Divorce Doesn’t Mess Kids Up

You're listening to good inside with Dr. Becky. I have so many ideas, strategies and scripts to share with you right after a word from our sponsor. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment. So even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain Good Inside. Today's episode is about divorce and co parenting. This is a topic that has truly taken me too long to get to and that one of you raised as a missing piece in all the parenting content I put out there. Thank you as always for speaking up and for holding me accountable. Before we go further, let me say divorce doesn't mess kids up. That is an old, unsophisticated narrative and one that we can replace with this much more nuanced narrative. Kids need supportive, loving adults who can be there for them when they struggle and have tough feelings. And what I know for sure is that this community is full of parents who are these adults for their kids. This is true for all of us, whether we're married, separated, divorced, or a single parent. So take a deep breath, remind yourself of all of your strengths, and let's jump in. Let's hear from our first caller, Sage.

Hi Dr. Becky, my name is Sage. I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and I am mom to two wonderful girls. One is seven and a half and the other is eight months. And one topic that I haven't heard you cover but I can imagine does affect a lot of the families that follow you and get inspiration from you is how to handle parenting a child with a co parent and navigating two households. I co parent my oldest daughter with my ex husband and she spends close to equal amounts of time in both households. We live close by and we do communicate pretty much every day about her and what's going on. But we also have very different parenting styles and the expectations in both of our homes can be quite different. So that can be tricky at times. So I was wondering if you have any general guidance for us and how to handle that and how to best support our daughter. Thank you so much.

Hi Sage, thank you for calling in and bringing up this topic of divorce of co parenting. Yes, so many kids have two parents who live in different homes. And it's really important that we talk about this. So do I have any general ideas for kind of parents who are co parenting? There are so many different things on my mind and three themes kind of rise to the top. Before jumping in to these three ideas, let me say this. Every family situation is different. Not every co parent can communicate a family effectively or safely. And sometimes the best thing we can do for our kids is limit contact. So as I go through these three themes and as we go through this episode, there might be times when you think, oh, I can't do that for my kid with my co parent or oh no, my kid definitely isn't getting that. Let's take a deep breath now together, Because here's the ultimate truth. You know what's best for you and your children. And as I say, often as parents, our number one job is to keep our kids safe. And if safety means distance, then you're doing your job and you are doing it well. With that in mind, here are the three themes. One, remind your child that they still have a family. Their family might look different than it did before. And talking about all those differences is super important. And remind your child they're safe, they have you. If it's true, say they also have their co parent. They have the sturdy leaders they need. Two, keep conflict as low as possible. There is a bit of an irony here. Often in a divorce, adults have to work harder than ever to communicate with an ex spouse. This ensures that your kids feel safe and taken care of. Three, let your child feel all of their feelings. Often our worries or guilt or anger can get triggered when our kids express how they feel. So anticipating your triggers will help you show up and support your child through this transition. Remember, it's not those feelings that give your child trouble as much as feeling alone in those feelings. So when you embrace those feelings, when you talk about them, when you even act ask about them, your kid is going to do so much better. And now our next caller, Elizabeth.

Hi, my name is Elizabeth and I live in Seattle and I have a single daughter. Her name is Clara and she is seven years old. And I'm calling a bit with a meta question for you or comment. Which is one thing that a lot of parenting advice, media and columns, et cetera, kind of tend to leave out is what it's like for children whose parents aren't married, whose parents are either divorced or who have a parent who passed away or who have a or who live with a single parent, like my daughter does. I'm A single mom. And something that I found that is tricky in navigating life as a single mom is that I do share custody with my co parent, my ex husband, and my daughter's dad. And she experiences a lot of inconsistencies in our parenting styles as she goes back and forth from house to house. I don't have any issues with the way her dad parents her, although I know that there are some single parents who do disagree with their co parents and parenting styles. But it just is an adjustment for my daughter. And I can tell, especially on the transition days when she comes back to me or when she's getting ready to go to her dad's house, she's kind of bracing for a lot of emotional upheaval. And I'd love to think more or hear more about how I could best support her through that and help just normalize the experience. Experience for her.

Hi, Elizabeth, thank you so much for raising this issue of inconsistencies, of kind of the dance our kids have to do when they're going from one house to another. Kind of constantly assessing where things are, what the rules are, what each parent asks for and demands and what each parent reacts to and how this is tough on a kid. And. And then raising the question of, well, what is our role if we are co parenting and helping our kid through these inconsistencies? A couple things. First, name it. Naming it is so helpful. Even just saying to your child, what's different at your dad's house than at my house? What rules does he have that are different from the rules that I have? Just classifying it, just allowing this to be spoken helps a child so much because it puts words to an experience that's living in their body. Now they can understand what's happening and now they feel less alone because we're holding that truth in a safe, loving relationship. We don't have to solve the inconsistency. We don't have to say, well, I'll make sure your dad and I get on the exact same page. We, we don't have to do that. And most of the time it isn't realistic to do this. But just saying, wow, that is different. Wow, I'm so glad we're talking about this. Huh. I never thought about that difference until you brought it up is really helpful for our kids. Now, the other thing you raised, Elizabeth, was when there's an inconsistency that we don't agree with. You said this tends not to be the case with you. But I wanna talk about when there is an inconsistency that doesn't, doesn't sit well with us because I think that happens in so many families. So here's an example. Maybe you, when your kid is overwhelmed or having a tantrum, have an approach like we talk about here. We set a boundary around out of control behavior and then stay present and connect to the underlying feeling. Maybe your child's other parent handles this differently. They yell or they send a child to their room or do timeouts. Something that doesn't sit well with you. What I think of as kind of the general goal in these type of situations is really centering your child's experience without necessarily throwing the other parent under the bus. That often it feels like, oh, I say nothing about what my co parent does or I criticize it and say it's awful. Both of those approaches can actually be really stressful to a child because either they're alone with the experience at the co parent's house that feels bad to them, or now they feel responsible for your feelings about what happens. Neither of those approaches actually explores your child's experience. And when we really center our child's experience, we see that it's actually less about the co parent and more about connecting to our child's experience. So how would I make my child's experience the real focus? I might say something like this. Huh. So when you have really big feelings at dad's house, he sends you to your room. Oh. Oh. What oh. And then you're sitting alone in your room. When that stuff happens at my house, I generally sit with you. Yeah, that is really different. What is that like for you when you're sent to your room, then pause. That's a really important question. And it's a simple question, but it's often when we don't ask. When we hear about an experience our child has at our co parent's house, we often have the reaction of criticizing our co parent instead of having the reaction of, of learning more about our child's experience. If our child had an uncomfortable experience, what they need from us is not to rush to action with our co parent. They actually first need to feel less alone. So center your child's experience first. So let's say my child says to me it's bad, I hate it. I would stay with my child's experience. I'm so glad we're talking about this. This is so important. You hate that. I could ask a wide range of questions. I might say, what do you wish would happen? What's the worst part of it? What happens Next. Do you ever think of me in that moment and imagine what I would say to you? What I'm really doing is I'm focusing on my child's feelings. I'm building connection. But my child's other parent really isn't the focus here. My child is. Now what might I say after that? Or would I say anything about my child's other parent? I might. There's no one rulebook here. So take all this with a grain of salt and use what's useful to you and put to the side the rest. I could imagine saying in some situations, you know, it's not your fault that you have such big feelings. You're a kid and being a kid means having feelings that are sometimes bigger than your ability to manage those feelings. I know your dad loves you and I know he doesn't see emotions in the same way I do. I might add on that's probably really tricky for you, huh? To have two parents who do things so differently. And again, what I'm doing, even though I'm talking about my child's other parent and is I'm centering my child's experience. Let's hear from our final caller, Allie.

Hi, Dr. Becky. I am Ali. I have a four year old. I live in Los Angeles, California. I am recently divorced and I have a four year old. And he's having a hard time transitioning between mommy's house and daddy's house. Each time he needs to make that transition, he cries and says he wants to stay with me. Although I support him through those moments and talk him through it, he seems to have a hard time. And for me, coming from divorced parents, I my heart breaks a little bit each time we make that transition. Thinking about the fact that he sleeps in a different bed every couple of nights, I'd love your advice. Thank you.

Hi Ali. I really appreciate your openness, your vulnerability, which to me is synonymous with bravery and your reflection on your own childhood and how all of that comes up when you're interacting with your own child. So thank you for calling in and sharing. So the first thing I want to say, even though you didn't ask this directly, is this divorce doesn't mess up kids. It doesn't. There's this narrative of it's always better to stay together or we stay together until our kids are of a certain age. Divorce doesn't mess up kids. What's hard for kids in any family arrangement is when they notice a lot of things around them and feel alone, when they have a range of emotions that nobody Talks to them about when they feel ignored and invisible. That's always really hard for kids if you're going through a divorce. If you are divorced, say that to yourself. Now, divorce is not going to mess up my kids forever. What divorce does do is it does bring up a lot of feelings for kids. And that does mean we need to hold ourselves responsible for inquiring about those feelings, allowing those feelings, and being present when our kid feels all those feelings without trying to make those feelings go away or make them feel something, quote, better. So how does that relate to what you're bringing up? Well, your child gets really upset during separation. That's really common for young kids and definitely common for young kids where there's divorce in the family. Why is that especially common around divorce? Well, one of the things that divorce does for kids is it kind of calls into question so many of the things they assume to be true. Right. Kids assume, if they have two parents that live in one home that their life will continue with two parents who live in that home. It's kind of a baseline, probably unconscious assumption. Well, divorce shakes that all up. So it makes sense that so many other big assumptions that help kids feel safe would also be questioned. Assumptions like, will there be people there when I wake up in the morning, Will someone come back after I say goodbye? We actually can use this as an opportunity to speak to those assumptions, to understand kind of the larger anxieties our kids might feel again so they don't feel so alone. So what I would say to your son, there have been a lot of changes, right? Mommy and your other parent, we used to live in the same house. Now we live in two different houses. That's a big change here. Here's something that's not going to change. Both of your parents love you so much. Even though we live in different homes, we both still love you the same amount. Here's another thing that won't change. When I say bye, I will come back and be with you again. One of the things that changed is the homes we live in. One of the things that won't change, one of the things that will stay the same is I'll. I'll come back after I say bye. We really need to say these things to our kids because they truly do have these existential worries. What else would I do? Well, I would remind myself that my job isn't to stop my kids crying. It's to help my kid feel understood and less alone in their crying. So going into a separation, I'd remind myself my child might Cry. That's actually not a problem because the more okay I am with my child crying, the more my child will feel my sturdiness, which is what they're looking for in the first place. So remind yourself that. And instead of saying things like, it's going to be fine or you know, I'll be back, I'd say, mommy's going to be back with you. We've talked about that and I know this is hard. You're allowed to cry. You're allowed to be as upset as you feel. Mommy still knows you're safe, and Mommy knows we'll come back together soon. So I'm seeing the emotion. I am not allowing that emotion to overcome my emotions, but I'm also not expressing fear of the emotion in an approach that would try to convince my child out of the emotion. Okay, one last strategy around separation. For kids who have separated or divorced parents, it's hard for kids to hold on to the idea, the feeling of a parent when they're at the other parent's house. We can actually really help bridge this gap, which really helps those tough separation moments. You can do a variety of things. I'll name a couple, and by no means do you have to do all, but you can have these in your back pocket. Write a note to your child and have your child's other parent read it to them when they're at the house. In this way, you're really showing up when you're not there. You can record a message for your child. You can go on Amazon, Google recordable button. This is something I actually recommend so many families use to help their kids with sleep, which is also a form of separation. But it's really useful and I've watched so many kids benefit from it when they go between homes. So record your voice saying some message to your child, like, I'm thinking about you, I love you, and I'll see you soon. Something like that, right? And then your child actually keeps that recordable button with your voice, meaning your presence at the other parent's house. And definitely they should have a button of the other parent at your house. And this makes concrete the idea that my parent is still there even when I'm not looking directly at them. Thank you, Sage, Elizabeth and Ali for calling in and bringing up so many important topics around divorce and co parenting. Let's end this episode with three main takeaways. One, divorce doesn't mess up your kids. Let's throw away the narrative that kids need two parents living in the same home to thrive. What kids do need to thrive is to have at least one parent who notices them, who attends to them, who allows them to express all of their feelings. Kids need to feel less alone in all the feelings they have, and we can be that parent for our kid, whether we're married or divorced. 2. Separation becomes easier when kids feel less alone in their feelings, not when kids feel convinced to have a different feeling. This means saying more things like it's hard to say goodbye, huh? Or saying goodbye to one of my parents used to be so hard for me too, rather than saying you're going to be fine or there's nothing to be upset about. 3. When you hear about your child's experience with their other parent, center your child and what was going on for them, instead of focusing on criticism of what the other parent did in thanks for listening to Good Inside. There are so many more strategies and tips I want to share with you. Head to goodinside.com and sign up for Good Insider, my free weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox and follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Dr. Beckyoodinside for a daily dose of parenting and self care ideas. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Beth Rowe and Marie Cecile Anderson, an executive produced by Erica Belsky and me. Dr. Becky, if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review it or share this episode with a friend or family member as a way to start an important conversation. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.