Honesty and Forgiveness

These two ideas are partners in laying the foundation for a full and successful life. The ability or inability to embrace the partnership of honesty and forgiveness is at the root of many traumatic family breakups.

Parents justify their anger, bitterness, and pettiness by pointing fingers at the behavior of each other. Parents give themselves permission to be selfish and mean-spirited or judgmental and blaming.

Parents behave badly and children watch, listen, and learn. Then when children hit, kick, yell, whine, scream, and behave in ways that are selfish and mean-spirited or judgmental and blaming, parents ask them "Who taught you that?!?!"

Honesty means taking responsibility for our part in the breakup of the family. Honesty means admitting that we ignored or covered up the signs that our partner was not a good fit for us. Honesty means accepting that our family laws in the United States, for the most part, are No Fault laws.

The reason for No Fault laws is simple. Adults make choices that work for them. Then at some point those choices don't work anymore. People do their best with what they have at any given moment. Humans have a deep and compelling ability to grow and change and move in positive directions.

Self-honesty and self-forgiveness is critical to moving forward into a better life. As we get to know ourselves better, sometimes we find out that the partner we chose at age 20 or 30 is on a different timeline and different path from us. Sometimes we are able to work through those differences and sometimes we realize that staying with this person will change us in ways that cripple us.

Be honest with yourself, not your partner. Take responsibility for your own choices, don't blame your partner for his or hers. Then forgive yourself for creating pain, disappointment, and struggle for yourself and your family. Then forgive your partner for being human.

Bernard Meltzer, a radio host from the 1960s to the 1990s, offers this simple way of understanding the importance of forgiveness. "When you forgive, you in no way change the past - but you sure do change the future."

We can change our futures by being honest with ourselves and practicing forgiveness in our lives.

We owe it to ourselves. And we certainly owe it to our children.

Parenting Dilemmas: Why Does My Child Lie?

People lie.

Adults lie. Children lie.

When grown-ups are asked to record their own lies, they admit to about one lie for every five social interactions. Adults lie about once a day, on average, and college students are double that. Most of these lies are white lies. They are meant to make others feel good or to prevent others from feeling bad or to avoid embarrassment.

Our white lies help our children become comfortable with being insincere, disingenuous, dishonest. Most of us end up teaching our children -- through our own white lies -- that honesty can create conflict and dishonesty is an easy way to avoid conflict.

Children know the difference between a white lie and lying to cover their own misdeeds, but teaching and modeling how to tell a white lie lays the groundwork mentally and emotionally for lying. It gradually becomes easier for the child to lie to the parent.

So how do we handle it? How do we help our child tell the truth? Slow down. Listen and observe your child. It is a basic parenting skill: Listen Actively! Children freeze, or fidget. You can almost see them thinking.

Help your child to tell the truth. If they say something mean or inappropriate, does it really matter where they learned it? Most of the time, it doesn't. What matters is the parenting. Don't set your child up to lie by making demands that are a set up for a lie. If the child can tell you are really upset and you demand the truth, you have put them in a very scary situation.

Stay calm, tell them the truth. "Wow! That really surprised me when you said that. Let's talk about it." What matters is the teaching, the values, the lesson, the morals, the quality of the connection between two people.

Lies distance us from others. Too many lies cut us off from those we love. Help your child stay connected by exploring that urge to hide the truth, to be insincere and to be dishonest in their closest relationships. Slow down and talk about it. Try to understand. And do that together.

Pay attention today to your own truth telling. Challenge yourself to find ways to manage social situations in a more truthful and respectful manner. We are never to old to learn how to be more genuine, to discover more about who we are.

Parent Stress Limits Parental Warmth

Just for today: decrease the stress and increase the warmth.

Research tells us time and time again that parental warmth is the single most important quality that serves as a protective factor during times of stress for a child.

Parental warmth is almost nonexistent when Mom and Dad are caught up in the adult struggles with litigation, financial concerns, competition for parenting time and all the other distractions from being present to your child in this moment.

Wake up every morning and concentrate on making a plan for 1 hour over the course of the entire day focused just on your child. Then move into your day with the intention to be present to your child without distraction each time you talk to them or interact with them.

Concentrate and focus in the moment. Spend 1 hour a day just child-focused and playing.

What is parental warmth?
1 Calm behavior.
2 Kind attitude.
3 Thoughtful gestures.
4 Focused attention.
5 Loving and nurturing words.
6 Affectionate touch.
7 Genuine conversation.

We can only live one day at a time.

Our children can't wait until we do that one magical thing that will make it all better.

Don't wait to share moments of parental warmth toward your children. And certainly don't wait for those moments to magically appear. Make it happen. You are in control of your child's emotional and mental well being. You are responsible.

So if you cannot practice those 7 attributes of parental warmth, get some therapy or education or support! You deserve it and your child absolutely needs it for survival.

More on Resilience

The research tells us that exposure to even chronic traumatic events, like an entrenched Family Court battle, does not have to predict a negative outcome! What predicts a negative outcome is how we think about and talk about the event(s). For a child, what predicts a negative outcome is how parents teach them to think about and talk about traumatic events.

In other words, resilience can be taught. We can learn how to be less negative, less emotionally reactive and extreme. The key is in what we tell ourselves -- and our children -- about experiences, emotions, and thoughts in response to a potentially traumatic event.

When we are children, first we feel, then we act, then we talk, then we think. As adults, first we feel, then we think, then we talk, then we act.

Parents teach children how to respond to stress and to the unexpected. For example, parents who rush to the aid of a child every time they fuss or cry, who make every fall, bump and bruise catastrophic will probably raise children who are not resilient. The child learns that discomfort means emergency. Discomfort means threat, danger, loss.

Parents who hear the fuss or cry, or see the fall - - and wait to see what happens next - - are more likely to raise a resilient child. Why?

The first parent rushes to the child, stress on their face and in their voice and exclaim: ARE YOU OKAY? ARE YOU OKAY? ARE YOU HURT?

The second parent probably stays where they are, face calm, voice tone calm, waits a little bit, and says: You're okay. You're okay. You're fine.

The first parent has intervened in the child's own processing of the experience so quickly and with such intensity that the child probably didn't even have a chance to notice his or her own reaction to the event. Instead the child is likely to take on the parent's perception: I'm hurt, this is awful, I can't take care of myself, I'm not in control.

The second parent allows the child to have his or her own experience of the event. Hmmmm. What happened? How does that feel? Am I okay? Mom/Dad seems to think I'm fine. Am I fine? Huh! I guess I am okay. I can do this. This isn't so bad. I can figure this out.

In a difficult family break up and challenging family restructuring, parents have multiple opportunities to teach their children how to process chronic stress. Some high conflict coparenting struggles are so prolonged and intense that the child grows up in the equivalent of a war zone with armed conflict (intense verbal and sometimes physical battles between Mom and Dad) and IEDs (litigation maneuvers, CPS reports, disparaging declarations) as the back drop to life.

We cannot teach what we have not learned.

Parents must learn to frame adversity as a challenge, not as a disaster. Parents can then become more flexible, more likely to face the challenge, deal with it, learn from it, grow and move on with more skills and more depth and more understanding.

Risk and Resilience for Children During a Family Breakup

The stress of the initial separation is the first opportunity parents have to make good decisions about taking care of children. Parents tend to either tell their children too little or tell their children too much.

Telling children too little can lead to confusion, sadness, and depression. Telling children too much can lead to anger, fear, and acting out.

Parents usually tell their children too little because they have no idea what to say. Parents usually tell their children too much because the parents are so angry or hurt that they want the children to choose sides with them against the other parent.

How do you find the amount of information that is just right?

Here are the messages children need to hear:
1 Mommy and Daddy aren't going to live together anymore.
2 We will each have our own home and you will live with both of us.
3 Mommy and Daddy will take good care of you.
4 Mommy and Daddy can still be friends but we need to live apart to be the very best parents we can be for you.
5 Mommy and Daddy will always love you.

If your children ask you a question and you don't know the answer, be honest. Tell them "I don't know, but Mommy and Daddy will figure it out and let you know as soon as we can."

If your children ask you a question that makes your blood pressure rise, or your heart break, tell them "that sounds like a really important question, sweetie, and I need some time to think about that. I will talk to you about that later."

Include your children as soon as you have made some decisions that are specific. Questions that need to be answered before you talk to your children?
Who is moving?
When is Mommy or Daddy moving out?
Will the children stay in the same school?
What will change and what will stay the same for the children?

If you are having fights in front of the children, then you are probably going to need to talk to them before all of those initial questions are answered. The problem is, if you are fighting in front of the children then you are already putting your children at risk. You probably know that you are hurting your children by fighting in front of them but you cannot stop yourself.

If you have already made mistakes or if you are afraid to talk to your children or you have no idea what to say, get some information. There are many great sources of information.

Transitions Family Program at Hannah's House offers consultation and coaching and classes for parents who need help talking to their children about these important issues. Talk to someone as soon as you can because your children will fare much better if they have some basic information to help them understand what is happening.

More on Risk and Resilience For Children Who Experience A Family Breakup

Some researchers on divorce and family breakup in high conflict families have looked at the question many parents ask. Is it better for the children if the parents separate? Or is it better for the children if the parents stay together?

The answer? Conflict and negativity harm children. Hostility and parental warmth are at opposite ends of the parenting spectrum. The hostility end of the parenting spectrum is devastating to children. The parental warmth end of the spectrum is as necessary as food and water for the health of a child.

Conflict between parents is harmful to children regardless of the living arrangements. It is estimated that between 20 and 25 percent of children experience high conflict during the marriage of their parents. Some parents are able to reduce conflict after the breakup of the family. Unfortunately, some parents are unable to reduce conflict.

Sometimes it is both parents who continue the war zone mentality of a battle to the death of the opponent. And sometimes it is only one parent who continues to compete for the win. And it only takes one parent to continue the hostility and conflict in the coparenting relationship. It only takes one parent to create an environment in the home that feels like a war zone: threatening, abusive, and quietly or loudly violent -- whether physical or verbal or emotional -- with a child feeling caught in the middle of the battle.

Researchers have found that parental warmth is the one parenting action/expression/attitude that can truly protect a child from adult conflict. Parental warmth only takes one parent. If either Mom or Dad can make that commitment to care for self, and focus on the children, then the potential for enough expressions of parental warmth are high!

When both parents are preoccupied or overwhelmed by emotional challenges and emotional reactivity related to the adult conflict then the outcome for the children will almost always be negative. Overwhelmed and preoccupied parents practice poor parenting because they use harsher discipline or ineffective discipline.

Your children deserve peace in at least one of their homes! Be the bigger person. Practice positive parenting and cooperative coparenting regardless of the other parent's choices. It only takes one parent to stop criticizing the other parent; to stop analyzing ways to win; to stop making money more important than peace; to start treating children like people instead of property; to start setting and maintaining healthy boundaries between Moms House and Dads House.

Even better if both Mom and Dad realize that a hostile family environment is destructive for everyone, but especially the children. Parents make choices. Parents are not forced to be angry or hostile or self-centered or self righteous.

If you are overwhelmed, negative, and able to admit it to yourself then get some support and help that is positive. If you are getting your support from people who cheer you on in the battle to win against your opponent, then you are choosing to treat your children as the collateral damage in a war that is more important than your family.

Conflict hurts children.

Peace nurtures children.

It's not mysterious.

Choose peace in your home.

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Risk and Resilience When Mom or Dad Place Litigation Concerns Above the Needs of the Child OR I Don't Want it Used Against Me!

Some parents keep the conflict in the family home going because they refuse to move out. They are concerned about the STATUS QUO in terms of parenting and property. So they stay in the family home, refusing to move, so that they can tell the judge "but your honor I was the one who took my child to the doctor last week!" Of course that parent is not going to tell the judge that, until last week, the parent didn't even know the name of the doctor.

Or the parent is focused on property "I don't want to be accused of abandoning the home because it will be used against me!"

There are laws in place to protect parents when they leave the home to reduce the conflict. The single most important protection you have is to reach out regularly and respectfully to request time with your children. That's it. Use email so there is a record for the court. Make your communication brief, clear, focused only on possible days and times, and do not judge, preach, chastise, or blend any adult concerns with coparenting needs.

Moms and Dads can set the tone for positive parenting and cooperative coparenting by the way they leave the home and the way they communicate about the children. Use email so there is a record of your approach to coparenting and a record of your efforts to stay connected to your children.

Don't try to make excuses about the status quo in order to justify your decision to continue to expose your children to hostility and conflict in the family.

Say yes whenever possible. If your coparent asks for financial assistance for activities, school, daycare, dental or medical care, or therapy/counseling, JUST SAY YES! Don't say no because you don't want it used against you. Put your child first and familiarize yourself with the laws about legal custody and best interest of the child.

Simply put...you can get a second job, you can make more money, you can figure out the financial challenges. You cannot go back and protect your child's physical, emotional, psychological, and neurological development. You have one chance every day to protect your child. You have one chance every day to affirm your child's need to have a relationship with both parents. You have one chance every day to take the high road and be a moral, ethical, and kind person.

The goal legally and morally is for parents to share equally in caring for their children. Assume your fair share and more if you need to because it is for you child and his or her safety and care, not for the comfort of you coparent.

Put your child first. If you are so intent on making your parenting decisions in the context of litigation there is absolutely no question that your child will suffer. Make your parenting decision in the context of parental responsibility to safeguard your child's right to have a childhood.

Protecting your child's right to a joyful and loving childhood is the most important responsibility a parent has.