Helpful Long Island Divorce Lawyer Advice
Help Your Child Deal With Your Divorce
Thousands of children watch their parents go through a divorce every year. As a parent, it is important for you to recognize that while you are dissolving your marriage, your divorce is affecting your children as well. How you handle your divorce with your children can have a great impact upon their emotional and psychological development for many years to come
Every Child Handles Divorce Differently
As with most things in life, there is no set formula to making sure your child does not become negatively affected by the divorce. Each child is unique and the impact will be influenced by their emotional development, age, personality, and the unique circumstances of the parental separation and divorce. Common emotions a child may feel can include shock, sadness, frustration, anger and worry. How you help your children deal with these emotions will affect how they cope with other stresses over time. Your divorce can make them stronger or weaker, depending upon how you handle it.
How to Help Your Child Through Your Divorce
In our experience as divorce attorneys on Long Island, and working with child care professionals on a regular basis, we’ve learned a few things parents can do to help their children during the process of their parents’ divorce, including:
- Keep any visible conflict, heated discussions, and legal talk away from the children
- Minimize disruptions to the child’s daily routines as much as possible
- Confine all blame and negative comments about your spouse to private therapy sessions or conversations with friends outside the home
- Keep both parents involved in the child’s life
- If needed, allow the child to see a therapist
Reduce the Divorce Stress on Your Child
Divorce requires a lot of flexibility and acceptance of changing family dynamics. Your children are extremely impressionable and it is imperative for their future well-being to make sure their memories of this process include as few, if any traumatic instances that could impede their development or have other negative effects on them for the rest of their lives.
We Can Help. Call for a Free Consultation
There are a number of methods and strategies to obtaining a divorce. Some divorce methods, like divorce mediation, can sometimes be beneficial to helping you and your spouse maintain a more positive relationship for your children during and after your divorce. If you have any questions regarding how to best protect your children during your divorce, give us a call at 631-923-1910. The divorce law office of Robert E. Hornberger, P.C. will be pleased to offer you a free complimentary consultation to discuss any aspect of your divorce.