How to manage emotions?

How do I manage my own emotions while parenting?

How parents manage their own strong emotions and go about ending their marriage and creating a new way of life makes a major difference for their children. It is imperative that parents learn how to control conflict that is verbally or physically hostile, frequent, intense or focused on the children – the kinds of conflict that are most damaging to children.

Responsible parenting includes respectful behaviour toward the child’s other parent. Continuing bitterness and anger between separated parents is likely to damage children much more than the separation itself. To prevent this happening, it may again be helpful to talk about your feelings with someone you trust (preferably outside the family) or with a professional from one of the services mentioned.

Children whose parents are in high conflict are exposed to a number of scary, confusing, or traumatic experiences. Look carefully at this list of examples and note which of these your children has experienced.

Hearing hurtful words and insults towards one another. Hearing scary, dark threats in their parents’ voices Seeing threatening body language Seeing a parent being humiliated or physically hurt Hearing a parent screaming or crying Hearing a parent blaming the other parent harshly Feeling forced to choose one parent over the other Feeling a parent’s withdrawal Hearing whispering of older siblings/family members about what is happening Seeing signs of violence i.e. bruising, fearful parent

Detach your feelings about the separation from your parental responsibilities. In order to parent more effectively after divorce, regardless of the amount of time you have your children, you can reduce the exposure of this conflict.

How to avoid putting your children in the middle of conflict?

The child as a “bargaining chip”

Sometimes one parent might threaten the other parent to get them to behave the way they want. For example, ‘If you don’t pay your child support, I won’t let you see the kids.’, ‘If you don’t tell me how you’re using the money I give you, I’ll stop paying child support.’, ‘If you don’t stop seeing Farah, I won’t let you see the kids as often.’ When parents act this way, they’re probably focusing on their relationship with each other and not on their children. Sometimes, parents put their children in the middle of their conflict without realizing it. Maybe you’ve heard stories about separating parents who use their children against each other.

Children already have to deal with a lot of changes. They don’t need to be put in the middle of their parents’ conflict, even if their parents don’t always mean to do it.

You don’t want your children to be put in the middle of your conflict. So here are some examples of the kinds of behaviour you should avoid.

The child as ‘messenger’

Sometimes, parents might not speak to each other directly. Instead, they might send messages with their children. For example: ‘You tell your father that when you’re at his place you need to get your homework done.’ Or ‘You tell your mother that her lawyer better stop calling me!’

This puts the children in the middle of the conflict. It can make the children feel stressed and anxious. Instead, you need to communicate directly with the other parent about parenting

issues. Try not to make your children a go-between.