|
Sunday, 17 August 2008 03:01 |
A recent statistic shows that almost half of all marriages end in divorce. Divorce is difficult for everyone involved, but maybe the hardest on children. Most often they experience many feelings that they do not understand. They go through a range of emotions and need their parents to understand. If you are going through a divorce getting to understand how your children are dealing with it is important.
When parents divorce they often put their children in the center of arguments and a game of emotional tug of war. To avoid this sort of thing parents need to work together. Even though their marriage is over they are still parents together. The child needs to understand many things about the divorce. Parents need to keep in touch with their children and understand the many feelings they may be having. Older children, especially, can go through periods where they act out as a way to cope with the divorce. Many times children feel the divorce is their fault. They may worry about the future and how to deal with other events, like parent’s day at school. Both parents need to show the children that they can work together and not fight. At the same time it is important to let the children know that you are not getting back together. Establishing some sort of family structure is a necessity to help children get back to “normal”.
Children will react different depending on their age. The following list explains a little about each age group and how they react to divorce.
Age 3-5: Regression to a more infantile state, problems sleeping, fear of separation
Age 6-8: Fantasies of parents getting back together, open emotions
Age 8-11: Anger, treat one parent as good the other as bad, take a caregiver role
Age 12-18: Depression, violent actions, judgmental of parents, develop anxiety about own relationships
Learning to help your children cope through divorce is possible the most important step in the divorce process. Children have no choice in the matter and may feel completely left out if their feelings are not recognized.
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
Stephen Kreutzer is a freelance publisher based in Cupertino, California. He publishes articles and reports in various ezines and provides divorce resources at About Divorces!
|
|
|
Monday, 30 June 2008 12:01 |
Angie was brought up by rigid, authoritarian parents who kept her on a tight leash. They rarely considered her feelings about anything, showing a complete lack of empathy and compassion for her feelings and desires. If she came home five minutes late from school or from an activity, she was punished. Yelling and hitting were their favorite forms of punishment.
Angie was a good girl. She did well in school and did what she was told, but was often sad and lonely and never felt important. When she married and had her own children, she knew that she didn’t want to treat her children the way she had been treated. She wanted to consider their feelings and needs. She wanted them to feel valued and important.
Angie was a very loving mother. She spent lots of time with her children, playing with them, listening to them, and giving them much affection and approval. However, because it was so vital to Angie that her children feel valued and important, she often put herself aside and gave in to their demands. Because Angie had never felt important, it was easy to put herself aside. She actually believed that her children’s feelings and needs were more important than hers. As a result, Angie swung the other way from her own upbringing and became a permissive parent.
The consequences for Angie of authoritarian parenting was that she didn’t value herself. The results for her children of permissive parenting was that her children grew up with entitlement issues, thinking they were more important than others, and often not being caring and respectful toward others.
Neither authoritarian nor permissive parenting is loving parenting. Loving parenting is parenting that values both the parents’ and the children’s feelings and needs. Loving parents do not attempt to control their children – other than in actual situations of health and safety - nor do they allow their children to control them. They do not violate their children with anger, blame, or hitting, nor do they allow their children to violate them. They do not expect their children to give themselves for others, nor do they give themselves up for their children.
Loving parents are parents who deeply value themselves enough to not worry about being rejected by their children. They are willing to set solid limits on unacceptable behavior and are not available to being manipulated by their children. Their identities are not tied into their children’s performance in school or in other activities, such as sports. Nor are their identities tied up in how their children look. They are accepting of who their children are as individuals, even when their children are very different from them. They do not impose their way of being onto their children, yet at the same time they solidly reinforce a value system that includes honesty, integrity, caring, compassion, kindness and empathy.
As much as we want to be loving parents, unless we have done our own inner work to heal our own deep fears of rejection and domination, we will automatically be acting out of these fears without being consciously aware of it. If you grew up with fears of rejection and/or domination, you will automatically protect against these fears in your relationships with your children. You may find yourself trying to control them out of a fear of being controlled or rejected by them. You might be controlling with your anger or with your giving in and giving yourself up. Fears of rejection can manifest with children through trying to control them with anger, or through trying to control their love through giving yourself up to them. Fears of domination can manifest through controlling them with anger or violence to avoid being controlled by them. Insecurities can manifest through attempting to get your children to perform in the way you want in order to define your worth.
In one way or another, whatever is unhealed within you will surface in your behavior with your children. Raising healthy children means first healing the wounded child within you – the part of you that has your fears and insecurities, and your desire to protect against rejection and domination.
Our society has swung back and forth between authoritarian and permissive parenting and the result of both is far less than desirable. We have only to look at the number of people taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, as well as the number of alcoholics and drug addicts, as well as the rise of crime and the number of people in prisons, to know that neither method works to raise healthy individuals.
Perhaps it is time to accept that we need to be in the process of healing ourselves before becoming parents.
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?" She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
';
document.write( '' );
document.write( addy_text7497 );
document.write( '<\/a>' );
//-->\n This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
. Phone sessions available.
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
|
Monday, 26 May 2008 06:00 |
More than ever before it has become absolutely crucial for people to pay attention to their surroundings and the people they meet. There are now hundreds of organizations and websites dedicated to the safety and welfare of young children and yet, children are being abducted every single day.
The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics reveals more than one third of America"s children are being raised by one biological parent who very often has a live-in boyfriend or girlfriend, or eventual step-parent. Statistically speaking, children raised in these settings have a forty percent greater chance of being abused than children living with both biological parents. Always scrutinize people before allowing them access to your child! If you are considering a live-in housemate of any kind, you may benefit from the information available from WhoisHe.Com or WhoisShe.Com before they move in.
Conscientious and caring parents can benefit from programs that take DNA samplings, and fingerprints of their children to keep on file in case they are ever needed to help find or identify their youngster. All parents are busy parents, yet they need to MAKE the time to plan ahead to safeguard the children who depend on them.
One of the best ways to protect children is to take regular photographs of them as they grow. This information can then be provided quickly if ever it becomes necessary to issue an "Amber alert", or any other search for a missing child.
Though we live in a very busy world we ought to train ourselves and our families to pay attention to details so they can be remembered and reported if needed. Consider the events surrounding the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart who was forcibly taken from her bed in the middle of the night. Her sister, who slept in the same room, was so terrified it took hours before she could wake her parents and tell them. Elizabeth was missing for nine months. Her little sister"s traumatic experience of an intruder awakening and abducting her sister delayed her ability to realize that she could identify the kidnapper. When she finally was able to recall the name and description of the person who took Elizabeth, the entire family was horrified to learn he was someone they had innocently brought into the home as a day laborer. Their compassion for a stranger cost them nine months of their beloved daughter"s life.
Still, the Smarts were among the very few fortunate families to reunite with a stolen child after such an extended amount of time. Sadly, statistics of children taken by strangers show that being gone for as little as three hours severely diminishes the chance they will be seen alive again. The Smart family strongly supports a nationwide "Amber alert" to help find missing children quickly. If they had required background searches on people who worked in their home, they would have discovered criminal records on not one, but TWO of those they hired! Just asking questions is not enough when you realize that a USA Today article states fully sixty percent of people lie about who they are! The loving Smart family would never have jeopardized their children. Instead they were being kind in an attempt to help strangers who very nearly destroyed the Smart family"s happiness.
Sometimes children disappear when taken by some relative or family "friend" who may or may not intend to harm them. The White House issued a grim press release in August of 2002, stating that that each year. "More than 58,000 children are abducted by non-family members" and "Many of these children are returned home quickly, but some are not." There are heartbreaking horror stories of children abducted and murdered, seemingly by random, at the hands of strangers. Yet too many times children are abducted, molested, or killed by a neighbor or someone else known to the child or the family. These are agonizing betrayals since children may so easily be lured by a predator they know and might even like. Consider the case of little Danielle Van Dam whose neighbor, David Westerfield, was convicted of kidnapping and killing this trusting child who knew him from her own, supposedly "safe", neighborhood!
We cannot wrap our children in a bubble of absolute protection and still allow them the freedom to grow and explore life. We can, however, commit our parenting skills to prevention, assuring our children and ourselves that we are doing everything we can to keep them safe. Certainly we can keep an up-to-date file folder on each of our children with all of the personal information that would be necessary to identify them. We can, and must, carefully consider all people we allow to have contact with our children. There have been far too many cases of children molested, abused, kidnapped or killed by a boyfriend of the mother. Perhaps along with child support payments from non-custodial parents, we might start a trend toward using background checks when either custodial parent allows a boyfriend or girlfriend to share a dwelling with their child.
Statistics show the standard of living after divorce often decreases, especially for women who become head of the household. It is not surprising then that a mother who is struggling financially might be tempted to rush into a live-in arrangement with someone to help with the responsibilities. Many times predators look for just these types of situations.
Seldom, however, do these single parents stop to think that they may be putting their child in harm"s way under their own roof! Situations like this beg for background checks before handing over the house key, and the safety and well being of an innocent child.
Children depend on the parents who are there to love them and tend to their needs. Background checks through organizations such as WhoisHe.Com and WhoisShe.Com are an affordable way to learn the history of the person you are expecting your child to allow close to them. You are your children"s first line of defense. Don"t let them down!
About the Author
LINDA J ALEXANDER, ESQ is an attorney and the President of WhoisHe.Com / WhoisShe.Com. WhoisHe.Com and WhoisShe.Com provides comprehensive background, criminal and civil record checks for employment screening, prospective mates, business partners, nanny checks, in-home service providers, Nanny Checks, future step-parents since 1997. She can be reached at 760-806-4377 or at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
|
|
