As a society, we are inclined to attach shorthand labels to everything from parenting (Tiger Mom, Soccer Mom, Helicopter Parents) to politics (Red States and Blue States, the War on Drugs). It’s a function of our human brains that we are wired to categorize concepts in order to make sense of the world, but sometimes it feels like we’ve put this tendency on steroids. Too often people assume a label is sufficient to explain complex social phenomena (Obamacare, the Arab Spring) or to fully define an individual or group of people (Boomers, Gen X’ers, Millenials). We confuse sound bites with explanations. Think about the times you’ve seen two shorthand labels in a headline, maybe with a “vs.” in between, and believed there was no need to read further to understand the situation (Israeli vs. Palestinian conflict). It is easy to become polarized instead of thoughtful, rigid instead of nuanced.
For Minnesota families, summer feels different than other times of the year in more ways than just the warmer weather. Because most kids don’t attend school year round, the summer months can present unique scheduling challenges. This is especially true for families headed by two wage earners, and even more so when parents have gotten unmarried. For a school-age child, the summer routine often includes a mix of camps, classes and lessons, latchkey programs, vacations and sporting activities, with many logistical issues to be resolved. This is “times 3” if there are three kids in the family! The start and end times of kids’ activities vary week to week, and tend to not conveniently coincide with the work hours of the parent on duty.
That’s a lot of moving parts for families in which parents are getting unmarried. Managing complicated logistics is especially stressful if kids move from Mom Island to Dad Island without a safe and reliable bridge between the two. This is one reason why Collaborative Team Practice is designed to help parents establish the best possible co-parenting relationship after a divorce or break up. This always makes it easier on kids, but it can also be a huge benefit for time-challenged parents, and for the support network of extended family, baby sitters and carpool parents who can be resources for kids without having to be in the middle.
Here’s the rub: establishing an effective co-parenting relationship isn’t easy. An effective co-parenting relationship relies on clear communication, cooperation, reasonable flexibility and courtesy, and these elements can be in short supply during the painful end of a marriage or partnership. The Collaborative guidance and support of a neutral child specialist to create a Parenting Plan and a neutral coach to create a Relationship Plan are important resources toward the goal of effective co-parenting. We know this hard work can be invaluable for your family in the future. You and your kids deserve to enjoy all the summers to come.
When Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin made the recent announcement that they were 
consciously uncoupling, they clearly touched a public nerve. There was immediate sniping from people who seem to prefer celebrity gossip leavened with spite and public histrionics. Critics derided the process Paltrow and Martin are choosing and questioned their motives, and more than one “expert” opined that divorce could not occur without acrimony and anger. I beg to differ.
How cynical has the public discourse become when people would criticize a process of divorce that mindfully strives to create emotional safety for children? What’s to be gained by scoffing at the notion of creating an effective co-parenting relationship? Why is there an automatic assumption that hurt and sadness–even betrayal–must trigger fury and contempt, and that divorce is of necessity an adversarial process?
consciously uncoupling, they clearly touched a public nerve. There was immediate sniping from people who seem to prefer celebrity gossip leavened with spite and public histrionics. Critics derided the process Paltrow and Martin are choosing and questioned their motives, and more than one “expert” opined that divorce could not occur without acrimony and anger. I beg to differ.
How cynical has the public discourse become when people would criticize a process of divorce that mindfully strives to create emotional safety for children? What’s to be gained by scoffing at the notion of creating an effective co-parenting relationship? Why is there an automatic assumption that hurt and sadness–even betrayal–must trigger fury and contempt, and that divorce is of necessity an adversarial process?
As a Neutral Child Specialist, I respect the calm and dignified way Paltrow and Martin have begun this sad journey, which, because of their professions, will need to be done in the public eye. Understanding that language is powerful, I applaud the term conscious uncoupling, which, like getting unmarried, does not carry the emotional baggage of the word divorce. I was especially impressed when Paltrow and Martin referenced the wish to co-parent and to continue to be a family for the sake of their children
A divorce process that puts the needs of children at the center is much healthier, not only for children but also for their parents. It is true that effective co-parenting leads to a much higher quality of life for all family members. These goals are embodied in the work of the Collaborative Team Practice community. Collaborative Team Practice may not be chosen by those who don’t believe that parenting during and after a divorce requires mindfulness, a certain amount of self-sacrifice and hard work to keep children at the center and out of the middle. However, it is an excellent process for parents who want to reduce the impact of a painful change on their children’s future.
In my meetings with kids, I ask them to share perspectives on family, including hopes and wishes for how family might work best when parents are living in separate homes. I recently had the privilege to meet with four amazing young women; siblings whose parents are getting unmarried in a Collaborative Team Process.
I continually learn from kids with whom I work as a neutral child specialist. Each of these girls made thoughtful observations for me to share with their parents, so I asked them and their parents if I could write a blog post to share these ideas with others. Because they are thoughtful, empathetic and generous people, they agreed, and have my deep gratitude and appreciation.
Below are words of wisdom from Lauren, Kelly, Emily and Grace. Though focusing on one quote per girl, I want to stress that each of them had many wonderful insights about all the areas mentioned.
Lauren on Holiday and Birthday Celebrations
“I want one graduation party, not two. This is about me, not my parents. And I want them both to come and to get along.”
Lauren’s words represent the viewpoint of many kids, and are a powerful reminder that children of all ages have strong feelings about family celebrations. Lauren also talked about preserving family traditions on both sides for holidays, like Christmas. Tuning in to kids’ perspectives can help parents figure out how to preserve important traditions while adding new ones, providing grounding and clarity for all family members.
Kelly on Co-parent Cooperation
“I want my parents to remember they’re both always my parents no matter which house I am at.”
Kelly’s words articulate the heart of the positive and profound shift in family law away from attaching custody labels toward co-parenting and creating parenting plans based on the best interests of kids. Kids dislike the feeling of going from “Mom Island” to “Dad Island,” and feel safer if parents respect and honor their relationships with both parents. Effective co-parent communication is a centerpiece of parenting and relationship plans in Collaborative Team Practice.
Emily on Transitions between Homes
“I hope my parents will have a one to two hour window for me to go from one house to the other, so it’s do-able if I am in the middle of something or with a friend.”
One of the most challenging aspects of a divorce for kids is transitioning between homes. It is vital that parents work together to make transitions as smooth, cordial and stress-free as possible. Emily’s words are an important reminder to regularly check in and listen to kids about what is working well and not so well in transitions. Parents need patience and empathy: kids have lives too!
Grace on Family Transformation
“I want us to be a together and apart family. We’re still a family, but we’re just split.”
Grace absolutely nailed why I do the work I do as a neutral child specialist. What she said is both insightful and core to helping kids develop resilience. It is so important that all family members move forward with the deep understanding that getting unmarried does not end a family with children, but transforms it.
Thank you Lauren, Kelly, Emily and Grace. We will keep listening!
Watching the Winter Olympics, a commercial captured my attention. The ad included footage of Olympic athletes who fell while competing, thus failing to reach a goal for which they had trained intensely and prepared for years. Although elite athletes know there is no assurance of winning, their hearts can still break when their hopes and dreams are shattered after a fall before reaching the finish line.
As you see in the commercial, the story didn’t end with failure. Each of the fallen athletes was shown years later, returning to give a winning performance. The theme of the ad was “there is always a second chance.” Though not every heartbreaking fall comes with a replay button, we know that life is a constant process of loss and renewal.
Those of us in the Collaborative divorce community are deeply attuned to the emotional event of a divorce. It is usually heartbreaking for all family members—the divorcing couple, their children and their extended families. It can certainly feel like a painful fall before the finish line of a marriage is reached. Hopes and dreams can feel shattered. We never want the story to end there.
Collaborative Team Practice is designed to help guide families making their transition through a painful time of loss with safety, respect, dignity and hope for the future. The Collaborative Team is comprised of professionals from many areas of practice:
Collaborative attorneys are skilled at listening deeply, helping clients set goals and engage in problem solving meetings that are non-adversarial in nature. Neutral Coaches work with clients to bring their best selves to problem solving meetings, and create a relationship plan with them if their future includes co-parenting their children. Neutral Financial Professionals generate creative options to help both clients come through their divorce on the best possible financial footing. Neutral Child Specialists meet with all family members, are supportive advocates for children in the family, and help parents create developmentally attuned parenting plans.Like a skilled sports team, each member of a Collaborative Team understands his or her unique role in the interplay of helping clients reach their goals while feeling understood and supported in the process of getting unmarried. We believe in the process and promise of renewal after loss.
Divorce is a challenging and life-changing experience for all family members, and most divorcing parents worry about how their children will be affected in the short and long term. Because divorce is such a significant event for children, these concerns are understandable. As a neutral child specialist, when helping parents address their concerns, I encourage them to consider three guiding principles.
Guiding Principle #1: The crisis of divorce should never become a trauma for children.
Although divorce will almost always be painful and difficult for children, it is entirely possible for parents to keep it from becoming traumatic. Children can be traumatized when trapped in an environment of high conflict, danger, abandonment or abuse. None of these words should describe a child’s experience of divorce.
Guiding Principle #2: Children must be kept in the center and out of the middle of their parents’ conflict.
It is understandable that divorcing parents will experience conflict with each other. It takes mindfulness and empathy for parents to set the kind of clear boundaries that keep their children from being drawn into the conflict. Being in the middle always impacts children negatively. It is toxic to use children as confidantes, ask them to take sides against the other parent or disparage the other parent in their presence. The decision to take the high road and not put children in the middle is one that parents will never regret.
Guiding Principle #3: There is such a thing as a good divorce for families.
Judith Wallerstein’s longitudinal research on the impact of divorce on children painted a bleak picture of negative, long term developmental, social, academic, emotional and behavioral effects. Wallerstein studied families who divorced in 1971, a time when family law was typically adversarial and divorce was socially stigmatized. In 1994, Constance Ahrens wrote The Good Divorce: Keeping your Family Together when your Marriage is Falling Apart based on her own longitudinal study. Ahrens found that when divorced parents could reduce conflict, communicate effectively, and co-parent cooperatively, their children did not experience long term adverse effects.
These children continued to feel a reassuring sense of family, transformed from under one roof to under two. With the right kind of personal and professional support, parents can make a healthy transition from a divorced couple to effective co-parents. Making this transition successfully makes a huge difference in the quality of life for children.
Non-adversarial methods of divorce undoubtedly enhance parents’ ability to create child-centered outcomes. Since 1990, there has been a sea change in family law, including models of collaborative practice, mediation and cooperative divorce. When divorce must happen, choosing a child-centered divorce process is another decision that most parents will never regret. For more information on Collaborative Team Practice, please visit the website of the Collaborative Divorce Institute of Minnesota.
Recently I did a radio interview about how divorce impacts children during the holidays. One of the first questions asked was, “Isn’t it true that divorce traumatizes children, especially during the holidays?” My response was that divorce is a crisis for a child, but parents can ensure that it doesn’t become a trauma.
A crisis fades to a painful but manageable memory, but a trauma feels life-threatening, and can reverberate throughout a lifetime. If a holiday becomes traumatic, a feeling of dread or deep sadness may accompany the holiday year after year. I’d like to share five things divorcing parents can do to help their children cope and find moments of holiday joy during a divorce.
The first is for parents to commit to de-escalating conflict to ensure their children are not put in the middle. This ideally involves both parents pushing the pause button on arguments, but even if only one parent opts to not engage in negativity and conflict, the atmosphere will improve around children. Parents need to be mindful to keep from being triggered, and this is good self-care during a divorce. I always recommend the book The Four Agreements to my clients to help them learn ways to disengage from conflict.
A second consideration concerns holiday gatherings of extended family or friends. Parents may need to set clear expectations that negative things will never be said about the other parent in the presence or hearing range of the children. Children should be encouraged and supported by both parents to enjoy holiday time and events with each parent and extended family.
A third way to support children during the holidays is to stay attuned to them and spend time with them doing things they enjoy. This is a good time to distill holiday celebrations to their essence, and not go into overdrive. If you are in the midst of a divorce, your emotional energy is likely depleted and you may be in crisis yourself. Keep things simple, but show your children they are loved with the gift of your attention and interest.
Fourth, it can help to honor the familiar while creating new holiday rituals. If co-parenting is harmonious enough, children may be soothed by maintaining a familiar ritual like decorating the tree, or gathering as a family for a couple of hours on Christmas morning to open stockings. Parents attending children’s school concerts or church pageants together can be similarly reassuring.
Finally, I help parents create We Statements during a divorce to provide explanations for their children in a clear, developmentally appropriate, non-blaming and authentic way. A We Statement detailing holiday plans in advance can help children prepare and know what to expect. We Statements are especially effective when prepared and shared jointly by both parents.
Recently I received an email from a former client I met through Daisy Camp. This was a welcomed experience, as I value hearing back from parents once they have had the opportunity to experience co-parenting following their divorce or break-up.
This message was a day brightener, describing how helpful their parenting plan had been as a guide and road map. Co-parenting can be challenging, and parents may hit rough patches for any number of reasons. For these parents, the details in their plan had helped them successfully reach joint agreements and resolve their differences, and they felt good about how their co-parenting relationship had evolved. I was very pleased to get such a positive update, but then came the proverbial icing on the cake.
These parents, with whom I worked with years ago during their divorce, had just taken their children together on a trip to Disney World. This was the experience of a lifetime, and their daughters were ecstatic to have both parents there. Apparently there were many raised eyebrows when the parents announced their intention to take this joint trip, but this reaction just made them smile.
They knew why and how they were able to make this dream come true for their daughters. It was their mindful transformation from getting divorced to becoming resilient and successful co-parents. What a beautiful divorce story their daughters will be able to tell in the future!
Focusing on the needs of children, and keeping children at the center and out of the middle helps create the motivation and vision to do the hard work my former clients were able to accomplish so well. I loved getting permission to share their inspirational story.
My dream as a neutral child specialist in Collaborative Practice is that some day soon their story won’t be considered extraordinary, but typical. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all future divorce stories told by children contained healing moments of hope, laughter and grace, made possible by their parents?
My Pilates instructor, Maria Franklin, is a truly gifted holistic healer, committed to creating physical, emotional and spiritual strength and balance. During each class, Maria imparts nuggets of wisdom as we flex and twist. Maria reminds us that “practice makes permanent” and that we are capable of stretching ourselves much further than we thought possible as long as we believe we can. Stretching further and further is temporarily painful, but the strength and balance gained will last forever as long as we keep mindful, keep practicing and keep breathing.
Maria recently shared this nugget as we learned a challenging new exercise: “If you let go and relax, you can do it. If you clench, it won’t work.” She saw us instinctively tightening up in self-protection, as we were uncertain we were strong enough to safely do the exercise. She wanted us to trust ourselves more and release our muscles in spite of our fear of falling. She was right. Relaxing and releasing worked. We did not feel out of control, but became calmer and more confident of our abilities.
As a neutral child specialist in Collaborative Team Practice, I know that members of families with whom I work are constantly being thrust into stressful new situations that will require them to painfully stretch in ways they might not have thought possible.
It is the nature of divorce to be filled with uncertainty, and involuntary clenching of emotional muscles is a natural response to fear and anxiety. This can make a painful situation excruciating, and may hinder efforts at mastery of what lies ahead. In Collaborative Team Practice, you will find a team of professionals who are committed to helping families in crisis create stability, strength and balance while letting go of fear of the unknown future. We help people get unmarried in an environment of safety and respect.
I have written before on the necessity of letting go to move on. Experience keeps sending me reminders of the importance of practicing and ultimately mastering what fear tells us is not possible. Get the support you need and deserve from a Collaborative team, focus on healthy resolutions for you and your children, keep breathing and believe in yourself. You can do it.
One of my favorite people, and among the wisest of my friends, is my hair stylist, Gina. I always look forward to any time we have to chat while my newly foiled tresses take their color. Recently, we had such an opportunity. We were talking about my work as a Collaborative neutral child specialist, hearing the voices of children whose parents are getting unmarried or separated. Gina shared a story I hadn’t heard, and graciously consented to let me blog about it.
Gina’s parents, like many other couples, went through some very rough patches in their marriage. Because they eventually committed to changing destructive patterns, and worked hard using appropriate community resources, they were able to turn things around in a healthy direction. But not while Gina was a child, after she was nearly grown.
Gina told me that as the youngest child, she had grown up hearing her parents say they would not separate or get a divorce until she had graduated from high school. They may have believed this decision was in her best interests. But to Gina, this decision “on her behalf” made her feel responsible for the conflict and pain that existed in the home. She couldn’t change things on her own, and felt trapped.
She believes that behavior patterns she was forced to normalize by growing up in an abusive family environment impacted her deeply, both as a child and an adult. She has worked very hard to establish healthy patterns for herself, has generously given back to the community, and devotedly raised a fine son. But because early social learning is so powerful in shaping us, she knows she must always be mindful about her adult relationships.
Just staying together when high conflict persists is not a protective factor for children. It is the high conflict itself that inflicts traumatic wounds. Children’s psyches absorb toxic emotional environments just as their bodies absorb lead, and with the same destructive consequences. The decision to separate or divorce should not be made lightly, especially when there are children involved. However, the important question must always be, what needs to be done to keep children out of harm’s way?
For many struggling families, Collaborative Team Practice offers a way to end a high conflict marriage or partnership and begin a healthier pattern of co-parenting after separation or divorce. Children in high conflict families with whom I have met during their parents’ divorce have expressed relief to go home after school to homes that are not filled with stress, anger and anxiety. Please go to www.collaborativelaw.org for more information.