We eventually grew apart and often did not see eye to eye. We were constantly arguing and couldn’t seem to agree on anything. We believed that it wold be much better for our kids if we ended the marriage and lived separately.

Our 11 year old son Jacob was very hurt by our decision. We talked to him about the situation in terms that we thought he would have been able to understand. Once he knew that I was moving out I could see the hurt and resentment in his eyes. He thought I was leaving him, not his mom.The grief that came with the realization that our marriage was over was very hard to watch. Jacob was embarrassed to talk about our divorce with his friends and felt like he was alone.

[pullquote]Although we knew that we could no longer live together, we also knew it was going to be a very difficult time in our lives. What we didn’t realize was the impact that it would have on our children. It took several months before Jacob stopped thinking that I had left him. Constant communication was the key for us. We both talked to Jacob about why we really did not live together any longer and constantly told him that we both  loved him just as much now as we did before the divorce.[/pullquote]

I did all I could to keep the communication lines open between us though. I put in extra hours at work so I could make special trips to see the kids on weekends. I spent time with them all one on one and told them every day how much I loved them. While reassurance from Jacob’s mother and I was great, what made the biggest positive impact on him came when he finally able to open up to his close friends.

It was then that he discovered that he was not alone. Many of his friend’s parents had gotten divorced, and some of them even remarried. Others lived in homes where their parents fought daily and they wished their parents would find a way to work through it or end it as we had done.

Unfortunately, divorce is not something that is unheard of. Once he realized that it was possible to have fun and live life to the fullest even if we were not married, it got easier for him. It did take some work but the love that a parent has for their child can help heal the hurts and bring a smile back to their face.

We tried married counseling but came to a mutual agreement that divorce was the best option for us. It sounds pretty simple when you read it but our daughter Sarah had a really hard time understanding what was going on and why it had to happen.

She was always active in her school drama club and had a few close friends that she talked to on a regular basis. Her world was really disrupted when we told them about the divorce.

[pullquote]Our divorce has forced us all to change in many ways. Our oldest daughter now has more chores around the house to help out her mother who now works full time to support herself as a single mom. At one point she was feeling so overwhelmed she sent me a message that she didn’t want to live there any more.  We chatted back and forth for quite some time. I told Sarah that I would speak to her mother about what we could do to help her. With a little effort it all worked out in the end.[/pullquote] When I moved out and into my apartment, which is two hours away from Sarah and her brothers, she felt as if I had abandoned her.

I wanted to her to see that I really wanted to be a part of her life still so I had her teach me to use the computer. She taught me to pay bills online and how to chat and send messages. We talk a lot on the computer because I cannot be there every day to hear about her life and what is going on. As we talked I realized that she had some other feelings that I had never thought of.

Sarah felt like she suddenly had to be the other parent, or the adult, since she only had her mom living with her then. She felt like she had to care for her younger brother and pick up extra chores around the house. It was a really unfair situation that she was put in. I spoke with her mom and we worked out a plan that would allow her to have a little more freedom with her friends and time away from the house. This really seemed to help as she felt like she could be a kid still, and that was very important.

Sarah was the typical 13 year old girl before the divorce. She had her close friends that she shared laughs and secrets with and loved to take part in the drama club at school. She loved visiting the mall and checking out the new fashion trends as she was very fashion forward. All of that was great and then the divorce happened.

Our vibrant Sarah suddenly turned into an angry and scared little girl. She seemed to have lost her excitement for life and was in a state that was very close to depression. Amy and I had to do something to help her out. We began attending family counseling sessions with Sarah and her siblings. This is where we found out that Sarah was feeling guilty about our divorce.

[pullquote]It was our children that were affected the most by our divorce and it impacted them all differently. Sarah blamed herself and thought that if she would have been a better person, we would still be together. At that moment we knew that we were going to have many difficult months ahead. Over time and with a lot of talking and reassuring, our children have adapted very well to the divorce and have returned to their old habits and routines.[/pullquote]

She had somehow gotten the idea that she was responsible for our fall outs. She thought that if she had been better in school or had helped out more at home then we would not have gotten a divorce. It was then that I realized that my little girl loved us and really wanted to change the outcome so that we could be a family again.

It was important for us to talk to her and let her know that while her mother and I did once love each other that we have both decided that it was best end the marriage. Amy and I spent a great deal of time with her one on one, just walking and talking or simply holding her while she cried. Once we were able to show her that we were not going away and that we would be a part of her life forever we started seeing signs of the old Sarah. The fun loving and carefree girl that was once there had reappeared.

Soon after the divorce I moved to a small apartment about two hours from where my ex and the kids live. I was at my mom’s house taking care of her lawn when I got a call from my ex wife. Matthew had gotten sent home from school again because he was sick to his stomach and had a headache. This had become a very frequent occurrence and Amy and I were getting very worried. It was time to get him to the doctor.

After meeting with the pediatrician on a couple different occasions we had finally decided to take a different route. The pediatrician could only say that he was not sick and to give him over the counter headache medicine and some stomach medicine. [pullquote]There have been many times that I have felt physically ill since talk of the divorce began. I never thought that our children would experience similar problems. It took our 8 year old son several months to get over his physical illnesses caused by the stress of our divorce.[/pullquote]We turned our concerns over to a local counselor. After the first meeting we were told that our son Matt was having these side effects due to the stress of our divorce.

That hurt us to hear. We were both committed to raising well adjusted kids and we had to do all that we could to get him through this. We found activities that he loved to do, like soccer to get his mind off of the changes that were all around him. We had family members take him out for ice cream just to talk about it all with him.

Probably the most important thing we did for our son was to hold him and tell him how much we both love him. We had to support his feelings and let him know that life could still be good even though we didn’t live together any longer. It was well worth the effort as Matt has finally accepted the change and taken his life back from the sadness.

Jacob has always been an average student. He plays football for his school and does a really good job at it. When the divorce was final and when I moved two hours away from his mother, his brother and his sister, he was left feeling alone and forgotten. He was very angry at me and felt like I had abandoned him. He needed his dad to be there and I understood that completely.

[pullquote]All of our children have struggled with their emotions since our divorce. Our oldest daughter has become afraid of relationships while our youngest son went through a period where he was bullying other kids at school. At the moment it is Jacob who is struggling the most. He is so angry with the situation that he often just yells out at his siblings or his mother and I. It’s sad that our divorce has impacted our children so deeply…..I wish there was more that weI could do besides just talking to them. [/pullquote]

It was a struggle getting him to understand that his mother and I loved him dearly and that we would move the earth for him if we needed to. I have never allowed my children to be disrespectful to any adult, including their mother or myself so when he had his fits of anger I had to remember that he was working through a difficult time in his life.

While I did let him blow off steam, I also reminded him that I loved him and that I did not raise a hot headed brat. I explained to him that his anger was not helping him and it was hurting those he loved. We spent a lot of time talking on my weekend visits as well as on the phone and on the internet (thanks to my kids for teaching me so much about it). We hugged, cried, laughed, and sometimes just sat quietly.

When I signed us up for a father son two on one basketball program that met every weekend he was surprised and I could see the love return to his face. This was our special time every weekend to bond as father and son and to maintain the love that we have for each other. It brought us closer and helped us through the toughest time yet to come in his life.

She went through a long period of thumb sucking which she hasn’t done since she was about her brother Andrew’s age, who is now two, and she also began wetting the bed again. I knew I had to do something fast before these behaviors became too ingrained. What my daughter needed was reassurance that she was going to be all right…that we were going to be all right as a family.

I called a psychologist friend of mine who deals with children on a daily basis and has seen all kinds of behaviors in children after divorce. [pullquote]I wanted so bad to help ease our children s pain that I ended up starting to act like more of a friend than a parent. I was so hung up on my own guilt that I started to let the children make their own rules around the house. I thought that I was doing them a favor by not imposing the old sets of rules. Boy was I wrong. I soon realized that this was doing more harm than good so I sat them all down and explained that I had made a mistake and that we were going to be going back to our previous routines with the house rules that used to exist before our divorce. It wasn’t easy, but with a little time and effort we were all back in the groove and getting along much better as a result.[/pullquote]

She told me that what Olivia needs most is to feel as though life and her daily routines will be the same as they were before our divorce. She also suggested that we need to reassure her that our divorce and the fact that her father is living somewhere else, doesn’t mean that life as she knew it had ended. It was good advice but, it did take some doing. While it was fairly easy to maintain the schedules the children were used to with school, I was having difficulty maintaining discipline at meals, playtime and bedtime.

My own feelings of guilt over failing at my marriage urged me to act like more of a friend to Olivia rather than a parent. However, I was her mom and thanks to the advice of my friend, I began to realize that the best thing for her was to be the same mom now that I was before the divorce. That meant making her eat her vegetables and refusing to allow her extra television time or going to bed whenever she wanted to. I thought she would hate me but, to my surprise she seemed to relax more. She quit wetting the bed within a month and the thumb sucking slowed and ended in a few months time as well.

Thanks to some good advice and some sustained effort on my part, Olivia is now acting her age again and once again feeling secure and happy.

After spending considerable time talking with him, I discovered that he was struggling with an important decision. He thought that he needed to decide which side he was on, his mothers or mine. He was also very angry at me for moving out and just as angry at his mom because she let me go. Even though I could understand why he was angry, confused and hurt, the bullying had to stop.

[pullquote]Much to my surprise, the hardest part about getting divorced was dealing with how our children have reacted to it. We both thought that they would simply carry on the way they had while we were still together. Were we ever wrong! Matthew went from being a happy and pleasant team player to being a bully. Fortunately Amy and I were able to put our differences aside and agreed to work together with Matthew and a divorce counselor to deal with the problem. It wasn’t easy and it took some time, but Matthew has returned to his old self.[/pullquote]

I spent some time doing research online (thanks to my kids for teaching me how to search for information on Google) and found a lot of good information. The one thing that was most frequently recommended was to enlist the help of a counselor. Amy and I agreed that the problem was serious enough that we needed to do whatever we could to turn Matt around.

We asked around and were able to find a local divorce counselor that could meet with Matt, his mother and I a couple times a month. We spent hours as a group discussing the divorce and our children (mostly Matthew of course). Matt also spent considerable time one on one with the counselor discussing how he felt without the pressures of us being there hearing what he had to say.

Turns out he was feeling lost and insecure. He felt that if his mother and I made the choice not to be together, that he also had to make a choice of who he wanted to be with.

We started by reassuring him that we both still loved him and always would no matter what. We explained to him that just because Amy and I no longer loved each other, it didn’t mean we loved him any less. Over the next few months Amy and I would each plan special outings with Matt so that we could each spend time alone with him just talking or having fun together.

After several sessions with the counselor and many long discussions with him about how much we both love him, he finally began to come around. He soon started to resemble his former self. He was back playing with other kids again and was accepting the fact that things had changed and that he would have to change along with them.

It was a long and painful process but in the end our relationship with our son became stronger, Matt is no longer bullying other children and he understands that we both still love him even though we are divorced.

Our life became really difficult quite some time before the divorce. We tried counseling but it just made Amy and I realize that we were better off apart. That didn’t mean that we were leaving the love that we shared for our children though.

My middle child, Jacob, is eleven years old. He took the divorce very hard. We tried to explain the situation to him as best we could as we did with all 3 children. They all reacted differently to the news and are all handling it in their own individual ways.

As for Jacob, he has become distracted and withdrawn. It is to the point that we got a call from his teacher the other day who told us that his grades have began to suffer and they are threatening to suspend him from the football team unless his grades improve. You have to do well academically in order to remain on the team.

I have promised to play an active part in his life but I now live two hours away from him and his brother and sister. I am also forced to work all the extra hours that I can since I have more of a financial responsibility now that we are divorced. Having said that, my children are the most important part of my life and I do my very best to be as involved as I can in their upbringing.

[pullquote]Neither Amy or I ever thought that our decision to get a divorce would impact our children so greatly or so dramatically. We thought “they’re kids….what could they possibly have to worry about? They are still loved and cared for. They still live in the same house, go to the same school and have their same events and routines.” How wrong we both were. The reality is that they have all had problems since our divorce. [/pullquote]

With Jacob’s grades falling and the threat of him not being able to play his favorite sport, I decided that I needed to make a few special trips to see Jacob and to spend some quality one on one time with him. We talked at length about the importance of an education and of his dream of being a professional football player. I explained that the divorce was not his fault and that his mother and I both still loved him very much. I told him that we were proud of him and that we knew he could do better in school if he would just let go of his anger towards our divorce.

I enlisted the help of his grandparents, aunts and uncles too. They made sure he was talking through his feelings and that he understood that just because his mother and I are no longer married does not mean that we love him or his siblings any less.

The more we got him to talk and open up about his feelings, the less angry he became. He started to realize that even thought I was not living in the same house with him any more, that his life could still be “almost” the same as it was before Amy and I got divorced. Within a short while his anger diminished and he began to focus more. With that his grades also started to improve. He has also been able to stay on the football team and has started to adjust to the changes in his life.

I am totally convinced that it was our efforts at communication that helped get him through the problem.

The downfall of our marriage caused Sarah to begin to worry about her future. She became very cautious about getting close to anyone and said that she was afraid of getting involved in any relationships. She even said that she would never get married.

Amy and I knew that it was our jobs as parents to help her get her through these fears. We needed to help her understand that just because her mother and I did not stay together, it didn’t mean that we didn’t love and cherish each other very much while we were married. And it certainly did not mean that our daughters relationships would fail. We knew it would not easy at this point, but…… we knew that we had to help Sarah realize that even though friendships and relationships do not always last forever, they are an important, and necessary part of every persons life.

Both Amy and I took every opportunity to talk to Sarah about relationships. During meal time, on our walks in the park or while driving her to her drama club, we always tried to figure out ways to include some discussion around the importance of having healthy relationships. We told here that just because we would not be married any more it did not mean that we loved her or her brothers any less.

[pullquote]I’m having difficulties with my teenage daughter who now says that she is afraid to ever get married. How do I convince her that relationships and marriage are important when I could not hold my own marriage together in the end? I decided that the best way was to be open and honest with her and to discuss the matter frequently and openly at every opportunity.[/pullquote]

We did our best to convince her that her mother and I had a healthy relationship at one time. This was the hardest part…..explaining to her the importance of a relationship while at the same time we were ending ours. We simply told her the truth……no matter how hard you want something to work out, sometimes things just don’t. Nothing in life is certain.

It was important to us that she be able to engage in a meaningful relationship in the future and not be scared by the fact that her mother and I got divorced. Amy and I decided that we needed to demonstrate to Sarah that even though we were divorced, we could still have a healthy relationship as parents. We knew that in order to do this, we would have to keep our differences to ourselves in front of the children. It was pretty difficult in the beginning to keep the peace and “make nice” in front of the kids but we had to in order to help them deal with the divorce.

While I no longer live in the same town as Sarah and her mother, I make a point of keeping in frequent contact with Sarah. I call her on her cell phone every couple of days and she has taught me how to use the computer to send messages back and forth to each other. I need her to know that I love her and that I will always be there for her.

It took us several months of communication and discussions but Sarah is finally starting to feel more relaxed and open to the idea of having relationships in her future.

While Olivia still doesn’t understand exactly what divorce is, she did notice some of the tension between my now ex-husband and I in the weeks before the separation.

When Mark left, I tried to spend more one on one time with the children and made special time just for Olivia and I because she seemed to becoming quite withdrawn.

Then one day I got a call from her kindergarten teacher. I had to immediately leave work and pick her up from preschool because she had kicked another child. I could tell by the look on her face that she thought she was in big trouble.

Instead of scolding her I took her to the park and bought her an ice cream cone. As we sat on the bench eating it, I asked her if I could tell her a secret. She nodded yes and seemed really surprised when I told her that sometimes I felt so angry that I felt like kicking someone too.

[pullquote]It’s not fair!! I hate that our our divorce has caused pain and emotional problems for our children. It’s not their fault. I used to believe that we did everything we could to avoid a divorce. I now wonder if we should have done more and stayed together no matter what, for the sake of our children…….[/pullquote]

I then went on to explain to her that usually the person I felt like kicking was not the person I was really mad at. She then told me she really hadn’t been mad at Tommy either and then the flood gates opened and she poured out all her fears, anger and confusion over the divorce.

We both cried and then we talked about everything. I assured her that what she was feeling was normal and that whenever she felt that way she could come and talk to me about it. That really seemed to help.

Things didn’t get better overnight but, they did improve and now Olivia seems much happier and well adjusted knowing she can talk about all those things she feels.