In order to help protect your child from any fallout during the reorganization of your family, and to ensure that your child stays happy and well-adjusted throughout, it is important that you recognize, accept, and even embrace, certain concepts. Sometimes a parent has a hard time accepting these principles, because they run counter to what the parent wants for themselves. It's ok, and even normal, to feel that way; it's just not ok to act on those feelings to the detriment of your children.
During her years of fathers' rights practice and law school teaching, Ms. Mitchell has distilled out seven steps which single, or soon-to-be-single, parents can take to help ensure that their children remain on course and well-adjusted, during and after a divorce. These steps may seem obvious to you; unfortunately, what often is not obvious to parents is their own behaviour, and how it is perceived by, and impacts, their children.
Step 1
Accept and Acknowledge That Your Child Needs an Active, Ongoing Relationship with Both of Their Parents.
It can be hard, when breaking up with someone, to remember and accept that while you are breaking up with that person, your children are not. No matter how good a parent you may be, and no matter how "poor" a parent you may personally believe the other person to be, your children need both of you. They need to be able to have an unreserved relationship with their other parent, free from your own views of that parent, and unfettered by concerns that you will be hurt, or love them less, because they still want to spend time with their father or mother.
It's your situation, your problem, and your breakup. It is not your children's; don't make it theirs, and don't let it become theirs.
Your children love both of you, and need both of you, even though you may no longer love or need each other. And they need you to understand this, and to be ok with it. Their love for you won't be diminished by their love for the other parent; in fact, they will love you more for making it ok for them to also love their other parent.
In addition to the fact that children need both parents, no matter what kind of parents they may be, there is another very good reason for doing whatever you can to encourage your child's relationship with their other parent: children have a funny habit of growing up. Once out on their own, many children come to recognize that the reality of why they only had one parent around doesn't always match the picture painted by that parent. More often then not, they will come to resent that parent for interfering with their relationship with the other parent.
Finally, even if you don't find any of the above compelling (and you should), encouraging your child to have a relationship with their other parent will be looked upon favourably by the Court. Conversely, if you try to get in the way of your child's relationship with the other parent - whether physically, or simply by talking badly about the other parent to your child, the Court will hold that against you.
