10 Jan
2009
When a marriage ends and kids are involved, everyone’s life is shattered and along with dealing with all the intense emotion, there are important decisions to make. Among them is where to live. Often decisions are made for us, because a change in financial status forces us to downsize to something more affordable or you’re the partner who is leaving so you have to find another place to live.
What about the kids? What’s best for them? If you’re the custodial parent there’s a tendency to want to make a fresh start and move to where your parents are or to where your good friends are. Or it might make sense to you to move in with a new partner. Your thinking might be along the lines of: “It will be more economical and the kids will have two parents around like they had before.” Or it might be for any number of other reasons.
Kids don’t ask to have their families broken apart. The marriage break-up had nothing to do with them. Their secure little world will never be the same. For this reason, most of the time it’s in their best interest to change as little as possible. They do better if they can stay in the same house, go to the same school, continue to see all their friends. All those things contribute to their sense of security. If they’re on a sport’s team, they want to be able to continue. Adjusting to the many other changes that are going on in their lives is enough. We don’t want to completely uproot their foundation.
Whether we like it or not children are adversely affected by divorce; some much more than others and it often depends on the age. Very young children are less affected than older children. There are things we can do as the adults in their lives to minimize the trauma. The way we communicate to them about what’s going on is key. If we make a point of not demeaning the other parent we make things easier on both ourselves and our kids. Sometimes, we really have to stop and put ourselves in the shoes of our 6 year old or our 10 year old. What’s really best for them?
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