From MU Extension at the University of Missouri-Columbia, this resource is a guide designed specifically for school teachers on helping children deal with their parents’ divorce.
The resource covers four key elements which drive a successful family-school relationship:
Approach
Attitude
Atmosphere
Action
For each element, this article explains how it applies to divorced and single-parent families and provides teachers with useful and practical advice on how to incorporate families in the educational life of their kids following a divorce or separation.
Anger is a very common reaction in children whose parents have separated or divorced. When you do not deal with your anger, it can become very destructive, and when you let it out in the wrong way, you can hurt yourself or someone else or find yourself in trouble. In the past, you may have had people tell you that you need to slow down and pause when you get angry. That’s probably good advice, but today we are going to look at a way to deal with anger that involves speeding up. When you get angry remember to win the RACE against anger with this four step plan:
STEP #1: RECONGNIZE YOUR ANGER
The first step in addressing your anger is to recognize when you are angry. Pay attention to what your body feel like when you get angry. Do your shoulders tense up? What does your face look like when you’re angry? How do you feel deep in your stomach when you’re angry? You might want to use the anger page from our My Feelings Workbook to help you understand how your body reacts to anger. Other things you will want to keep track are the things that make you angry and how angry you get. You can use the Anger-ometer to keep track of this for a week to note patterns in your anger. By understanding your anger, you will be in a better position to deal with it.
STEP #2: ADDRESS YOUR ANGER
It is important that you address any anger that you may be feeling. It is easy to just write off your anger or to bury it deep inside. Both of these options will lead to long term problems. Anger which is not dealt with will only fester and grow until it eventually comes out. Anger buried deep inside and not dealt with is like a volcano just waiting to erupt.
Following the divorce or separation of your parents, your relationship with them may feel distant or strained. It may be the case that you have been angry with them and have intentionally avoided them causing your relationship to suffer. They might be busy with adjusting to a new life away from your other parent and not be spending time with you. You may both be avoiding one another because you don’t know what to say, or maybe you’re afraid that you’ll hurt your parents’ feelings if you tell them what you’re really thinking.
Whether you admit it or not, most children instinctively desire to protect their parents. No matter how wrong you might think they were to get divorced in the first place, you may be reluctant to share the emotions and troubles you have for fear of making things worse for them.
On the other hand, if your parents are divorced or separated, you are likely experiencing some emotions you have never felt before or never felt quite this intensely. Many of the articles and resources on this site are designed to help you process those emotions and understand and deal with them better.
That said, you still need someone to talk to about your emotions. Just the process of naming your emotions and talking about your struggles is an important first step in overcoming them. The person you talk to may be a friend or a trusted adult, but sometimes the person you really need to talk to is your parent. It may be scary or uncomfortable, but in the long-term you will both benefit from having the conversation.
Here are some guidelines for how to talk to your parents about emotions or other things that may be bothering you:
From MU Extension at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the purpose of this resource is to provide parents and other adults with guidance on how to help children understand their parents’ divorce. It includes information on how to tell children about divorce and how to talk with children about divorce. From the child’s perspective, this resource includes a list of six things that kids need from mom and dad in the face of a divorce. It also includes suggestion on specific books you can use to help kids understand divorce along with a brief description of each book.
All of those are great resources, but the most useful tool included in this publication is a two page pamphlet that lays out information about divorce for each age/stage of development for a child (infants, toddlers, preschool and early elementary and preteens and adolescents). For each stage, the pamphlet includes information on what the child understands at that age, children’s thoughts and feelings and what parents can do for children at each age.
Many parents lose sight of their children’s needs during a divorce. That is why we were excited to find this pamphlet from child centered solutions is designed to help parents to keep their children’s needs first when going through a divorce. The pamphlet addresses the following topics:
Stewardship vs. Ownership Parenting
How do you prepare children for divorce?
How do you help children cope with family change?
What are some positive parenting strategies?
What questions should parents ask before developing a parenting plan?
What is a workable parenting plan?
What are some strategies for handling conflict?
What should you communicate to your children’s school?
What is a custody or parenting evaluation?
Where can additional resources be found?
In section includes bulleted lists of useful advice and suggestions for parents to follow to help ensure that they are putting their kids first during the divorce.
If your parents are separated or divorced, you may have a lot of spiritual questions about God and faith and the church. Many times when parents get divorced, kids begin to wonder about why they even exist and sometimes that leads to tough questions about God and faith. Here at I Am A Child of Divorce, we want to help you as you search through and struggle with many of those questions. So, we have created a section for “Questions About Spiritual Stuff” that will address these question.
We recognize that discussions about God can be very polarizing and controversial, but the fact of the matter is that God can help you heal after your parents divorce and provide hope. To ignore that may avoid some controversy, but it would not be fair to you (as someone whose parents divorced) to ignore the issue all together.
Our goal in tackling spiritual issues is to be as honest and as forthright as we know how to be. If you don’t feel like these particular questions or issues apply to you, please just ignore them and continue to utilize the rest of I Am A Child of Divorce to help yourself in whatever way possible. However, if you do have questions about God and Faith, we hope that these answers will help you to sort through those issues.
Even if you do not believe in God, or feel like you don’t need faith, I would encourage you to at least read through these questions and answers. While the principal issues addressed are indeed about God and Faith, they also deal with the broader issues of meaning and existence. Regardless of what you believe, these are issues that we all have to face and divorce sometimes forces us to face them earlier than we would like.
So, stay tuned to this section as we intend to tackle questions like: Continue reading
From MU Extension at the University of Missouri-Columbia, this resources suggests a multitude of activities that parents can do with their children to “help them work through their feelings, concerns and frustrations regarding the divorce.” Though specifically designed for parents, these activities can generally be done by any caring adult with a child of divorce.
Specific details and ideas are included for each of the types of activities which include:
Registration for our pilot online teen support group ends April 30th, and we are asking for your help to promote that program. We have created a flier promoting the upcoming group. We invite you to print out copies of the flier and hang them at your local community center, at your church, at your place of business or school, or wherever else in your community that teens might see it. Our goal is to make sure that teens who need this program are aware of it.
For a printable pdf version of this flier, please click the image below:
This site is from the Justice Education Society in British Columbia. It is a guide for teens to parental separation and divorce. Written on a teen level it deals with what is happening, changes, emotions, strategies, the law, and frequently asked questions. The website is also available in French.
Within each section, various issues facing teens whose parents are separated or divorced are addressed including:
Grief is a process that people go through when they suffer a loss. It is a journey through understanding and dealing with what has happened. The goal of the grieving process is to reach acceptance of the loss that will allow you to move on with life. When your parents separate or get a divorce, it is natural for you to grieve that loss. Grief is not an easy process, but it is a necessary part of healing.
Experts have identified five distinct stages in grief. You may not experience these stages sequentially (meaning one after the other), but you are likely to experience all five stages in dealing with the loss in your life. You may also experiences these different stages numerous times as you continue to get older and understand more and more about life and the loss you have experienced as the result of your parents’ divorce.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross identified five stages of grief that people experience following the death of someone close. These five stages will also apply to processing the losses you have experienced as a result of the divorce. They include:
1. Denial
During this stage you may deny that anything has changed about your family. You don’t talk about it. You try not to think about it. You convince yourself that everything will get back to normal soon. Rather than deal with the emotions and feelings you are experiencing, you push them deep down inside and pretend nothing is going on. You might be wondering why all this is happening to you in the first place. In order to move into the other stages of grief, you must first be willing to admit that you have lost something.
From MU Extension at the University of Missouri-Columbia, this resource is a guide designed specifically for school teachers on helping children deal with their parents’ divorce.
