Surely one of the most emotionally-charged times of your lifetime is the time you are forced to process the ideas involved in your divorce.  Many, many fears will raise up during this time.  Questions about the future will be there in abundance.  Planning for that future is necessary.
If you are going to become (or already are) a single parent, then the responsibility for raising your children might well fall onto your shoulders.  If the other parent is in that picture as a co-custodial parent, so much the better.  But one way or the other,  you are financially, spiritually and physically responsible for your child, his welfare, his education, and his stability.
You’ll need a good job with a good salary to accomplish this child-raising task and you’ll need a great education to get that good job.  So let’s get busy and determine what your options are:
Benchmarking:  Here are some questions to ask yourself to see what your current situation is.  Where are you right now?  Do you have a place to live?  Do you have adequate furniture and the other things it takes to keep house?  Do you have good transportation?  Have you a custody settlement plan in place with a good attorney?  Are you working on a Parenting Plan you can both agree upon?  
Next steps:  If you have answered in the negative for any of the questions above, you can take one more step.  What can I do to change my current situation?  Who can I put on a list of My Support People?  Are there community resources available to help you achieve what you desire in any of the areas above?  Would you be willing to take the Parenting Workshops offered by many states?
Make a New Plan:  Keeping your child’s welfare in the forefront of your mind, what are the ideal pictures you have for a good life for that child? For his education? For his stability? For helping him to mature?  Is your current job enough to accomplish your ideal plan?  What else do you need to do?  Do you require more education?  Where can you get it?  Does the training institution have education funds you can use?  
A Career Path:  You will need to see yourself getting raises, promotions, having a successful career in order to raise your child well.  What does that look like to you?  Where do you see yourself working – in what industry?  What career is really appealing to you even if you might not be working in that career right now? Working to achieve these dreams will set a wonderful example for your children to work to achieve their own dreams. Let them know they can help you to achieve “our” dreams even if it’s just giving you some quiet so you can get your homework done.
Telling Your Child About the New Plan:  Always include your children in your plans.  Let them know what you are working toward.  Tell them how they can help you to achieve your plan. Tell them how, when you achieve your plan, it will benefit them. When your newly divorced life becomes “our” new life, it helps bring comfort and a sense of stability to your child so they can do well in their own experience.  And a good plan will help you to put all those early-on fears to rest.
 

Len :: Oct.20.2008 :: Caring for Yourself After Divorce, Caring for your Children :: No Comments »

Divorce rates are higher for second marriages than for first marriages.  Isn’t that bone chilling?  It’s almost as if the first one wasn’t pain-filled enough; you now require more pain.  Wouldn’t you like to never experience that kind of pain again?  Here are some tips to help you.
The first tip is:  be brutally honest about the questions that follow.  Hint: if you are blaming your ex, you are not being brutally honest.  It takes two to tango.  You played a role in that divorce. What was your role?
Why did you get married in the first place?  Were you too  young? Did you marry for wrong reasons? Were you looking for someone to take care of you financially?  Do you have co-dependent behavior and you rescued someone who was struggling?  Did you get pregnant before marriage?  Did your parents pressure you into a marriage?  Look carefully at the brutally honest reasons you got married in the first place and see if there’s something you did that can now be changed.  You might need the help of a counselor to make those changes.
Did the communication between you and your ex fall from loving dialogue to harsh criticism or sarcasm?  How did that happen?  If the communication coming from your ex was hurtful, did you swallow that hurt without discussing it with him only to find it coming out of your own mouth?  If your communicating isn’t harmonious, this is a big clue that the marriage is going downhill fast.  Don’t retreat behind a wall of silence.  The only way I know to fix this is to improve your sense of self:  join Toastmasters and become a better speaker.  Get into therapy and learn more about your strengths and weaknesses and how to talk about them. 
My virtual assistant told me that in her early life, her extreme sensitivity to parental fighting put her into a state of speechless shock.  It’s not surprising to know that the very same thing carried forward into her first marriage.  She couldn’t believe that such evil words and angry gestures were coming at her.  I think that an individual’s intrinsic goodness and the fact that he or she wouldn’t consider using this abusive behavior towards any other is what makes them somewhat vulnerable to it.  If you go into shock, please find help via a pastor or a counselor to help you past this stuck spot so that you don’t carry it into another unhappy marriage/divorce situation.
Do you carry a grudge or a long list of “he done me wrongs?”  If you do this, it will be on your mind constantly and by thinking about it, you will recreate it over and over.  You might not be aware that you are doing this.  Watch the way you are thinking and see if you hold a grudge against your ex for his errors.  If you do, look up “how to forgive” on the internet and then get busy doing that work.

Len :: Oct.11.2008 :: Caring for Yourself After Divorce, Caring for your Children, The Pain of Divorce :: No Comments »

Single – Parenting can be such a challenge.  Here you are, all alone, doing the work of both parents during the time you’ve got the kids.  It’s not easy.  Your ex looks like she’s got the life.

You’ve got the kids full time during the week, and she only has them for the weekend.  She has no homework to help them with each night.  No laundry to wash on the weekend.  Oh and now, she’s got a new boyfriend!  Sweet.  Wish you knew more about him so you could feed those flames burning emotionally inside you?
So, who do you think is the best one to find out this information?  Your kids. NOT NOT NOT!!!

Could you tell I’m really against the idea of using your children to ferret out information that you want about their other parents?
It is a terrible thing to do to your children when you ask them to spy for you on their other parent.  You might couch your questions innocently enough, but they can feel in their hearts that you are prying. If they go to mommy and ask your questions, then she gets mad at them.  And if they don’t have answers to your questions when they come home, then you get mad at them.
Stop a minute here and let’s assume an attitude of maturity.  Who wants to know?  You do.

So who should do the asking?  You should.  It’s just not a good idea to put your kids into this

horrible position of carrying information back for you. It hurts them emotionally and you don’t want to do that, do you?
When you put your child in the middle of something that makes them very uncomfortable, it begins to build up an unloving sense inside them against you. This unloving sense makes them think that by being in the middle that they had something to do with your divorce, and they didn’t.  They should not be burdened with solving your problems. They should not be made into an intermediary or a detective. And carrying information back and forth makes them feel disloyal to one or both parents.  It’s an ugly, emotional stew you’re cooking up for your children.
You might consider that you really don’t need to know so much about your ex’s new life.  If the information only serves to keep the flames burning inside you, why feed that fire?  Try telling yourself “I don’t need to know that.”  See if you can live with that. Or if you absolutely must know, exercise the courage inside you that is just waiting to be used.  Ask your ex yourself.

Len :: Oct.11.2008 :: Caring for Yourself After Divorce, The Pain of Divorce :: No Comments »