In divorce, family and friends can give wonderful support… except when they don’t!

When your relationship or marriage ends, there are so many feelings swirling around inside. The partnership you’d thought would last a lifetime has come unraveled. You have so many emotions – hurt, fear, frustration, anger, sadness, liberation, and more – all welling up inside. You need someone to listen, help you navigate your way through them, and offer loving support.

Family members and close friends often can be enormously helpful during times of difficult transitions. If you benefit from your times with them, don’t be shy about seeking out those whose company and insights you find helpful and reassuring.

Sometimes, however, even with the best of intentions, the people we love actually add to our distress. If that’s the case, then either give them direction about what you need or don’t need, or find other resources that can genuinely help you.

For instance, sometimes people who love you believe they are showing their support when they criticize your ex. Despite the pain that he/she may have caused, criticism about that person also implies criticism of a major life decision you made to marry him/her. Even worse, if this criticism is aired around your children, it can be very damaging. Children understand that they are part of both their parents, so hearing one disparaged makes them feel demeaned, too, as well as creating loyalty conflicts for them.

If your “supporter” is going down this path, you may be able to manage the situation. You could tell them that much as you appreciate their love and support, it is not helpful to you to hear about your former partner’s faults, and then tell them what would be helpful to you. “I appreciate that you care about me, but it actually makes me feel worse when you say negative things about my ex.  What would really help me is for you to tell me honestly some of the things about me that you value; at this point, I doubt myself, and you could help me regain some confidence.”

There are many other ways that family and friends may – unintentionally or even intentionally – erode your emotional well-being. They may, for instance, give you advice you’re not ready to hear. (“You just need to get out there and start dating.”) Or they may dwell on all the difficult emotions, to the extent that you are dragged still further down. (“I can imagine how much you’re hurting. You must feel just awful all the time.”)  Or they may tell you about someone else they know whose children slid off the rails after their divorce. (“I’ll tell you, after the divorce, those kids went from being straight A students to doing drugs.”)

In such situations, you will feel better if you take charge and either redirect the conversations or simply refuse to talk with those individuals about your feelings. In cases where family or friends cling to their harmful ways, you may need to distance yourself from them, at least for awhile.

Fortunately, there are many other resources that can help you navigate your difficult emotions. You may find support, perspective, and encouragement through a support group or a qualified mental health professional. I hope you will actively seek whatever help you need. That alone is a sign of strength and can lead to healing.

What I learned about divorce in Istanbul

Putting Children First – in Turkish Translation

Recently, I returned from a trip to Turkey, where my book, “Putting Children First: Proven Parenting Strategies for Helping Children Thrive Through Divorce,” was published in Turkish translation. Now while I’ve conducted research and worked with parents and professionals all across the United States, and in several European countries, South Africa and Australia, I’m really not an expert on divorce in Turkey. So on my book tour, I was eager to learn about these parents’ experiences and insights, as well as to share some of the strategies that have proven so effective for separating and divorced parents in other parts of the world.

I’m so grateful for this experience. What I found in Turkey mirrored so much of what I’ve seen here in the U.S. and elsewhere, though perhaps even more poignant. Divorce is less common in Turkey than it is here, and less widely accepted in the culture. Because of those factors, the parents I met there felt greater measures of vulnerability and shame than parents here generally do. So I was particularly touched by the strength and courage it took for the Turkish parents I met to make a priority of coming to a weekend workshop, where they expressed their deepest feelings openly and sought ways to help their children adjust and thrive.

The experiences and feelings they shared, 5,000 miles away on the other side of the globe, were remarkably similar to those of parents right here in the U.S.  They expressed a sense of loss, sadness and regret at the realization that their marriages were ending, and with them the dreams they’d once had for their lives together.  They shared their feelings of anger, too, and worries about the future and their children, but also some positive feelings of relief and hopes for a better future, especially if there had been abuse and intense conflict in the relationship.

Perhaps the most painful stories were of lost relationships between parents and their children. They talked of the challenges of life in a single parent family, managing task overload and their fervent wish to find the strength and energy to raise strong healthy children.

There, as here, in the workshop we focused on the most critical factors that have proven to help children and parents thrive:

1)      Managing conflict and protecting children from being caught in the middle of adult problems.

2)      Quality parenting, providing children with abundant ongoing love and reassurance and at the same time providing clear, consistent expectations for responsible behavior, and limits.

3)      Positive relationships between children and both parents, and with extended family, as long as it is safe.

4)      Parents’ own emotional and physical well being, which is fundamental for parents to be able to focus on their children and provide quality parenting.

5)      Household stability and healthy routines for children, including involvement in school and extracurricular activities, homework, meals together, limits on screen time and regular bedtimes.

I returned home, grateful for the opportunity to meet these courageous Turkish parents, and inspired – as I am so often – by the kind of love and dedication that enable parents everywhere to put their children first.

Help your children by taking care of yourself

Your baby needs her diaper changed. The school called to say your kindergartener lost his backpack. You need to get showered, dressed, and out the door to work in 10 minutes. You haven’t had a good night’s sleep in six weeks. Your coffee is cold. And just under the surface, a huge tangled ball of emotions is churning in your stomach.

Stressed? Oh yes. You’re separated now, and worries for yourself and your children weigh heavily. Taking time for yourself seems like the last item on your very long to-do list.

And yet, taking care of yourself needs to be a high priority – for your sake and for your children’s. If you’re like many single parents, you struggle with the logistics of finding time just for yourself, and you may also feel guilty for taking time away from your children. But doing so can benefit everyone. When you have greater physical and emotional well-being, you are better able to manage strong emotions, reduce conflict, and provide thoughtful, quality parenting.

Given that your life feels overwhelmingly busy already, where to begin?

Here’s what I suggest: Give yourself the gift of 20 minutes every day. If you can find more time than that, go for it. But the point is to start with an amount of time that feels manageable. Then make a daily routine of doing something that brings you peace.

Getting exercise daily is an excellent way to reduce stress and stay healthy. Go out and take a brisk walk – maybe share it with a caring friend, or use the time just to savor being alone – whatever feels best to you. Practice simple deep breathing for a few minutes, visualizing a place where you feel safe, relaxed and peaceful.  Yoga and tai chi are excellent ways to relax. If you can’t get out to a class, get a DVD at the library and try it out. Get on a treadmill and crank up your favorite music. Whatever activity you choose, clear your mind and focus on creating a calm, rejuvenating experience.

If physical activity doesn’t speak to you, then choose something else that makes you happy – read quietly, dance, play the piano, paint or draw, work a puzzle , make jewelry, or do some other creative or a spiritual practice that deepens a sense of peace within you. Whatever you choose, make it something that engages and absorbs you. Watching TV or playing video games are ok for occasional entertainment, but  these activities  don’t engage your mind in the same way.  The goal is to find routines that deepen a sense of balance and relaxation in your life.

In future blogs, I’ll talk more about other ways to take care of yourself. For now, just get started. You deserve it, and your children will benefit from a more centered you.

My Valentine for separated or divorced parents

Here it comes. Valentine’s Day – a barrage of ads for the roses, the jewelry, the chocolate, the romantic dinner.  All those reminders of lost dreams can be painful, for sure. This holiday, with its emphasis on romantic love, is likely to create or reinforce difficult emotions for you as a no-longer-married person.

The first is to remind you of the losses of ending a marriage with children, which may increase feelings of sadness, anger, guilt, and worries about the future. The second is to prompt you to move too quickly into a new romance at a time when you’re very vulnerable. What’s “too quickly?” It’s any time before you and your children have had time to adjust to the divorce emotionally. Generally that’s one to two years. There are many reasons for this – as reflected in the striking statistic that second marriages end in divorce a whopping 60 percent of the time.

In both cases, your children feel the impact as well. When you are drawn into your own sadness, you’re less available to them. And they worry about you. When a new potential partner enters your life, your children experience a myriad of difficult emotions – confusion, resentment, fear of being lost in the shuffle or replaced by someone more important to you, and torn loyalties to their other parent, to name just a few of them.

So here’s my valentine to you – a suggestion that I hope will help you and your children. Celebrate Valentine’s Day as a day of love for them. Start a new ritual. Make each other valentines that say all the things that are special about them. If your children are old enough to hold a spoon, make Valentine’s Day supper together, and set the table complete with candles. Plan a menu of foods you all love. If the vote is for pancakes or pizza, go for it, and know that you’re making good memories for years to come. Read a book or watch a movie together. Above all, hug your children and reassure them that the kind of love you have for them will never end; that you’ll always, always love them and take care of them.

If you approach Valentine’s Day this way, you will be giving yourself and your children a gift that keeps on giving: a lifetime of love.

How I met Abby Cadabby on Sesame Street…and how she can help children through divorce

Dr. Pedro-Carroll with Muppet Abby Cadabby in the Sesame Street project: Little Children, Big Challenges, Divorce.

Having worked with children and families as a clinical and research psychologist for some 30 years, and having 7 children and stepchildren of my own, I’ve been a huge fan of Sesame Street for many years. So I was especially thrilled when they came knocking on my door and asked me to serve as an advisor for their new initiative: Little Children, Big Challenges: Divorce.

This website and a whole host of tools have just been launched, and I’m thrilled to recommend this resource to parents who are somewhere along the continuum of transitions relating to divorce. In a virtual sea of information, advice, and opinion – often conflicting – Sesame Street offers  a wealth of solid, research-based information that parents can reliably use for themselves and with their children.

More on that another time. Today, I’d love to share my peek behind the scenes at Sesame Street. My work with them began back in March 2011. Job one was to establish the research base for the project, with a focus on what we now understand about how young children experience divorce, what impact it has on them, what factors cause risk to their short- and long-term well-being, and which ones promote their resilience.

Once the knowledge base was established, then the creative work of translating it into a story and imaginative yet realistic ways of sharing the important lessons with children and their parents. I was so impressed with the creative team’s dedication to making the scripts and other materials not only accurate for the children’s developmental stages, but also feel completely authentic to them.

One of the first strokes of genius was to choose sweet, wispy Abby Cadabby as the primary character — the little girl whose parents had divorced. She is believably vulnerable, and yet she also displays candor and strength in articulating her feelings – a wonderful model for young children. Another stroke of genius was in making Abby’s story a retrospective. In this way, she is able to talk about the mixture of big emotions she had at the beginning (so typical of children in these circumstances) and also reveal how she’s feeling now. It is reassuring to children to realize that what they feel now is not necessarily what they will feel in the future — that they will have more positive feelings as life moves forward and, with their parents love and support, they adjust. In Abby’s case, she tells her friends that although she is still sometimes sad that all of her family no longer lives together in one house (again, typical of children to have these lingering feelings), she is mostly happy. She particularly likes her “two-hug days” of transition between her mom’s house and her dad’s, because both of them show her how much they love her.

Abby is a source of important lessons for parents as well as children. The parents’ interactions are respectful and free of the kind of conflict that is very distressing to children. She learns through conversations with Gordon that she did not cause her parents’ divorce, a common misconception that many children harbor and often hide from their parents. And she learns that just as she did not cause the grownup problems her parents have, she cannot solve them.

All of this is presented in a normalized environment, with the Sesame Street Muppets sitting around a table, drawing pictures of their homes and talking about their families. This is just one more of the nuances that make it possible for children to relate to and believe in Abby and her friends — and take their experiences to heart.

There is much more to say about this wonderful new project. But let me stop for today with this: if you are a parent, grandparent, teacher, therapist, judge, mediator, attorney or anyone else who is seeing a child through divorce, please find your way to Sesame Street’s Little Children, Big Challenges: Divorce.