How to Help Your Family Deal with Foreclosure

Foreclosure is at an all-time high in this country, and it only seems to be getting worse. While there are many programs currently in operation to help modify mortgages and protect homeowners, I would like to address the trauma of losing your home. How can you help your family deal with foreclosure?

Know Your Rights

If you know the foreclosure laws in your state, you will be better informed to make decisions in the best interests of your family. When the foreclosure agents come to your door asking for keys, you should already know what your options are under the law. Many times there are protections in place that guarantee you a certain period of time before you must vacate the home. It could be that your children could finish the semester or school year before the need to transfer to a new school.

Accepting the Inevitable

You should definitely explore every avenue available to you to stay in your home, but the reality is that you may have no options. Remember that much-used Serenity Prayer about accepting the things you cannot change? It applies here. Don't prolong the agony or create false hope for your children. The first step in moving past it is to accept it.

Look Forward With Expectation

Move from looking at the past with regret to moving forward toward the future with as much excitement or expectation as you are able to muster. It may be difficult, but your children will take their cues from you. Help them plan the decor of their new room. Don't promise anything you can't deliver, but this might be a good time for a new bedspread. However you can do it, make this an adventure.

Remove the Stigma

There is not as much stigma associated with foreclosure as there used to be, but in a smaller community, there can be. Your children may be experiencing this at school or elsewhere, even though they do not mention it to you. Remember that parents talk in front of their children. Without focusing too much on the subject, remind them about others who are going through the same thing, allowing them to understand that your family is not that different from many others during these hard times.

Mind and Mouth Control

After you lose a house to foreclosure, you need to exercise self-discipline in regards to your own thoughts and words. It is easy to lapse into a pity party, grieving the life you lived in the house and its memories. You can't go there; you just can't. You need to be careful what kind or verbiage that you use when you refer to the whole experience. It is time for new memories and new experiences. Lead the way.

Final Thoughts

If you are going through an unbelievably difficult time, just keep going. Focus on getting on the other side of this, and you will. Think of the peace of just sitting down as a family to watch a television program in your new living arrangement. After the storm subsides, it will feel much better. Why was that house important to you? It was the backdrop for your family's life together. You are taking what is important with you to a new backdrop. It will be ok.