keeping the kids with a life that was as normal as possible was a great help.
Talking
One of the most difficult things that I did with the kids, but one of the most necessary things that we did, was the conversations about what was happening and why. No matter how old they are, kids know that something is going wrong and if you don’t address it then they are going to be left to make tup their own opinions, and given the creativity and imagination that kids have, that is unlikely to end well. Every Friday night me and the kids had honest hour, where they could ask just about anything and I would tell them. Naturally I would leave out the really private stuff, but I always made sure that they had a clear vision of what was happening, why it was happening, and what I felt that the future was going to hold for us all. Kids aren’t stupid and as tough as it is, we can’t treat them like that for something so important.
Three simple tips, but three tips which can really help both you and your children.