Helping Kids Through Separation

DO ✅

1. Be on time. Don’t run late for drop-offs or pick-ups. If you say you’re going to be there or do something at a certain time then do it.

2. Learn to raise issues without blaming. Blame equals past. Be future-focused. You can’t mediate the past. It's done. It’s gone. All you can control is what you decide to do next.

3. Learn to respond to issues or concerns without being defensive. Be open, listen and see it as an opportunity to learn and work together.

4. Avoid put-downs and negative talk about the other parent when the kids are nearby. It wins you nothing. Kids love both of you. They often feel they need your permission to have a good relationship with the other parent.

5. Put a time-sharing schedule on the fridge so the kids can see it. Get them to make it as a project with their favourite colours and cutouts etc. Kids need certainty. If they have creative input, some sense of ownership, then it can help ease their anxiety or fears about what happens next.

6. Try to keep as much routine and stability between homes as possible.

7. Be future-focused. Draw the line, move on and put your energies into moving forward.

DON’T ❌

1. Turn parenting into a competition. The kids don’t care. You both bring something they need to the table. Let them receive it without conditions, without the pressure of deciding which one does it better.

2. Use the kids as messengers. If you want to let the other parent know something, do it yourself. The kids have got enough to worry about.

3. Ask the kids to keep secrets. Secrets can make a child frightened of disclosing something or failing to disclose something, thinking that either may jeopardise a parent’s love.

4. Ask the kids what is going on at the other parent’s home. Unless they are unsafe, it's got nothing to do with you.

5. Discuss adult issues, financial, visitation or court matters etc with the kids.

6. Use the kids as your confidante or counsellor. There are many pressures during this time but your kids are not your therapist. They are not your best friend. They are looking to you to lead them through all this. Hold them, support them. Be their safe place.

7. Focus on what the other parent does or doesn’t do. It's not your role to change them. Don’t rely on them to change so you can change. It’s not going to happen. Only focus on what you need to change about you.