Getting a Divorce! - Put the Kids First!

When I got divorced I was so angry. I couldn't understand why this was happening to me. Anger and hurt are natural emotions when going through this type of event but when they spill over into your relationship with your kids they can have a major negative impact. In our case it only took a single incident for us to realize we needed to put our son first.

One night after we had separated and I had brought my son back to his mom's after a visit, we got into an argument. It was very heated, I'm sure the neighbors considered calling 911. The majority of the yelling was being done right outside of my son's room with his door open. He was just a little over 2 years old at the time and at some point during our argument he stood up in his crib and yelled as loud as a little 2 year old can yell (which is pretty loud) Stop It! and then he started to cry. Both his Mom and I immediately stopped yelling and with astonished looks on our face went in to comfort him. Though we didn't discuss what happened at the time we both realized that our anger towards each other would never be a benefit to our child and could only do damage.

Amazingly we both came to this conclusion separately and were able to make changes in how we reacted towards each other from that day forward. Sure we still had arguments but never in front of my son.

Here are a few things we were able to do to lessen the impact of divorce for my son that may be helpful for you:

• We stopped arguing in front of our son.
• We never talked bad about the other parent to our son. (We may have done that to other family members but to our son)
• We never forced him to take sides.
• We tried as hard as possible to be consistent with discipline even if it required us both to sit down and talk to him together.
• We made individual career, living, and school decisions with him in mind.
• We decided to reduce the turmoil in his life by having him go to private school through 8th grade so he had some consistency. We tried to have his stuff at both houses so he wouldn't have to live out of a suitcase when he changed houses.
• We also went to a week-on/week-off living arrangement.

I once heard a saying. "It takes 2 to make a good marriage buy only 1 to make a divorce" I would add to that "it takes 2 to make a workable divorce". I realize your situtation may be much different than mine but if you always put your children first in the decisions you make you can lessen the impact of your divorce on their life.