Divorce! - Put the Kids First!

When I got divorced I was so angry. I couldn't understand why this was happening to me. Anger and hurt are natural emotions when going through this type of event but when they spill over into your relationship with your kids they can have a major negative impact. In our case it only took a single incident for us to realize we needed to put our son first.

One night after we had separated and I had brought my son back to his mom's after a visit, we got into an argument. It was very heated, I'm sure the neighbors considered calling 911. The majority of the yelling was being done right outside of my son's room with his door open. He was just a little over 2 years old at the time and at some point during our argument he stood up in his crib and yelled as loud as a little 2 year old can yell (which is pretty loud) Stop It! and then he started to cry. Both his Mom and I immediately stopped yelling and with astonished looks on our face went in to comfort him. Though we didn't discuss what happened at the time we both realized that our anger towards each other would never be a benefit to our child and could only do damage.

Amazingly we both came to this conclusion separately and were able to make changes in how we reacted towards each other from that day forward. Sure we still had arguments but never in front of my son.

Here are a few things we were able to do to lessen the impact of divorce for my son that may be helpful for you:

• We stopped arguing in front of our son.
• We never talked bad about the other parent to our son. (We may have done that to other family members but to our son)
• We never forced him to take sides.
• We tried as hard as possible to be consistent with discipline even if it required us both to sit down and talk to him together.
• We made individual career, living, and school decisions with him in mind.
• We decided to reduce the turmoil in his life by having him go to private school through 8th grade so he had some consistency. We tried to have his stuff at both houses so he wouldn't have to live out of a suitcase when he changed houses.
• We also went to a week-on/week-off living arrangement.

I once heard a saying. "It takes 2 to make a good marriage buy only 1 to make a divorce" I would add to that "it takes 2 to make a workable divorce". I realize your situtation may be much different than mine but if you always put your children first in the decisions you make you can lessen the impact of your divorce on their life.

Discipline and the Single Parent!

When discussing parental discipline the topic can get very heated. A great many parents do not believe in spanking as a form of discipline while others believe if you take away spanking as an option you limit the effectiveness of discipline.

I’m not going to make any judgments about spanking in this post because methods of discipline are a parental decision. First off, reasonable people can differentiate spanking from beating a child and “Timeouts” are very effective for some children. My brother and I came from a household that used spanking as discipline. I don’t actually remember seeing my brother ever spanked but I got it a couple of times (and rightfully so). As young parents though we used different methods to discipline our children. I had to spank my son 2 times by the time he was 4 years old. The reason I remember it was because it hurt me to do it. From the time he was four I never had to spank him again. You see “Timeouts” wouldn’t work with my son, he enjoyed sitting in his room alone. My brother on the other hand used “Timeouts” because his children responded very well to that form of discipline. Now, many years later, his two kids and my son are all very well adjusted, respectful young adults. Parents need to treat their kids as individuals and discipline them when necessary with whatever method works best.

I’m no expert on this subject, but in my case because I clearly explained the rules and boundaries to my son and followed through with discipline that I explained would happen he quickly understood breaking the rules was counter-productive. Certainly, as kids get older the methods of discipline change. As they grow older it often is more effective to take away something that is of value to them, setting boundaries with clearly explained consequences is effective. What doesn’t work though is setting up rules that you won’t make stick. If kids don’t feel there will be any consequences to their actions no amount of yelling and threatening will work.

However you decide to discipline your child do it because you love them and want them understand proper behavior and that there are consequences to their actions.

Memories!

My son and I drove by our first apartment the other day, really the only place we lived as a complete family (except for a brief attempt at reconciliation). My son was only 2 at the time so I didn't expect him to remember much but I asked anyway. He said the only thing he could remember was that I used to take him up the street to look at the horses and throw rocks in the pond. I was amazed, we really only did that a couple of times and the pond was actually just a puddle left over from a big storm. That got me thinking! We only have so much room in our heads for memories, what made him select that memory over so many others?

I thought back to my own childhood and the memories that stood out from my earliest days were related to emotional moments. Some of the memories were nice and some were not so pleasant but almost all of the early ones involved some type of emotion. I remember telling my Mother that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up and her saying "honey, you have to read something first" I remember thinking "I don't like to read so I guess I can't be a writer" I also remember walking home from school with my 2nd grade girlfriend and spilling milk on a girl I really liked in first grade and a crush on my 3rd grade teacher.

I asked my son to think about what he remembers from his early childhood. In addition to the memory I mentioned above, he remembered his Grandma taking him to see the construction workers building homes (when he was around 4 yrs. old). He remembered the cockroaches at his mom's house when they lived with her parents and he remembered me being late to pick him up from school one day (he was the only kid left). I remember that event also, I can still see the hurt in his face. Fortunately there were several more positive memories that involved me. I was struck by how much these events had apparently impacted him but I had to think hard to remember most of them.

It appears our deepest memories are made from emotional events; not from all the fun things we did while growing up but often from the everyday mundane things we did. They come from living and sharing an emotional connection. If you are a parent, my suggestion is to ask your kids what they remember from their early childhood and work on making those types of events a regular part of your relationship -- if they were positive. I’m no expert on memories but I do know we remember them for a reason.

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