Divorce Without Dishonor

When child custody becomes a battle, everyone loses. Innocent children pay the price when parents are pitted against each other. Children need the love of both parents and should never be asked to choose between the two most important people in their lives.

In my new book, Stop Fighting Over the Kids, Resolving Day-to-Day Custody Conflict in Divorce Situations, I show you how to work together to creatively solve child custody issues while working cooperatively to support your children. The book will debut soon on Amazon.com with an e-book version available in the near future. To receive advanced notification of the book’s availability on Amazon, please email my webmaster at: webmaster@mccordweb.com.

To protect your children, you and your spouse should ask yourselves:

• What’s best for our children now and for the future? Children’s needs change as they grow. Your custody arrangements should be flexible to accommodate future change.
• How can we minimize the physical, emotional and spiritual damage divorce inflicts on our children? Parents need the support, love and attention of both parents.
• What can we do to increase our children’s sense of security, well-being and self-esteem during the coming transitions? The changes caused by divorce will be upsetting to your children and he will need help and support navigating them successfully.

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In the current issue, you’ll find a fascinating article on how collaborative divorce benefits children. With 60% of American marriages ending in divorce and a third of them involving bitter conflict, often about child custody, collaborative divorce provides a much-needed positive solution. One million children will be involved in divorce this year. They are more likely to develop behavior problems, psychiatric illness and addictions. Children of divorce are 50% more likely to divorce than children from intact homes, perpetuating the cycle.

With its emphasis on children’s needs and focus on respectful communication and creative problem-solving between divorcing spouses, collaborative divorce offers real hope for breaking the cycle of divorce. Click here to read the full newsletter article.

In this issue of the Divorce Without Dishonor newsletter, you’ll also find helpful information on separating from your spouse and a tip sheet for moving out. Don’t miss your opportunity to receive our informative newsletter; sign up today.

My new book, Stop Fighting Over the Kids, Resolving Day-to-Day Custody Conflict in Divorce Situations, will be available soon on Amazon.com. An e-book version will also be available in the near future. To receive advanced notification of the book’s availability on Amazon, email my webmaster at: webmaster@mccordweb.com.

My own acrimonious divorce and bitter child custody battle led me to search for a better, less damaging way to end a marriage. In collaborative divorce I have found a way for partners to separate their lives without destroying them. Collaborative divorce emphasizes the well-being of each member of the family, with a special emphasis on the needs of the children. It allows for creative, outside-the-box solutions to custody issues that are tailored to the individual needs of each family.

Proceedings take place outside the courtroom, usually in a lawyer’s or counselor’s office,  in an atmosphere of support, problem-solving and conflict resolution. Collaborative divorce allows both parties to establish and practice effective communication habits that will allow them to parent cooperatively after divorce. Collaborative divorce recognizes and emphasizes the importance of both parents in their children’s lives and helps to structure child custody arrangements that meet the changing needs of the child, as well as the capabilities of the parents.

If your marriage is ending, I urge you and your spouse to consider collaborative divorce and stop fighting over the kids, for your sake and theirs.

Last time we talked about Ghost Dads, fathers who fade away after divorce (see our Feb. 4 post). In most cases fathers who stop seeing their children do so for their own emotional health and self preservation, but in doing so they place a damaging burden on their children. A friend of mine raised three girls without the involvement or support of their father. Now grown women, they continue to have self doubts and relationship issues that stem from the absence of their father as they were growing up. The following is a portion of a letter one of them recently wrote to her dad. She is now 24.

“Why don’t you ever write to me? I’ve written you letters, sent emails and birthday cards, but you never write back. Don’t you love me? Don’t you care about me? I am your daughter but I feel abandoned. Am I that unlovable? I want to get to know you again but you seem to have closed your heart. Please write back otherwise I don’t think I can keep trying. It’s just too hard.” 

The children who heal fastest from divorce are those who enjoy the love, support and involvement of both parents. As a father, it’s essential that you remain part of your children’s daily lives during and after divorce. You need to be in the crowd cheering at soccer and Little League games. You need to be in the audience at dance recitals and school programs. You need to attend parent-teacher conferences. You need to help with homework, comfort your child when they’re sick, go out for ice cream, play catch at the park — all the things you did when you lived together as a family. It’s the way you show your kids that you love them and that you’ll always be there for them.

Child custody battles leave only casualties, no winners. Britney Spears’ problems last weekend are only the most recent example (see our January 7 post). Children need the love, support and involvement of both parents while they’re growing up. Sure, there are cases when one parent may not be capable of effective parenting or when a parent may actually endanger a child, but most of the time it is the anger divorcing spouses have for each other that muddies the child custody waters. Collaborative divorce can help parents set aside unproductive personal emotions and focus on their children. With the help of the collaborative divorce team, a couple can create a child custody agreement that provides for their children’s physical, emotional and financial needs while allowing both parents to maintain a close relationship with their children.

When children are involved in a divorce, the collaborative divorce team will usually include a child specialist. The child specialist works privately with the children to provide them with their own voice in the collaborative process. The child specialist is not a psychotherapist but a sympathetic realist who will help your children deal with the changes and challenges divorce will bring to their lives.

In talking with your children, the child specialist will gain important insights that can affect your custody agreement. She may be able to offer creative solutions to custody arrangements that will meet both your children’s and your needs. Should the collaborative process break down, like all members of the collaborative team, the child specialist, whose work is confidential, is enjoined from testifying for or against either parent in a court proceeding.

It’s unfortunate, but you had to see this coming. Britney Spears lost custody of her sons this weekend. A court commissioner awarded sole physical and legal custody of Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, to dad, Kevin Federline, after Spears refused to return the children to Federline at the end of a court-monitored visit. Police were called and the pop-wreck, as the tabloids are now referring to Spears, was hauled off to the hospital by paramedics summoned by police officers at the scene. Police said there was no threat to the children during the three-hour altercation. Federline had previously been awarded temporary custody of their children when Spears defied previous court orders.

While it’s difficult to draw parallels between the lives of Hollywood’s elite and we mere mortals, Spears’ custody problems and parental misbehavior certainly serve as a worse-case example of what not to do. Her children may not have been physically endangered, but what about the emotional damage she is causing by failing to behave as a responsible parent, failing to maintain their safety, failing to work with their father to support them emotionally, and failing to cooperate with the court?

Children are resilient and her children are quite young, but using your children as a pawn in your divorce, fighting over custody in your children’s presence, and failing to consider your children’s needs, only further destroy your children’s fragile sense of security and feelings of love. Lately, Britney Spears isn’t doing herself, or particularly her children, any favors with her outrageous behavior.

When their parents divorce, children are caught in the middle. They suffer from problems and decisions not of their making. They often feel it is their fault their parents don’t want to be together any more. They fear their parents will no longer want them or love them. A collaborative divorce can ease their suffering, assure them of their parents’ love, help them adjust more quickly to the changes that are occurring in the family, and help them accept the reality of their new life. 

A collaborative divorce can give your children:

• The reassurance that both parents will continue to love and support them.
• The continued love and support of both extended families.
• The structure and consistency they need to grow and develop.
• A voice in their future and a way to share their views and feelings with you.
• The ability to accept and handle positively changing family structures and activities, including new relationships you and your spouse may have after divorce.
• The opportunity to obtain a good education with many opportunities to explore and develop their talents and interests.
• The ability to share life’s accomplishments and milestones with both parents.
• Happiness, peace and love.

Christmas is a time to celebrate our children. If you and your spouse have decided to end your marriage, a collaborative divorce will help you focus on your children and work together to address their needs. Parenting does not end when your marriage dissolves. Collaborative divorce will give you and your spouse the skills you need to continue to work together for the benefit of your children.

I hear them briefly through thin wire.
Their smell is gone from the pillowcases.
A visit this weekend will provide another snapshot, a touch
Will we ever share the same ground?
When will I ever be allowed to tell them stories over campfires of past warriors?
O great spirit, give me strength to keep trying, for I love them so.

Anyone who doesn’t understand the pain divorce causes fathers has only to read this desperate plea by Douglas MacKay, a divorced father of three in Connecticut. I ran across this prayer in The Divorced Dad’s Survival Book: How to Stay Connected with Your Kids by David Knox with Kermit Leggett.

With more than half the marriages in America ending in divorce, the number of single-parent homes is increasing. Of the more than 20 million children who live in single-parent homes, 85% live with their mother. Since courts traditionally award custody to mothers, many of these children see their fathers only a few times a month, if at all. After divorce, the amount of time dads get to spend with their children plummets from 100% to less than 25%.

"The percentage of American children living apart from their biological fathers will reach 50% in the next century," predicts Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe. "Think about it. Half of all children without fathers to say good night to them. Many, when asked who their father is, will answer, ‘I don’t have one.’"

What is this doing to America’s children? We’ll talk about that next time.

When you and your spouse decided to have a child, it was most likely a joyful time. From the moment of birth (and even before that), children steal your heart. You love them, care for them and protect them. You dedicate yourself to keeping your child safe, healthy and happy. Divorce shouldn’t change that.

When divorce becomes a battlefield, your children are the casualties. During divorce, parents must put aside their anger and emotions when making decisions about their children’s custody and support. They must separate their adult differences from the needs and welfare of their children and work together to make decisions that will support and provide for their children’s physical and emotional well-being. Therapist Rosalind Sedacca calls this child-centered divorce.

"When you create a child-centered divorce, your children win — on every level. Parents who make a concerted effort to sit down with each other and discuss the future well-being of their kids together, keep their perspective where it really belongs — on the children," says Sedacca in a recent article on the website Child-Centered Divorce. (Click here to read the entire article.)

Sedacca suggests divorcing parents ask themselves the following questions:

• What

  

A divorced mother herself, therapist Rosalind Sedacca, has created an excellent new website, Child-Centered Divorce, that I can highly recommend. Built on her own struggles guiding her children through divorce, Sedacca has created a website that can be a valuable resource for parents striving to help their children cope with divorce.

The goal of the website is to provide parents with a support network that addresses the problems parents face with their children during divorce. Articles address the issues concerning the emotional health and welfare of children going through divorce. Parents will find the articles engagingly written and particularly useful. In each article parents will find new understandings and helpful tips they can apply to their own circumstances.

Sedacca shares her highly qualified experience in regular articles on the website and also draws on the knowledge and experience of a variety of experts. Some recent topics include:

• Magical Thinking: When Children of Divorce Blame Themselves
• Children’s Emotional Needs During Divorce and Beyond
• When Children of Divorce Act Out — Caring Parents Step Up!
• Child-Centered Divorce Secrets

Child-Centered Divorce was created this summer by Rosalind Sedacca, a Certified Corporate Trainer, author, national speaker and workshop facilitator. She is the author of the helpful  new book How Do I Tell the Kids about the Divorce? A Create-a-Storybook Guide to Preparing Your Children - with Love! (see our October 29 post for a review).