If you will spend some time discovering what triggers you, you can make enormous progress in your life to become the kind of role model your kids deserve.  You can share your new skills with your kids to teach them how to handle things when they become triggered.
You deserve to feel better than you do when you are triggered and here are a few tips to help you return to normal:
Move Away: silently step away from whatever is triggering you so that you can have a moment to recover emotionally before you say something you might later regret. Take a deep breath and see how you are feeling after that.
Be Here Now:  sometimes our old feelings of danger or fear or lack of safety trigger us.  They are from the past.  Be Here Now means to consciously recognize that you are in the present moment and you can take yourself into a safer spot, either physically or emotionally.
Breathe:  a few deep, conscious breaths will allow you to gain control over a triggering event until you can think more clearly.
Get Help:  call a friend and explain that you’ve been triggered.  Often a friend’s input is less emotional and can help you get back on track.  Your kids deserve to have you on track.
The Trigger but Not the Source:  When you experience being triggered, it frequently points back in your history to another time when the same feelings triggered inside of you.  Try asking yourself “What is the earliest memory I have of these exact feelings?”  Your mind will provide an answer for you.  Ask the question as many more times as you need until there is no more earlier time.  That first event is the Source of the Triggering you now experience.  
At the time you were first triggered, you made a decision about it.  Now that you are an adult, it might be time to examine that decision and make a new one – one that’s more beneficial to you so that you can be the solid emotional anchor in your kid’s life that they so deserve.
I’d like to recommend that you spend a week with a notebook beside you as you silently observe what is out there triggering you.  Write them down.  Use the first three tips above to keep yourself stable.  Use the fourth one when you’ve gotten a bit of distance from the trigger.  Use the last one when you’ve got some quiet time (maybe when the ex has the kids) to ask yourself about your earlier memories.  Sometimes, if you can trace the path that the triggering has taken, the triggers disappear.  I wish you that, divorced parent readers.

Len :: Aug.07.2008 :: General :: No Comments »

When you are a divorced parent, you’ve got your hands quite full.  There never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done, and your kids can fire questions at you more rapidly than a cherry-spitting contest.  Arguments over dinner and homework abound.  Sometimes, you can get overwhelmed and want to throw in the towel.  
Children don’t understand overwhelm.  They don’t understand not having enough money.  They don’t understand that you need advanced notice to make a trip to buy their school project supplies.  They don’t understand that bunches of kids yelling and laughing can get on your nerves.  They don’t understand their arguing can drive you nuts. They don’t see the full picture.
But you do.  And it’s the full picture that we want to talk about here, because it’s that full picture that will help you to unfold the courage you’ll need in order to persevere with your Great Parenting Plan.  You have made a plan, haven’t you?  You’re not just winging it, are you?
The Great Parenting Plan is where you are all dressed up, dabbing the tears from your eyes, watching your child walk down the aisle at his graduation.  It could be a high school graduation or a college graduation.  That all depends on your plan. You want to take yourself in thought out to that point in the future where your child graduates and begins to move off into his own life, fully self-sufficient and capable. The idea is to get him to that point from where you are right now and where he or she is right now.
Working backwards from that moment in the plan, but always keeping it in the forefront of your thinking, will help you get through those challenging moments that create overwhelm, those moments when you might not even want to be a mom or dad anymore.  There is no quitting option though.  Your kids are here and they deserve your best.  It is your golden opportunity to summon up all of your resources and give it one heck of a go.
It takes courage to persevere with the Great Parenting Plan, and it takes thinking problems through thoroughly to unfold that courage.  One of the nicest aspects of parenting is that the things you need to do the job are all built in.  Yep.  You had them when you were born.  You’ve been building them while you lived your own life.  This parenting task is like getting a Ph. D. in strengthening virtues!
What happens is that your kids provide some test for you – they test your patience, or your courage, or your ability to love.  And you have the option to say “Yes, I can” or “No, I can’t.” Sometimes when you really think that “I can’t,” you still say “I can” and then you do.  Have you ever noticed that in life, when you make a commitment, somehow in someway the fulfillment for that commitment seems to just happen.  
When I was a young parent, I needed a reliable car.  Car wasn’t in the budget that month, but we needed that car.  I made the commitment.  I don’t remember ever not making that payment easily.  Somehow, in someway, the fulfillment for that commitment seemed to happen.
It will happen the same way with bringing up the courage to persevere.  If you determine that, by gosh, you will persevere in doing the absolute best job you can to be their mom or dad, the courage that it takes in the moment (that’d be the moment when you’re exhausted and they need a ride downtown,) you will bring up the courage to set yourself aside and provide what they need from you.  
And you will do it over and over again throughout your divorce.  You’ll forget those moments until you see them walk down that aisle in their gown and mortar board and you’ll be one proud, successful divorced parent. You’ll forget about all the overwhelm.  Oh they’ll have told you “Dad, puhle-e-eze don’t cry at my graduation” and you’ll try.  You’ll really try.  Only you will know of all the times when you set yourself aside to care for them, of all those hundreds of details you handled to be a good parent, and you won’t be able to help those escaping tears.  They’re tears of joy.  I know.
 

Len :: Aug.07.2008 :: Caring for your Children :: No Comments »

Being a divorced parent can initially be a scary experience.  You’ve just been emotionally slammed.  The partner that you made a life time commitment to has fled the scene, and you are now scratching your head and feeling overwhelmed with dozens of questions scurrying around inside your head, juggling like a maniac.  How am I going to take care of these kids?  Will I have a social life ever again?  Will my parents be disappointed?  Will I have to listen to my sister June say “I told you he was a creep?”  Will the kids have abandonment issues?  It goes on and on.
This scenario is the one that pops out first when divorce happens to your life. It is motivated by fear. I’ve always thought it was funny that while I know I have a fine mentality and that you do too, it’s almost lost in the shuffle when fear enters into my mind.  It’s like going instantly deaf, dumb and blind.  Fear can be anesthetized, though, and I’d like to tell you how.
Fear is destroyed through choice.  You can choose to consciously tell yourself “No.  That’s fear talking. What do I really want to permit to filter through my mind?”  And then you choose the flip side which is Love.
If you were ever religious in your life, at some point you probably heard the words of St. Paul about love – that love is patient, kind, doesn’t envy, doesn’t brag, isn’t proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  
This love, then, is a pretty powerful commodity and wouldn’t you imagine that love would be something you’d like to have in your parental tool bag and use frequently?
What is the most practical form in which love can be used by you?  It’s acceptance.  And the main way that acceptance is put into play is the acceptance of each person’s individuality, including your own.  Accept the way you are.  Accept the way your kids are.  Accept the way your ex is.  It’s the most practical way you can love each of them and keep fear at arm’s length.  
Does this mean mushy gushiness?  Nope.  It means a calm, rational state of consideration where you simply be what you are and allow them to be that too.  When you remove fear from the soup, it becomes so much easier to swallow.
Does this mean that you now accept the way each of us is and none of us will ever have to lift a finger again to improve?  Nope.  It means that when the foundation of acceptance (love) is there, no negativity will anchor us to this current state and we can move naturally and gracefully into whatever we create next for our life.

Len :: Aug.03.2008 :: Caring for Yourself After Divorce :: No Comments »

I haven’t found a single way out of or around what I consider one of the stickiest problems brought about by divorce:  Sharing custody of your children with your ex.  
Divorce hurts.  It is your natural inclination to move away from the hurt that divorce brings as rapidly as possible. If you never had to see your ex again, that would make the hurt dissipate. But your children deserve to have and enjoy the only parents they will ever have, regardless of what your feelings about your ex might be.  So you can’t move away from that particularly distasteful aspect of divorce: interfacing on some kind of regular basis with your ex because the two of you share custody.
Because you care so deeply about your children, about their success, and about their needs – in fact, you place them higher on your list than yourself most of the time – you are simply forced to find a way to make the interface with their other parent (your dreaded ex) work so that they don’t feel any of the disturbance between the two of you.
How do you create a harmonious relationship with someone you are divorcing for the sake of your children? Here are some suggestions:
Keep Track of Their Good Points.  You know them.  You once fell in love with him/her because of them.  They haven’t gone away despite the fact that he wants to divorce you now. He still has those good points.  You can choose to focus on those good points and allow your children to discover other aspects of his personality as they naturally mature.  Kids deserve to love their mommy or daddy without any negative feedback.
Remain Objective.  If you permit yourself to fall into entertaining only those ideas you whirl around inside your head, you’ve succumbed to “subjectivity.”  Of course your opinion is nasty!  You’ve been hurt.  Your kids have not experienced this nastiness from their other parent though.  And they deserve to not know your nasty thoughts.  They deserve to see their parents as simply powerful and wonderful. So set your nasty thoughts aside for their sake and remain objective about their mommy or daddy.
Don’t Make Excuses – Be Factual.  Okay, the ex has promised to pick up the kids for a weekend outing.  You’ve got them bathed, slicked and ready.  They’re waiting on the couch.  They’ve been waiting for an hour.  He’s past due and they’re getting rambunctious.  You call him.  He “forgot” about picking them up.  You know they are going to be disappointed. You don’t have to say what a louse he is.  You put them in the car, take them to the park yourself,  and say “Daddy’s not coming.” Factual.  Not loaded with emotional bias.  
Use Legal Means to Keep Promises.  You have a legal right for the commitments made in your divorce proceedings to be honored.  Child Support can be collected for you.  You don’t need to burden your children with the fact that their daddy or mommy hasn’t kept his/her commitment – again!  Keep this kind of information to yourself and allow your children their concepts of their other parent until they have the maturity to understand the facts as they are if they are unpleasant. 
I know a woman who’s youngest son was six months old when she and his dad divorced.  He spent the first sixteen years of his life cajoling her to get back together with his dad.  He wanted an intact family.  She did not want to mention his dad’s homosexuality to her son, nor did she want to focus on his alcoholism and how it lead to verbal abuse when he was drinking.  He loved his daddy and only saw that he was funny and took him to amusement parks frequently.  He was his night in shining armor.  This lady worked to remain somewhat friendly with her son’s father.  Once, when the boys had become young adults, she went on a camping trip where her ex got drunk and became verbally abusive, bringing up their old pre-divorce stuff.  She did her best to calm him down, but both of their adult sons saw and heard the yuck.  Her youngest son said “Mom, no one should ever be talked to that way.”  And she was finally able to tell him “This is the reason your dad and I could not remarry all those years when you wanted us to, son. I never wanted you to know about this.”
Your children will look back when they become adults and be surprised at what you did not share with them because you cared enough to allow them to form whatever kind of relationship they could form with your ex despite all the nasty stuff you know about him.  And your children will be grateful.  Divorce and the shared custody problems isn’t pleasant, but if you handle it correctly, maybe you can save yourself from that evil second divorce.

Len :: Aug.01.2008 :: Custody Issues :: No Comments »