Along with producing many meditation CD/MP3’s, such as Meditations for Abundance and Love: Volume I Deserving and Volume II: Manifesting (available here at: http://bit.ly/meditat3), I have also written a best-selling book, The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict, available in print or PDF at inlovewithme.com/books, or on Kindle through Amazon at http://amzn.to/TIRGz4. Individual chapters are also for sale on http://inlovewithme.com/books/e-book-chapters.
Here is an excerpt on being proactive with the effects of divorce on your child:
Some parents may feel bad that their child “has” to see a professional due to their divorce. You should only feel bad if you do not have your child see a professional. My model of working with families of divorce is a proactive model. I do not believe something has to be “wrong” with the child. Children need to process their divorce experience with a professional so that nothing stands in your child’s way of living to their full potential. Even in the best divorce situations, children still have huge feelings; acknowledging these feelings early on is healthy. With every child I work with, I work through the child’s concerns so they can let them go and move forward more easily in life. If they don’t acknowledge them now, they will have to do this work later and it will be far more difficult for them later in life. Give your child the gift of working with someone who can assist them now in living to their full potential. I prefer to work with children early on vs. later when they are having bigger issues such as failing in school, drugs, drinking, etc. I talked with a counselor who saw teenage children for many different issues. Her practice was not focused on children of divorce, its focus was teens with issues. She said, “Most of the children I see are children of divorce. That ends up being a focus of my practice by default.”
National studies report that children of divorce are referred for mental health visits about three times as often as children in two-parent, intact families. Please note, these are not proactive visits, these are children with issues after the divorce has occurred. This is my point. If we take care of children up front, they will struggle less and have to seek less counseling later as teenagers or in their adult years.
Shannon R Rios MS is a successful Life Coach and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She coaches parents as a life coach through her life coaching business www.inlovewithme.com so that parents can move forward and create healthy lives and relationships with themselves, their children and others. She is also the founder of www.healthychildrenofdivorce.com
If you enjoyed this article, her best-selling book on parenting after divorce and healing after divorce is The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict and can be found here: http://inlovewithme.com/books
It is time to lay down the weapons you are aiming at your co-parent. This is important so you do not harm your child in the crossfire. What weapons are you still holding? Weapons that hurt your child can look like anger, withholding visitation, child support arguments, old hurts, small issues you continue to bring up. We have enough war in this world, let’s not have war in our homes. You have direct control over this war.19 Take control and make peace for your child. Continued fighting is your inability to let go of this relationship emotionally. Make a choice to emotionally let all of this old anger that you no longer need to hold on to. Do not bring this anger into the new life you are creating for you and your child. Do this for your child. They deserve a peaceful life. If you are still fighting, you have not let go of this relationship on an emotional level. You must either make the conscious choice to let it go or seek professional assistance to do this.
Recently, I read about a 10-year-old child whose parents were in the middle of a terrible divorce. The book’s author had interviewed the child due to parental allegations of abuse. The author revisited the child 2 weeks after their initial meeting; this time in the hospital after the child had surgery to remove cancer. The sobbing child said, “I need a rest. Can I stay here?” I’m not saying that her cancer was directly related to her parents’ divorce. What I can tell you is that this child preferred being in a hospital to being in the middle of her conflicting parents’ divorce. She was crying out and clearly the stress was negatively impacting her life. Don’t allow this to be your child. I know you love your child. If you are in conflict with your former partner, make the changes you know are necessary to end the conflict now and improve your child’s environment, before it is too late.
In this book you learn foundational skills to build deep self-love. Your entire life will shift in mysterious ways.