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Home › Articles › Parenting Strategies › Dealing with Divorce

Dealing with Divorce

3 Steps to Help Your Preteen Cope

By Teri Brown

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  • "Don't expect the court system to solve problems in your post-divorce relationship. Our legal system is explicitly an 'adversarial system.' It forces each side to extreme positions where admitting wrongs, softening one's stance and compromising are seen as harmful to your 'case.' However, while legally appropriate, this approach almost invariably harms preteen (and all) children, forcing them to 'choose sides.' Unless you are concerned about a danger to your child, avoid drawing your relationship battles into court. Mediation is almost always a better option, and simply working it through on your own is the ideal."

    • While much research shows the negative effects of divorce on children, getting divorced does not have to be a recipe for emotional disaster. Dr. Grelling believes that the problem with divorce is that it often triggers a cascade of other changes that pulls the rug out from under preteens.

    Once parents separate, mothers work more, fathers become more distant, the family's standard of living drops and families often move, causing children to change schools, lose old friends and so on and so on," Grelling says. "The real risk here is that children cease to have faith in the stability of anything in their world, and that lack of faith makes the developmentally necessary growth and planning of the upcoming adolescent years far more difficult to achieve."

    Families should attempt to prevent this cascade of changes by maintaining stable living situations, staying involved in their children's lives and by trying to maintain consistency in parenting across households. Though this isn't always possible, striving to maintain stability in other aspects of their lives can help to alleviate the worst consequences of the divorce and give your child a chance to get used to the new family dynamic in a secure environment.

    *Name changed to protect privacy.

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