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Hi there, and welcome to the Parenting Without Power Struggles. Podcast. I'm your host, Susan Stiffelman, a marriage and family therapist educator, and the author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting With Presence. In this podcast, we dive into real parenting struggles, real solutions, all rooted in attachment theory and neuroscience, mindfulness, and decades of clinical experience. You're gonna find conversations here with experts like Dan Siegel and Janet Lansbury, Mona Delahooke, Tina Bryson, Ned Hallowell, plus Q and A episodes where I tackle your biggest parenting challenges, and we know that they exist. All of us have our challenges from time to time.

If you wanna go deeper and get more help, visit susanstiffelman.com. I have a free newsletter and lots of master classes on everything from meltdowns and anxiety to chores and sibling rivalry. Now let's get started.

Today I wanna talk about something that affects many families yet can often feel quite isolating and overwhelming. And that is parenting after divorce. Whether you're newly separated or you're years into this journey, parenting after a partnership has ended can bring tremendous challenges. There's grief.
There's anger, there's hurt, there's confusion, and all the while you're still getting breakfast on the table and managing homework and bedtime and showing up at work and just trying to keep it together. And if you have a less than cooperative co-parent or one who seems intent on making your life even more difficult, it can call forth strength that you may not have known you had.

So it's really important that we keep our eye on what matters most, and one of the things I hear most from parents is some version of, I just want my child to be okay. They didn't sign up for this. I want them to feel and know that they're safe and loved. I don't want this divorce to damage them. I hear the pain, the desire, the longing in that.

The longing to shield them from hurt. But here's what we know from research and from real families. It's not the divorce that causes the most long-term harm for children. It's how the adults handle it, which is really empowering because even if your former husband, wife, partner isn't cooperative, even if you're really mostly parenting on your own, you can make a difference in how your child weathers this change.

And it starts with emotional presence. That means you don't have to have all the answers. You don't have to be endlessly patient, you don't have to be saint like. But if you wanna give your child what they need most, it's to help make sure they're emotionally safe and that they know they can bring you their messy and they're confusing and sometimes contradictory feelings to you, and that you're not gonna shame them or shut them down.

That might mean holding space when they say, I wish you and daddy still live together. Or when they idealize the other parent who only shows up on weekends with toys or when they're angry or scared or sad, and they take it out on you. None of this means that you're failing. It just means your child's trying to adapt to a really big transition, and they trust you enough to bring those feelings forward.

Now, if you're the parent who carries most of the emotional labor like this or the task, like school drop offs, like scheduling laundry, nighttime, bedtime, or if you're parenting solo or in a really high conflict co-parenting situation, then I understand that every day can be exhausting and you may feel like you have to be everything for that child of yours, but if you don't.

Even if you don't have much of a support system and you're wondering how you're supposed to show up calmly when you barely have time to take a shower, let me just remind you, you do not have to be perfect or do it all or check everything off the list. You don't have to make sure that your kids are in bed by eight every night or that they're getting homemade meals.

What matters most is that your child feels a deep, secure connection with you. Even on the really hard days, or after they tell you they hate you or you're too controlling, or they'd rather live with daddy, that connection is what builds resilience. Not getting it right all the time, or being endlessly patient, just returning to the relationship.

It's rupture and repair. Rupture and repair, even after those really hard moments. One of the things that I encourage parents to do after divorce, and it could be in the immediate aftermath, or it could be months later, or it could be down the road after your co-parent has started a new relationship or your child has moved intoa new stage developmentally, is to watch your child's behavior to get a sense of how they're doing.

We can ask our kids, how are you doing? Or, with the divorce, or, do you have any questions? And they may shut down or they may say, fine. Okay. I guess we wanna look for signs like regression or acting out clinginess withdrawal, pulling away from not just you but their friends. These can be ways that our kids show us that they're overwhelmed or they're sad, or they're angry or confused because they don't always say, I hate this divorce.

Why can't you let daddy come back and live here again? Daddy says you made him leave. And of course, we can't possibly impose upon our children the complications that would've led to a decision like this. So what we can do is when we see that their behavior is suggesting maybe they're not doing that well.
Get it out in the open sweetheart. It just seems like you're having a really hard time or that you were really sad about leaving daddy's today, or maybe that you were sad when you had to leave this house and go over to dad's for the weekend. I wonder how you're doing with that. I wonder if you're missing sometimes how things used to be.

I know I sometimes do so by making it. Safe for our kids to tell the truth about what they're feeling or even to figure out that there are feelings. A lot of kids don't really know that they're missing the other parent or that they're upset about something that happened either at your place or the others, or that the transitions are really hard or maybe a kid said something to them.

They may not connect the dots and realize that they are really, taking it out on their sibling because they're having an emotional reaction or they're struggling. It's us making it safe for them to be whoever. And however they are modeling that letting them know that you sometimes have rough times and really welcoming, without judging, shaming, complaining, counseling or advising.

When they do volunteer, even a tidbit, a peek into what's going on inside. That's what we wanna bring out in our kids, is the sense that even though this is a really challenging aspect of life, and one that no doubt, you didn't really prepare to have, most parents don't have kids, and with the idea that they're gonna be divorcing that child's other parent.

They will adjust. All right. They'll be okay if we can show up day in and day out as best we can. And some days they're gonna be terrible and some are gonna be better than others. Allowing them to feel whatever they feel. Now, of course, all this all also means that you're looking after yourself because the version of you that your children need.

Is a U that isn't running completely on empty or doesn't feel completely alone, or knows that this is a really difficult phase, but it's not a life sentence. Some of you may know that I also traveled the world of the journey of divorce, and it was really hard. It was really hard. It was something I didn't expect to do.

Certainly wasn't in my vision for our family. Tried very hard to make sure that we could avoid it, and still that was the outcome for my first marriage. And I know the pain and the sadness and sorrow, that's not just in that immediate time after the. News is shared with our kids and you're navigating, or I was navigating the kind of logistics of life after that separation and then divorce, but it's in times long after.

I still remember a time that I heard the family next door with the dad and the mom outside with their kids doing things in this wave of sorrow and grief that I felt that I wasn't able to provide that to my son, and yet I trusted. That we could give him our best. And I know I raised a beautiful young man and I, I think in the end it really is about showing up wholeheartedly and making it safe for our kids to be.

Going through whatever they are and that we look after ourselves as well, so that we can be that safe harbor. That safe haven. And for those of you really struggling, please check out a group that I co-facilitate with. Wendy Beharry, who's the author of Disarming the Narcissist, surviving and Thriving With the Self-Absorbed.

Hopefully that isn't your situation, but we do offer monthly support there. One final thing I wanna bring up. Divorce is not a one-time event, as I said years later, kids can revisit it at different developmental stages, and so can you, as I just shared. A preschooler might be sad about missing a parent at bedtime, but a tween might suddenly have really big questions about loyalty or why things ended.

A teen might start to express anger about choices that were made a long time ago. So just like us kids revisit loss as they grow. If your child suddenly seems to be struggling and it's been years since the divorce. See it as a chance to meet them where they are with new language, more maturity, more understanding.

And it might mean, it certainly will mean pausing before you react to something that you hear the other parent has said, and you think, what does my child need most from me right now? Not justification or defending yourself, but just presence, regulation, comfort, security. So hopefully for those of you who have been affected by a separation or divorce, you've gotten a little bit of comfort here.

There's gonna be a class that, that I'm offering later this month on parenting after divorce. I'm gonna talk about some of the trickier challenges like. What do you do when your child refuses to go to the other parent's house or doesn't wanna come to yours, or they say, daddy says you are the reason he had to move out, or they fall apart after drop off, or they don't wanna talk about it so you can get details if you sign up for my newsletter and on my website at susanstiffelman.com.

Wherever you are in this process, and hopefully you're not in the process, but for those of you who are, you're newly separated or you're years down the road, or you're navigating blended families or parenting solo or step parenting, please know this, that it's your love, your steady, imperfect love. It goes so much further than you think.

It's truly what our children need. They need one healthy, secure. Attached. Safe parent who shows up day in and day out as best they can, and when you need to make repair, you make repair, and you come back together again. As always, if you have found this episode valuable, I'd so appreciate it. If you would leave a rating or write a review, it just takes a minute, share the episode with a friend who might benefit.

That would be great. So consider one or two things that you've heard as we wrap up. Something that maybe you've heard a thousand times but it landed a little bit differently. Or maybe you wanna just make a resolution right now to reach out to a friend because you need a little support. You need some propping up.
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That's part of the dance for all parents. So as we close today, just a reminder as always, no matter how busy life gets, look for those moments of sweetness and joy. Stay well, take care, and I'll see you next time.