In order to minimize the social, emotional and developmental harm children
sometimes experience as a result of family transitions, I recommend that separated
and divorcing parents adopt these six standards of behavior.
1. Keep
the child out of the middle.
No
matter how you feel toward your estranged spouse, you still have a responsibility
to that person as your co-parent, and a responsibility to serve the best interests
of your child. Understand that your child is struggling to maintain a positive
and loving image of both parents, despite those parents' obvious dislike
of one another. Every time you expose your child to your anger toward your
co-parent, intentionally or by accident, you are hurting your child. Be aware
of what are your adult feelings and when you express them, and what are your
child's feelings. Keep them separate!
This
belief applies just as strongly to practical matters between parents. Do not
ask your child to deliver messages or the support check to your co-parent.
Deliver them directly. Don't ask your child to decide which weekend or holiday
or month he or she wishes to spend with you. If the child is old enough, ask
his or her opinion, but reassure him or her that you and your co-parent will
make these decisions together.
2. Expect
and allow your child's
strong emotions.
No
matter how calm and reasonable or angry and abusive the separation process
has been, expect that this family transition has evoked many varied and strong
feelings in everybody involved. Your child will likely experience a wide range
of feelings, including anger at you and his or her other parent, and at him-
or herself, guilt, sadness, and fears related to future loss and abandonment.
Your job as a parent is to help the child feel comfortable with any feeling
he or she experiences, while setting limits on how he or she acts out
these feelings. For example, a child must be allowed to angry, but may need
help learning what to do with this feeling.
3. Anticipate
that your child feels guilty about the separation and hopes for a reunion.
Emotion
defies logic and experience. Children routinely blame themselves rather than
blame a parent for a painful experience, and maintain a fantasy of family
reunion long after a divorce is finalized and parents have new partners. Understanding
these feelings can help a child cope with the separation and can help you
understand a child's motivation in many otherwise confusing circumstances.
4. Co-parents
must work together to create a predictable, consistent and secure world suited to the child's needs.
In
the face of a family transition, children need security. Security can
be created by assuring that some part of the world is stable and safe. It
is only when a child feels secure that he or she will be able to cope with
the strong feeling evoked by the family transition.
Predictability
creates security. A child's advance knowledge about where he or she will be
at any given time, with whom and in what activity provides security. Make
a calendar suited to the child's age and ability that makes daily events and
transitions among caregivers predictable.
Familiarity
creates security. Help your child maintain as much familiarity as possible
throughout the family transition. This may involve things as small as inclusion
of familiar items from one home into a second home, or as large as
avoiding changing daycares or schools or peer groups while the family is
still in transition.
Consistency
creates security. Establish and maintain the same rules expectations over
time in each home, avoiding the tendency to "give in" because the child has
"suffered so much." Unprecedented treats, rewards, and extended privileges
do not help a child adjust to the family transition, even though they may
make you feel better in the short run.
Consistency
between homes is equally important. Minimize the differences in rules and
expectations between homes by communicating and negotiating frequently with
your co-parent. Do not fall victim to a child's efforts to "split" between
parents: "Come on, mom! Daddy lets me do it!"
5. Establish
and maintain clear boundaries between the child's new families.
You
and your child and your co-parent formerly constituted a single family. The
boundaries used to be between your family and other families. Now the child
belongs to two families: mom's family and dad's family. Be clear what the
boundaries are between these two new families. Do these two families go out
to supper together? Do both families celebrate holidays together? Do belongings
go back and forth between families or stay at one or the other? Often, it
is important to keep families very separate and distinct, avoiding situations
which will feed into a child's fantasies of reunion.
6. Beware
of your own guilt,
anger and grief!
You
deserve your feelings, too. Be careful where and how and with whom you share
your feelings. Chances are that showing the full extent of your feelings about
the family transition to your child is inappropriate and even harmful to
the child. Do not fall into the trap of letting your child take care of you.
Take your feelings to friends, colleagues or professional helpers, not to
your children
facsimile 603.879.9070 
Benjamin D. Garber, Ph.D.