“What do I want my children to be saying about this in 10 years time?”
We are pleased to be supporting Resolution’s Good Divorce Week, launching their new guide, Parenting through Separation. The guide aims to give parents access to information and support that helps them throughout their parenting journey, through separation, divorce and beyond.
Divorce and separation can be very difficult and one of the biggest changes is learning to co-parent. Co parenting can be challenging as it requires parents to separate their feelings arising from the relationship breakdown with those needed to parent effectively. Your children will love you both irrespective of how you may feel about the other parent. It is important to promote a positive relationship with the other parent - adults will have different parenting styles which can become more prevalent upon separation. Unless there are concerns for safety no style is necessarily right or wrong. Children need help adjusting to two homes so it is important to think practically about what they need in each home and how the handovers will take place to make it as stress free as possible. Also it’s important that parents jointly define boundaries and take control of the special times children will want to spend with both of them such as birthdays and Christmas. An important part of co-parenting is making it ok for the children to be away from you - this can be hard as it takes time to adjust to them not being around all the time.
The guide provides some fantastic tips to help parents. One of my favourite is to ask yourself as a parent “What do I want my children to be saying about this in 10 years time?” Parents learning to work together now and for the future will produce good outcomes for them and their children.
Alison Benson is Head of Family at Rollits. She is a family solicitor, mediator and collaborative practitioner with 20 years experience in dealing with separated families and children disputes.
This article is for general guidance only. It provides useful information in a concise form. Action should not be taken without obtaining specific legal advice.
