How to Minimize Your Part in the Emotional Trauma to Your Children During Divorce

Just remember once upon a time there was something you saw and loved about your ex spouse, and that my friends is what is important for you to remind your kids about! You do this so that their little hearts may mend and their minds will understand that they came from something so good and meaningful it created them. Teach kindness, and build them up. Refuse to cause your child additional pain while they are experiencing grief over the breakup of their family, while their whole world falls apart and changes forever. Give them a reason to be secure in their place in your life; they come from you both.

When they see you have hatred for the other parent that just leads to self hatred for different parts or traits they see in themselves, traits that come from someone you once claimed to love. If you're not careful, they will constantly worry that you could eventually come to hate something about themselves, questioning their sense of self worth, or even wonder if you might eventually replace them with someone you think is better. They may also lose faith in you, or could simply pull away from you and place their loyalty with someone else they feel loves them without demands or recrimination.

If you really think about it, respecting and even being friends with your ex helps repair the damage of a broken home, as well as reinforces what a gift they are to you. It demonstrates how important it is to value the people in our lives, and show appreciation for the roles those people played in theirs. They must learn by example that relationships can run deep and true enough to still want happiness for the one that hurt or tried to break you, even if it means burying the past, and closing yourself off from the only person you ever trusted. The freedom of forgiveness and blessings that come from that kind of compassion is priceless, but the real take away here is that when we demonstrate how to love one another despite past wrongs and cruel endings, there's no room for negativity, or pain. Selfish desires, petty arguments, and emotional pain eventually go away. This leaves room for the growth of healthy relationships, and a capacity to put another person before ourselves, with the explicit intent of proving to a child that nothing and no one on this planet matters to either parent as much as the happiness and shared joy we hope to give to our children.

They should know that even though the marriage wasn't strong enough to succeed, it mattered, and they still can believe in happily ever after with the ability to love without walls around soft vulnerable hearts, that they may fully experience true intimacy free of the insecurities that no doubt are at the root of all our past failures and demoralizing heartbreak. If one cannot or simply will not stay married for whatever reasons they have, by all means make the split, burn that bridge, tear it down and start over; but stop at that. There is not one good reason to bring the axe down on your child. Leave that situation, but as a single mom and product of divorce, I beg you not to leave behind broken spirits when you go. Surely no matter how much you may have allowed yourself to loathe your former partner, you still will be your baby's biggest fan, and hopefully you can reach waaaaayyy down under all the angry bitterness and find a shred of what you once shared together. So yes leave, but leave your child whole without scars, or burning tears of confusion, or in a million tiny pieces that cannot ever be put together in quite the same way after you're gone.