DIVORCING WELL

A 'good divorce' can minimize negative impact on children: author Sarah Armstrong

While divorce can be hard on children, there are ways to minimize its negative impact on yours.

On a recent episode of the Divorcing Well podcast, Leanne Townsend spoke with Sarah Armstrong, the author of The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce: What to Think Through When Children are Involved, about why a good divorce is a worthwhile goal.

Armstrong says that a good divorce is when a couple puts their feelings about each other aside and focuses on doing what’s best for their children.

To remove the toxicity, she suggests taking control of your reactions and the choices you make when your kids are around. Reacting to your ex-spouse can affect your children, so using your internal strength to compartmentalize emotions and not lashing out is part of what makes a divorce “good.”

Plus, minimizing the changes for children helps mitigate the negative divorce impact. For example, rather than having the child lug their belongings back and forth between homes, keeping all of the children's essentials at each parent's home can make things easier for them and prevent the constant visual reminder that they are a child of divorce.

Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.

Finding the hidden gift in divorce: one woman's journey to freedom and purpose

Everything happens for a reason, even if it doesn’t feel that way in the moment.

Simona Ksoll discovered that after she and her husband of 15 years split up.

In a recent guest blog for Townsend Family Law, Ksoll shares that she was living in the U.S. and working as a Hollywood executive at the time. Alone and lonely, she thought about returning home to Austria but says pride saved her from making a mistake.

After the divorce was finalized, Ksoll worked on healing. She took a sabbatical, started practising meditation, travelled and finally found freedom.

“I came to see that he had the courage to leave a marriage that was unfulfilling to both of us because we had grown apart. He liberated me so that my path could open before me,” she writes. “But everything happens FOR us.”

Reclaim your parenting journey: the rise of parallel parenting for coparenting with a toxic ex

When coparenting with your ex-spouse feels like it’s not working out, changes and solutions are needed to be the best parents your child needs.

The foundation of successful co-parenting is communication and collaboration, but unfortunately, a toxic or abusive relationship history between parents can make that difficult. 

The solution, according to an article by DivorceMag.com, is an approach called “parallel parenting,” which is a complete departure from co-parenting that aims to prevent conflict between parents. This means there’s minimal communication between the parties, and each can exercise their own unique parenting style, except for when it comes to addressing the child’s health.

The benefits of parallel parenting include reducing stress for the parents and children, allowing the child to develop relationships with each parent regardless of conflict and allowing each parent time almost fully apart to heal from the split.