Divorce and Parenting: The Pre-Adolescent to Adolescent Child
December 28, 2009
As children age our techniques of parenting must change with them. Let’s add in a divorce, and the challenges of co-parenting. It’s enough to use up all the resources in our parenting toolbox!
Have you found that your parenting skills seem to be failing you? Has your child changed? Does the divorce add a confusing element that makes you soft when you used to be firm?
This young, respectful, well behaved pre-adolescent has changed over night! Now combative, hitting, arguing and you are at your wits end! As our children transition from pre-adolescents to adolescents of their life, parents are often concerned with disciplining their adolescent. Children become more challenging as they grow up, they tend to become uncontrollable. A parent’s first response is to attempt to control the child.
Three Mistakes Parents Must Avoid When Parenting After Divorce
December 21, 2009
While the terrible two’s have a reputation for misery, most of us find that the challenges of raising children only increase with time. As our children age, our techniques of parenting must mature with our children. Let’s add in the stress of a divorce, the daily demands of parenting and the challenges of co-parenting. It’s enough to use up all the resources in our parenting toolbox!
Have you found that yourself saying the same things over and over…but now louder and louder? Do you give in more easily in hopes of getting a better child, but find the behavior worsens? Has your child’s become less respectful, less motivated or less cooperative? Does the divorce add a confusing element that makes you ‘soft’ on your parenting…when you used to be firm? At the end of your parenting rope…at times?
If so, you are not alone. Studies consistently show that divorce tends to leave many parents with painful compromises in their parenting. Consistent parents become inconsistent. Decisions that used to be easy become hard.
Divorce and It’s Effects On Children
December 14, 2009
The Bottom Line Summary: Within the past 30 years, the rates of divorce have grown so high that over half of US families are directly affected. When a family experiences a divorce, it is a confusing and complex time for the children who may react in many different ways. The child’s self-esteem may be affected, and the divorce may lead to disrupted peer relationships as well as poor performance in school and engagement in risky behaviors (including early sexual experience, drugs, and alcohol).
It is critical to effectively communicate with your child and support them through this unstable time. Addressing your child’s needs in inappropriate ways (or failing to address them) may develop into many more serious problems, including depression, anxiety, conduct disorders, and serious academic underperformance. This brief article explores the effects of divorce on children and the best ways to help them through the restructuring process. This articles provides an overview to parents seeking guidance, and explains why parenting or co-parenting therapy is a wonderfully effective approach to treating this confusing time in the life of your child.
When Is My Child’s Reaction to Divorce is a Serious Problem?
December 7, 2009
Divorce is stressful. To Mom. To Dad. And often even more so…to the children involved.
The effects of divorce are well-documented, and are a source of concern. (It’s important to know however, that you can avoid many of these disastrous effects by making wise parenting or co-parenting choices as you transition through the divorce.)
How Children React to Divorce
It’s important to note that all children have problems coping with stress, so it’s difficult for parents to know when they should worry. Yet, children differ greatly. Some cope better than others. Some wear their stress on their sleeve…and the degree of drama may be more than the actual threat.
Children Going Through Divorce May Need More
November 28, 2009
The process of learning that your parents are separating, and that you will be living in two homes is stressful and scary for most children. The sense of uncertainty conveyed by anxious, frustrated and overwhelmed parents is an additional threat to helping children to adjust.
Yet, most parents go into the divorce without ever developing a carefully researched and thoughtful plan. Yet, the studies do clearly suggest that certain choices hurt children, and others help to protect children.
It is often the courts, and attorneys, who help do guide parents in their decision making about how to co parent and share their time with the children. Yet, when children are in crisis, parents rarely think in terms of developing a therapeutic game plan to help their child.