by Angella Gailey

Created on: September 01, 2010

There are many things you can do to put your children first during a divorce, and it is important that you do.  A child will adjust better and have fewer complications as they grow up if you put aside your anger and your unimportant demands for them.  This does not mean that you have to let your ex walk all over you though.

When your ex first tells you that they want to leave, you will probably want to pull your hair out and through a full on temper tantrum.  Hearing that someone doesn’t love you anymore is the last thing anyone wants and can affect you in any number of ways.  It is all right to do this, but not in front of your kids.  Even when your kids are older, they do not know how to handle a parent who looses it in front of them.  You need to find a private place to do this.  If you are the custodial parent, you may need to find someone to watch your kids for a few hours, or over night, if needed.  If you are the noncustodial parent, this should be easy to do, but make sure you can watch your kids without loosing it before you take them. 

If you are the one who left, you may want to put your hatred, or simple dislike, ahead of your children.  No matter how upset your ex makes you, don’t let that affect how you treat your children.  Even when your ex is at their most annoying, always think about how your actions affect your children.

When it comes down to the actual divorce, you don’t have to let your ex walk all over you, but try to keep the fighting down to a minimum and do it all away from your children.  If there is something you absolutely have to have, put up a fight, if it is something you can live without or you can replace easily (i.e. a TV, video games and equipment, or movies) it is not worth it.  Another important thing, do not hold on to things just to get back at your ex.  You are never going to use his baseball card collection and he will never need your shoes or read your books, but these are things that might be used to get back at a person.  Someone has to put on their big kid pants and learn to say when enough is enough. 

Anything that involves your children is NOT a bargaining tool.  A lot of times a non-custodial parent will try to fight over child support or threaten everything from taking custody of the kids to forcing joint custody just to show that they don’t have to pay child support.  If you find yourself being one

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