Parental conflict can be damaging for your children’s psyche’s and emotional development. Even babies exhibit symptoms of distress — such as sadness, anxiety, anger and fear — when their parents are arguing. Older children may develop patterns of delinquency and various emotional and behavioral challenges as a result of parent fighting. Due to these risks, single Tennessee parents may want to diffuse any kind of parental conflict either before or as soon as it arises.
Here’s how to diffuse parental conflict:
- Swallow your pride and turn off your “argument mode” as soon as you find it raising its ugly head. Present a united front with your children at all times and show them that you and the other parent are working as a team.
- Do not blame the other parent or criticize him or her in front of the kids. If you need to vent about your ex, do it to your to your therapist or a very good friend. When you show respect to your spouse, you help your children feel safe and emotionally secure. Seeing you and your ex talk in a calm way will be experienced positively by your children.
- If you’re currently in difficult conflict, resolve it with your ex when your children are not watching.
- For high-conflict exes, a monitored child custody exchange could be easier on your children. Monitored exchanges allow exes to exchange their children without the other ex present. The children are dropped off at a location that has professional staff. Ten or 15 minutes later, the other parent arrives to collect the children.
These four strategies are great for keeping parental conflict at a minimum. Also, the way you handle your divorce proceedings can assist peaceful relations with your spouse in the years to come. As such, you and your divorce lawyer may want to work together on methods for achieving a diplomatic split.
Source: CustodyXChange, “Dealing with Parental Conflict,” accessed Aug. 11, 2017
