Children & Divorce

A divorce decree cannot and does not end your responsibility as a parent. Parents are forever. Both parents should make every attempt to play a vital part in the lives of their children, and allow one another to do so. Children need the ongoing affection, interest and concern of their parents. Children must feel that they have two parents who love them, even though they could not live happily with each other.

We hope that this information will help you to help your children cope with your marriage dissolution with a minimum of hurt. The practical guidelines that follow are based on the many years of experience of judges, divorce attorneys and the counseling professions. You should be working to minimize the damage to your children in a number of ways. Here’s how:

Guidelines for Parents

1. If you think getting a divorce will mean you are fully and permanently rid of your spouse, think again! As long as you have minor children, you will always need to have a speaking relationship with their other parent. In that respect, the marriage will never be fully over, at least as long as the children are minors.
2. Remember the best parts of your marriage. Share them with your children and use them constructively.
3. Assure and re-assure your children that they are not to blame for the breakup and that they are not being rejected or abandoned. Children, especially young ones, often mistakenly feel that they have done something wrong and believe that the problems in the family are the result of their own misdeeds. Small children may feel that some action or secret wish of theirs has caused the trouble between their parents.
4. Continuing anger or bitterness toward your former partner can injure your children almost as much as the dissolution of the marriage. The feelings you show are as important as the words you use.
5. Refrain from voicing criticism of the other parent. It is difficult but absolutely necessary. For a child’s healthy development, discipline, happiness and mental well being, it is necessary to respect both parents.
6. Children have a desperate, fundamental need to see both parents as sources of moral authority, capability, and reliable strength. Trying to destroy the child’s belief in the other parent deprives that child of one of the essential elements of his or her well being.
7. Seeing a parent degraded and humiliated is deeply disturbing to a child. It inflicts long lasting damage in ways that a child — even an older one — does not fully understand.
8. Don’t make your child choose between you and the other parent. Children who take sides in the battles between their separated parents invariably come to regret it. It may take years, and may happen only in the late teens or in young adulthood, but the child almost always endures agonies of guilt. Often the child turns bitterly against the parent who allowed this to happen.
9. Placing a child in the middle, and trying to make him or her feel guilt for being fair, decent or affectionate toward the other parent, seriously damages the child’s psychological well-being and character. It is a cruel way to take advantage of one’s own child.
10. Giving a child the false belief that the child is the decision maker in matters of custody or visitation is not only unfair and cruel to the child, but a serious misrepresentation of the law. Judges, if they can get beyond the effects of parental coaching, will try to take the true wishes of an older child into account as one factor, but the only decision maker is the judge.
11. Try not to upset a child’s routine too abruptly. Children need a sense of continuity. It is disturbing to them if they must cope with too many changes at once. Maintain consistent parenting. Separated parents who may be giving the same children mixed signals about rules of behavior should communicate frankly and directly with each other on disciplinary issues in order to provide consistent rules and limits for the children.
12. Dissolution of a marriage often leads to financial pressures on both parents. When there is a financial crisis, the parents’ first impulse may be to keep the children from realizing it. Often, they would rather make sacrifices themselves than ask the children to do so. The atmosphere is healthier when there is frankness and when children are expected to help. Blaming the opposing party for this may be hard to resist, but it will probably land you back in court.
13. Marriage breakdown is always hard on the children. They may not always show their distress or realize at first what this will mean to them. Parents should be direct and simple in telling children what is happening and why, and in a way a child can understand and digest. This will vary with the circumstances and with each child’s age and comprehension. It seldom works to try to hush things up and make children feel they must not talk or think about what they sense is going on. Unpleasant events need explanation, which should be brief, prompt, direct and honest.
14. The story of your marriage dissolution may have to be retold after the child gets older and considers life more maturely. Though it would be unwise to present either party as a martyr, it would also be wrong to pretend there are no regrets and that dissolution is so common it hardly matters.
15. The guilt parents feel about the marriage breakdown may interfere in their disciplining the children. A child needs consistent control and direction. Over-permissiveness, or indecisive parents who leave children at the mercy of every passing whim and impulse, interfere with the children’s healthy development. Children need and want to know what is expected of them. Children feel more secure when limits are set. They are confused when grown-ups seem to permit behavior that they themselves know to be wrong and are trying to outgrow. Children need leadership and sometimes authority. Parents must be ready to say “No” when necessary.

* Source:  Virginia State Bar publications