Under the absolute best of times, going through the process of a divorce is a complex and incredibly emotionally charged time in anyone’s life. Deciding intimate details about your life and how you separate it from another person in front of a lawyer or judge must be one of the most humbling things you’ll ever go through. If those discussions involve children, it can be even more difficult to remain rational and work together to come to the correct decision for them, without letting your anger or emotions play a part. With this in mind, you need to consider some things during a divorce when kids are involved.
Setting Your Own Expectations
One of the first things you will need to do is be realistic about your own expectations when it comes to your children, particularly around custody decisions that will need to be made. You’ll need to consider how attached the children are to each parent, and let their feelings and actions dictate a possible custody agreement.
You will also need to seriously consider your economic status post-divorce and be realistic about your ability to provide for your children, as well as your partner’s ability to provide financial assistance. In the event of court-ordered child support, this will be decided fairly for you.
Things to Avoid Doing in Front of the Kids
There’s a reason why you’re getting a divorce, and that reason is the result of irreconcilable differences. Because of this, there’s likely a lot of anger, animosity and emotion involved, and you need to do your best not to involve the kids in this. That means you need to absolutely avoid certain behaviors when the kids are present. Psychologists suggest that the following things should be avoided at all costs:
- Arguing in front of the children.
- Talking about each other and complaining about each other to the children.
- Overruling each other out of spite.
- Putting your children in the middle of an argument or disagreement.
- Letting your children see spiteful and vindictive behavior towards each other.
Children are already confused and hurt, and will have a difficult time processing the divorce, so you need to make it as easy as possible on them, not only during the divorce, but afterwards too.
Co-Parenting After a Divorce
Perhaps the most difficult thing once the divorce is finalized is going to be co-parenting. The best way to assist with this is to make sure the terms of your co-parenting are well defined. Consider holidays, birthdays of both the parents and the children and any other special occasions where there might be conflict about who should spend that time with the children. Communicate as best you can with each other too and stick to the same principles about what not to do in front of the children during the divorce.
Be patient and kind to your children every step of the way and remember to put aside your own feelings and emotions when it comes to dealing with them and their emotions because your children should always come first during your divorce.
