10 Steps for Fathers Who Divorce

By Jeannette Lofas, Ph. D

Step 1: Accept that Guilt Is a Prime Mover in Your Actions. Most men feel guilty because they lost their family and their power as father to that family. You may also feel guilty if you believe the mother of your children is not doing an adequate job of parenting.

Step 2: Make the Most Of Your Visitation. The rules of visitation need to be set precisely and specifically. Children need predictability.

Step 3: The Children at Your House Live by the Rules of Your House. Your children need to become part of your household, not just guests in your home. Appropriate behavior and acceptable manners must be decided upon by the couple. Chores must be assigned; making beds, helping with meals, keeping the bathroom clean, etc. Structure equals love. Chaos and unpredictability creates low self-esteem in a child.

Step 4: Don't Be a Wimp Father. Most men (even the strongest and most powerful) wimp out and turn into ninety-pound weaklings when their children visit. They endeavor to be "buddies" to their child. We so often hear fathers saying, "I see them so little; I don't want to waste time being their disciplinarian." Remember, discipline means guidance.

Step 5: Create High Self-Esteem in Your Children. This is done by creating predictable expectations for your children when they come to your house. Predictable rules and regulations will make your children feel safe and secure.

Step 6: Money Is Always a Problem, No Matter How Much There Is. It is often best when children visit to give them a specific allowance for the time they will be with you. In return for the money the child receives, he/she is expected to be a good citizen of the household, do chores, and then use the money as he or she sees fit. If a child needs extra money, we advocate "extra pay for extra jobs."

Step 7: Build and Maintain Couple Strength. Work together with your partner. Discussion is okay, but arguments are not. Be respectful of her reality as well as your own regarding the assignment of chores. Work this out between you, or seek the help of a Stepfamily Foundation counselor. The couple is the pillar that hold the family together: She is the female head of the household; he is the male head of the household.

Step 8: The Couple Decides the Rules of Discipline. The couple decides the Rules of the House: chores and manners. The biological parent disciplines the child whenever possible. When necessary the stepparent says, "In this house we . . ." in order to avoid the "You're not my mother; you can't tell me what to do" syndrome.

Step 9: Creating a Structure Is Vital for the Children. This requires extending the Rules of the House to all events. This structure makes it easy for kids to know what to do at your house. It doesn't matter that the rules are different than Mom's. Creating a structure means creating high self-esteem. Children like themselves better when they know that they have done a good job and are part of a team.

Step 10: Remember that You Are the Father and the Male Head of the Household. Men teach children the ways of the still dominant, male hierarchical business structure.

“IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD”

The Untold Tragedy of Divorce for Children

By Jeannette Lofas

If you asked me “what was the most important event in your life,” what first comes to mind is my father leaving the house on Christmas Eve. I was 10 1/2. Presidential awards and honors have not affected me as much as the moment I knew my father was never coming back. My mother shriveled into a heap of depression. I was held her up. At that moment I became an orphan without a father or mother. Or so it felt to me and many other children whose parents divorce.

The divorce culture affects us all. Only some parents have skillfully handled working through divorce with their children. Today is no different. Parents just do NOT know. Few parents want to make their children casualties of divorce yet experts tell us over half of those remained wounded for a lifetime. This is not to say they do not achieve success, but all around emotional and spiritual success are missing elements.

Most of us can’t put a name to our sadness or a reason for our hyperactivity or listlessness... It’s a nameless heavy heart, a fear of abandonment a need to control and more that we carry in the back of our brains for the rest of our lives.

What have parents who divorce out of their own sorrow forgotten to do?
1. Tell the children properly.
2. Continue to parent post divorce.
3. Continue a positive working relationship with the other parent…for the emotional well being of the child.
Let me simply count some of the ways.
1. They badmouth each other.
2. They neglect to co-parent.
3. They place a “good time” and giving “things” ahead of guiding and parenting their
children.
4. They permit kids to dominate their households.
5. In the short time they see parents, kids are not to heed them, but are taught to expect from them.

Each week 1,000 children loose their family; the union of their mother and father in one home. Parents, experts on divorce, and family therapists neglect to suggest a substantial methodology to use to tell the children.

The loss goes to the non-thinking, reactive part of the brain. The part of our brain which causes us to jump away before we think, that part which over rides all thought and causes us to jump in the pool to save the fallen child.
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Call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder --- fear of an out of place reaction when we cannot process with our thinking mind that what happened. So we grab on to things, or people we can hold on to and will not leave us feeling alone, all the while feeling not good enough to sustain a relationship because no one ever taught us how. Not knowing that we don’t know, not knowing how to get what we want. To feel OK about our selves, we work, do things and buy things to control.

People are unimportant, yet unconsciously they are most important to make us feel self esteem, but we have lost the way there. No modeling of how to interact with others to create, solve conflicts and maintain.

WE MUST HAVE A BETTER WAY, NOT A BLAMING WAY OF TELLING KIDS ABOUT DIVORCE ---- for the sake of their future.

If one parent badmouths the other it destroys one half of the child. Do we want to do that?
No. But it is acceptable to bad mouth our ex spouses, to not talk to them, and to have parental visits with rancor between parents. How uncivil and cruel to the child,
just like the accepted process of talking to the child about divorce. Must we talk to them in an age appropriate manner? Yes; but we must speak to them mostly out of love for our children. They will always be OUR children. There are no ex parents!

From ME to WE

Corporate America, the work world, especially process of mergers and acquisitions is riddled with unresolved and often on going conflicts ---inter-personally and in the work situations. Rank has no relation to this steady enemy of success. It’s across the spectrum of corporate work, organizations and family.

It is a me-me, mine-mine notion of significance instead of a “we” and “our” mindset. The divorce rate and failure of job loyalty and job satisfaction statistics blast these issues loud and clear. To date few remedies have worked.

In our consulting practice of working with high conflict, (2 out 3 statistical failure rate families stepfamilies) we have developed conflict management and dramatically different resolution management tools. Experts believe these should have a larger out reach.

They entail Seven System Based Solutions.

They are strategically based on the work of the great Middle Eastern poet, Rumi,

“All wars and conflicts are cased by not honoring the other’s differences.”

We live in a litigious RIGHT/WRONG culture.

In marital relationships 60% of issues never get resolved. People just manage conflict well, and go on and work it out.

This hold true for work or in a relationship.

What kills marriages is not the lack of conflict, but how the conflict is resolved.

People ending to:

1. use anger
2. criticize
3. stone wall
4. And withdraw…in more than half of their transactions fail----at marriage fail to get the job done at work.

The Seven System Based Solutions utilize a concept called:

MY REALITY IS…..

1. Reality, truth, is akin to a nation’s history.

The same war is described and reasoned depending on the country you live in.

Growing up in the South you would think, feel, and see the Civil War differently that one would in the North.

2. Eliminate the word YOU you’re wrong, you did

3. Use I see, Hear, Feel…..my reality is…

4. Allow the other time to finish

5. Give equal air time

6. A decision not to decide is a decision, now

7. Show respect for differences….Indeed HONOR differences

Good relationships are based on respect. No respect to ability to resolve conflict. To arrive at success

LEFT OVERS in Relationships we may have A and B point of view. Often we must create one we both agree on a “C reality” and some time our “c reality is to agree to disagree.

BOY SHOOTS STEPMOTHER TO BE

BOY SHOOTS STEPMOTHER TO BE
The Mother of Two Children
By Jeannette Lofas, PhD., LCSW

Pregnant stepmother. Kenzie Houk, 26, was shot dead by her 11-year old stepson to be. Father Chris Brown told police, "The boy was jealous. We were getting married." The boy's name is being withheld by police.

WHY?
This angry 11 year old acted out what so many children feel when a parent remarries. Most often kids are not happy, many are in a state of fear, or even trauma.
There are many negatives for the child in a new marriage of a parent. For example: the loss of that parent's time and attention, the feelings of a grievous loss in the child's position in that parent's life, the absolute loss of hope that his two “real “parents will ever get back together, the chance that this parent will be as loving with the step person's children as with him, or have a new baby that may replace him…and much more.

Taking it to its extreme, as in this case, is shocking. However, we must remember that the child often fears for his life as he knew it. The step person threatens that way of being.

What we see here are the natural reactions, dynamics and behaviors that are just built in to a blended/stepfamily. Every member of the stepfamily has their specific set of dynamics and behaviors. For example, the stepmother may begin with caring and the turn cruel, the child naturally rejects the step person, the biological parents less and often over indulges and much more.

If we don’t expect these dynamics the surprise will cause serious negative behaviors.

Think of the fairy tales the “cruel stepmother” and the “wicked stepchild.”
The fairy tales tell us truths we are all reluctant to see and that which we deny could be in our family.

Few children are happy at the thought of a new stepmother or stepfather. Most act out their feelings with ugly actions toward the “intruding” step person, which can go on over years.

With this case we see an 11 year old boy familiar with guns, take out his disastrous wrath and fear that few would dare to imagine.

Many stepchildren show their feelings, often for decades, with nasty, ignoring, put-downs over the time of the remarriage. This torture continues until the step person goes from caring to cruel; the result being that 2 out of 3 remarriages with children involved end in break up.

The problem is repeated and repeated in our society of divorce. Shooting the step person is extraordinary. But it just might happen more often if no one saw or knew and the fact could be hidden from the world.

WHAT TO DO?

Perhaps, this little 11- year old is a wake up call for our denial of the real dynamics of stepfamily grief for many children. No one should go into a step relationship without the assistance of a Certified Stepfamily Foundation Counselor. In this case the boy’s anger may have been seen by and experienced Counselor and the couple could have lessened their contact, especially in front of the 11-year old. Then the painstaking work of integrating, creating a functioning, managed stepfamily could be worked out; or a decision to delay or detach would be put into place.

The Stepfamily Foundation manages the new family system as though it were a new team, new rules, roles and responsibilities. In this management system we assign predictable times to couple, parent and child, the stepfamily as a whole etc. This so no one feels left out. We need to take another hard look at what divorce and our changes in the family is doing to our kids. More American families are now some for of stepfamily. Experts relate more than half of the children are depressed. Anger and acting out is the other side of depression.


ABOUT: The Stepfamily Foundation, Inc is a on for profit founded in l976.
It is the first organization to address the blended/stepfamily from all points of view. We have developed a management technique that allows 84 % of remarried families to create couple agreed upon expectations and a successful blended family. On our website www.stepfamily.org we provide books, DVDs, CD's and Manuals for Group Leaders.

ABOUT: Jeannette Lofas, PhD, LCSW, Lofas is a child of divorce, a stepchild and lives in a stepfamily. She has written five books, won a Presidential Award, coached and counseled couples and families for over thirty years. Research relates an 84% success rate. She now coaches mainly on the telephone worldwide. She regularly conducts the Stepfamily Certification Seminars and lectures in New York and in cites throughout the world.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
call us at (212) 877 3244
www.stepfamily.org

Dr. Phil on Discipline in the Blended Family; Dr. Lofas disputes…

So, I was watching Dr. Phil on Tuesday, February 10^th and he had a blended family on his show. We saw a great deal of conflict between the couple regarding the behavior of the adolescent children.

What has come to my attention is that Dr. Phil [and other therapists] consistently recommends that only biological parent discipline each of their separate children. In this case, the stepparent has no place in the guidance of ALL the children.

We find that this advice misses the mark. In our 30 years of experience, after writing 5 books about this, and working with tens of thousands of clients, we have discovered that when both parents are present each of them can tend to their own children; but, what does one parent do when the other parent is not there? That question is left unaddressed by Dr. Phil.

Our success lies in our structural, managerial and team building techniques. Our research and experience shows that a blended/stepfamily survives best when the couple comes together decides on HOUSE RULES, writes them down, agrees on these rules, and has a meeting with all the children. Thus ensuring that everyone in the household knows what the expectations are.

Dr. Phil’s advice of each parent disciplining their own more often than not, leads in confusion, chaos and lack of strong leadership. If we do not build a team that functions with rules, roles and responsibilities we do not build a blended family, but rather two, often chaotic, stepfamilies under one roof.

Below are 10 steps to success in the blended/step family…

10 Steps for a Success

By: Jeannette Lofas, PhD, LCSW

1. Recognize that the dynamics of blended/step family are crucially different from the biological family. A step/blended family can not and will not function as does a biologically connected family.

2. Decide to work on building Couple Strength. The strength of the family lies in how well the couple communicates. Couple strength is achieved by recognizing each other differences in points of view regarding such issues as: discipline, manners, life styles, rituals, duties and responsibilities. Couple strength means honoring the differences and working through agreed upon rules and forms.

3. Establish concrete house rules and structure. Remember, we come from different ways of living and seldom agree on the new structure needed in our blended/step family. Rules need to be written in a positive tone. The couple must decide on the rules. For example: “In this household we hang up our towels; so those towels belong on the rack.” After the couple has agreed on the rules, they call a family meeting.

4. Discipline comes directly from the biological parent. The step parent however, reinforces the discipline by saying: “As you know, your Father/Mother and I have decided that, “in this house we…”

5. Prepare yourselves for the pulls of conflicting loyalties. Who comes first? My son calls me and my wife calls me, who do I answer first? The senior person always comes first.

6. Keep from bad-mouthing the prior spouse. When we bad-mouth and put down the other parent of our children, we are bad-mouthing and disparaging half of that child’s identity. Many divorced parents today realize that bad-mouthing their ex lowers the self-esteem of their child.

7. Choosing to be an effective parent and stepparent allows more room for romance. Lack of agreement creates chaos and destroys intimacy. The children do not dominate the family. The parents are the heads of household.

8. The couple comes first (after you are married). A strong, loving couple relationship sets the cornerstone of a child’s self-esteem.

9. Ask for counseling from a professional. Most blended/step families need coaching. This is a whole new world, a new paradigm. It is ok to have discussions. Agree to agree. Agree to disagree; and work it out. Remember you are partners in creating the stepfamily. Therefore, it is of great benefit to the family to seek advice from a trained step family counselor.

10. Guard your sense of humor!