Tweet

Check these 7 most comprehensive resources to help parents understand what children are experiencing as a result of divorce and learn how to continue parenting effectively with love and guidance, with or without the cooperation of your ex-spouse.

Helping Your Kids Cope with Divorce the Sandcastles Way

Divorce is painful and confusing. Perhaps now more than ever, you want to give your child all the love, support, and guidance he or she needs, but everything seems harder and more complicated. Helping Your Kids Cope with Divorce the Sandcastles Way can help. Based on Gary Neuman’s phenomenally successful Sandcastles program, which has helped more than fifty thousand children cope with divorce, this warm, empathetic guide shows you:

• How to build a co-parenting relationship–even when you think you can’t
• When you or your child should see a therapist
• Age-appropriate scripts for addressing sensitive issues
• What to do when a parent moves away
• How to stop fighting with your ex-spouse
• How to navigate the emotional turmoil of custody and visitation
• How to help your child deal with change
• How to cope with kids’ common fears about separation
• How to introduce significant others into the family and help your child cope with a new stepfamily

More than a hundred pieces of artwork from children of divorce will help you appreciate how kids perceive the experience. Dozens of special activities and fun exercises will help you communicate and get closer to your child. This guide shows you that divorce need not be an inevitable blot on children’s lives, but an opportunity for them to grow and strengthen the bonds with their parents.

Putting Children First: Proven Parenting Strategies for Helping Children Thrive Through Divorce

The breakup of a family can have an enduring impact on children. But as Dr. JoAnne Pedro-Carroll explains with clarity and compassion in this powerful book, parents can positively alter the immediate and long-term effects of divorce on their children. The key is proven, emotionally intelligent parenting strategies that promote children’s emotional health, resilience, and ability to lead satisfying lives.

Over the past three decades, Pedro-Carroll has worked with families in transition, conducted research, and developed and directed award- winning, court-endorsed programs that have helped thousands of families navigate divorce and its aftermath. Now she shares practical, research- based advice that helps parents:

• gain a deeper understanding of what their children are experiencing
• develop emotionally intelligent parenting strategies with the critical combination of boundless love and appropriate limits on behavior
• reduce conflict with a former spouse and protect children from conflict’s damaging effects
• learn what recent brain research reveals about stress and children’s developing capabilities

Filled with the voices and drawings of children and the stories of families, Putting Children First delivers a positive vision for a future of hope and healing.

The Co-Parents’ Handbook: Raising Well-Adjusted, Resilient, and Resourceful Kids in a Two-Home Family from Little Ones to Young Adults

When it comes to a child’s sense of family, what divorce breaks apart, solid co-parenting rebuilds. With a tested “here’s how” approach, The Co-Parents’ Handbook helps parents confidently take on the challenges of raising children in two homes.

Addressing parents’ questions about the emotional impact of separation, conflict, grief and recovery, the authors skillfully provide a road map for all members of the family to safely navigate through separation/divorce and beyond. Parents discover through practical guidance how to move from angry/hurt partners to constructive, successful co-parents.

The pages are chock-full of helpful strategies to resolve day-to-day issues in an easy-to use format.This book is here to answer questions, help parents co-parent and ensure kids thrive! We will show you ways to:

“When Your Parents Divorce” a kid-to-kid guide to dealing with divorce

Divorce can be a traumatic experience for children, but parents can do a lot to ease the stresses associated with this life transition. This book is an effective tool that parents can use to help children with questions and concerns that arise. The story line is engaging and defines terminology in a way that is easy to comprehend for children to better understand the process of divorce. Through interactive and reflective journaling exercises children can express their thoughts and emotions, and parents can keep communication with children on track with their responses to different issues as they come up. The story line is written from the perspective of a child and her siblings experiencing a divorce, which helps the readers identify with similar thoughts and feelings. Bibliotherapy (using books to assist in problem solving relevant to the therapeutic process) is a valuable intervention for helping children cope with divorce and can provide structured communication between caregivers and children. This book for is a valuable resource for  families, therapists, school personnel, and other professionals who work with children and are looking for a tool to help children understand and ease the stress that comes with divorce. A great book for kids learning how to deal with a divorce.

The Truth About Children and Divorce: Dealing with the Emotions So You and Your Children Can Thrive

Nationally recognized expert Robert Emery applies his twenty-five years of experience as a researcher, therapist, and mediator to offer parents a new road map to divorce. Dr. Emery shows how our powerful emotions and the way we handle them shape how we divorce—and whether our children suffer or thrive in the long run. His message is hopeful, yet realistic—divorce is invariably painful, but parents can help promote their children’s resilience. With compassion and authority, Dr. Emery explains:

• Why it is so hard to really make divorce work
• How anger and fighting can keep people from really separating
• Why legal matters should be one of the last tasks
• Why parental love—and limit setting—can be the best “therapy” for kids
• How to talk to children, create workable parenting schedules, and more

Divorce Poison New and Updated Edition: How to Protect Your Family from Bad-mouthing and Brainwashing

Your ex-spouse is bad mouthing you to your children, constantly portraying you in a negative light, perhaps even trying to turn them against you. If you handle the situation ineffectively, your relationship with your children could suffer. You could lose their respect, lose their affections-even, in extreme cases, lose all contact with them. The conventional advice is to do nothing, that fighting fire with fire will only result in greater injury to the children. But after years of consulting parents who heeded such advice with no success, Dr. Richard Warshak is convinced that this approach is wrong. It doesn’t work, and parents are left feeling helpless and hopeless. DIVORCE POISON instead offers a blueprint for effective response. In it, you will learn how to distinguish different types of criticism, how and why parents manipulate their children, how to detect these maneuvers, and how these practices damage children. Most importantly, you’ll discover powerful strategies to preserve and rebuild loving relationships with your children.

DIVORCE POISON is a time-tested work that gives parents powerful strategies to preserve and rebuild loving relationships with their children-and provides practical advice from legal and mental-health professionals to help their clients and safeguard the welfare of children. Whether they are perpetrators of divorce poison, victims of it, or both, parents who heed Dr. Warshak’s advice will enable their children to maintain love and respect for their parents-even if their parents no longer love and respect each other.

Co-parenting with a Toxic Ex: What to Do When Your Ex-Spouse Tries to Turn the Kids Against You

There’s no question about it: your children are the most important thing in your life. But if you have gone through a messy divorce, your relationship with your children may become strained if you have to deal with a toxic ex. Your ex may bad-mouth you in front of the kids, accuse you of being a bad parent, and even attempt to replace you in the children’s lives with a new partner. As a result, your children may become confused, conflicted, angry, anxious, or depressed—and you may feel powerless.

In Co-parenting with a Toxic Ex, a nationally recognized parenting expert offers you a positive parenting approach to dealing with a hostile ex-spouse. You’ll learn to avoid the most common mistakes of coparenting, how to avoid “parental alienation syndrome,” and effective techniques for talking to your children in a way that fosters open and honest response. In addition, you’ll learn how to protect your children from painful loyalty conflicts between you and your ex-spouse.

Divorce is often painful, especially if your ex habitually tries to undermine your relationship with your children. But with the right tools you can protect your kids and make your relationship with them stronger than ever. This book can show you how.

You can find out more about this book and about author Amy J.L. Baker at www.amyjlbaker.com.