Divorce is hard on children. Although there are steps that you can take to try to minimize the impact on your kid, the truth of the matter is that you’ll have to keep a close eye on him or her to ensure that you’re protecting his or her mental health.
How divorce can impact a child
After all, the effects of divorce on children can be wide-ranging. In fact, each of the following impacts on your child may be seen:
- Academic struggles
- Behavioral issues
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Guilt
- Fear
- Onset of risky behaviors
Any one of these effects can be significantly damaging to your child, which is why you may want to consider other steps that you can take to protect his or her wellbeing.
What you can do to protect your child
Fortunately, there are a lot of strategies that you can utilize to minimize the impact of divorce on your kid. Here are some of them:
- Co-parenting: Developing a strong and healthy coparenting relationship, for example, can go a long way toward ensuring that your child feels loved and supported regardless of the circumstances. This arrangement can also provide your child with some much-needed stability, which is something that children thrive upon. Of course, creating that successful co-parenting relationship can be difficult, which is why you’ll need to be cognizant of how you’re communicating with the other parent and finding ways to agree on how best to raise your child.
- Therapy: Don’t overlook the value of therapy, either. This can serve as a powerful outlet for your child to discuss their emotions in a safe environment. In the event that you’re dealing with a custody dispute, this therapist can also give you and the court a realistic perspective on your child’s feelings, needs, and wishes. The judge will probably give this testimony significant weight, so if you disagree with the therapist’s opinion, then you might want to bring in another expert who can help clarify the situation.
- Coping skills: Your child is going to go to ride a roller coaster of emotions as your divorce progresses and your child custody dispute is negotiated or litigated. That’s normal. But it can be harmful to your child if he or she doesn’t know how to cope with what he or she is feeling. That’s why you, your child’s other parent, and outside professionals may want to talk to your child about some strategies for dealing with anger, sadness, frustration, and confusion.
These aren’t, by any stretch of the imagination, the only ways that you can protect your child during the course of your marriage dissolution. Other options for helping your child during this difficult time is to avoid putting them in the middle of conflict between you and the other parent and finding ways to empower your child to conquer the difficulties that they’re facing.
Be creative in how to support your child, too. There’s no one-size fits-all approach to these situations, and nobody knows your child the way that you do. So, think about what sorts of steps would work best for you kid and take action before it’s too late.
Using legal strategies to lessen the impact
In the event that you’re seeking divorce or custody modification, you’ll want to ensure that your legal approach is right for your child, too. This means crafting arguments that support your child’s best interests and that keep your kid out of the middle of the dispute as much as possible. If you want to learn more about how to craft a legal strategy that seeks to protect your child as fully as possible, then now may be the time to speak with an experienced family law attorney.