“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.