An interesting article on the importance of growingly popular courses now offered to couples who file for divorce and have minor children at home. Courses such as these help educate the couple in the hopes of avoiding divorce or at least learning to help deal with the affects of divorce on the child. Classes, books and games such as Earthquake in Zipland can help ease the feelings of loss for the child of divorce and help him or her cope with the transition in their lives.

By Ashley Sanchez
The majority of Americans hope to get married …

By STEPHANIE OBLEY 

A new therapeutic tool for helping children deal with divorce may appeal to kids in a way nothing else will – as a computer video game. Earthquake in Zipland debuted last year and is a quest-style game that follows the struggles of Moose, the son of the King and Queen of Zipland, a small paradise island held together by a zipper. An earthquake rips the island in two, leaving the king and queen on separate islands, and Moose sets out to build a new zipper to bring the islands – and his parents – …

When a new study comes out showing that Ritalin use doubles in children of divorce, it is easy to assume the very public perception that divorce is always bad for kids. But is it really that simple?
Below, Professor Lisa Strohschein asks the following question: ‘Is it possible that divorce acts as a stressful life event that creates adjustment problems for children, which might increase acting out behavior, leading to a prescription for Ritalin?’
Or as this blogger puts it so well:
People often use psychiatric diagnoses as if they’re explanations when really they’re nothing more than descriptions. …

By Linda Freedman, PHD
Let’s take the case of Ellie. (all names, all ages, all identifyers are made up in this post).
She’s 9. Her parents divorced when she was 6 because they argued about everything and occasionally couldn’t control themselves, pushed and shoved too much. Her father grabbed her mother’s mother and bruised her badly in the final event that ended the marriage.
But Ellie thought all along (as I’ve said in other posts on parenting and divorce) that it was her fault that her parents divorced. Many of their arguments, and she heard SO many, centered …

Photo courtesy of Angries Out
A psychologist who has dealt with the pain of many children whose parents act irrationally during divorce tells it like it is!
Lynne Namka, Ed. D. © 2000
It is tough to be a child of divorced parents. It is absolutely terrifying to be the child of divorced parents who are at war with each other! Divorce hurts. It is a terrible thing to have happen to a family. Everyone gets hurt, but children remain scarred for years when parents continue the war. Research shows that negative behaviors from parents act after a …

Divorced parents often have very different perspectives about what their children want or need.
A short time ago two parents in my court were debating whether their 5-year-old son should fly unescorted between Phoenix and Albuquerque for visitation. The mother said, “He hates to fly.” The father said, “He loves to fly.” I said, “Are you talking about the same little boy?”
When I asked the mother what made her think her son hated flying she said, “Because he told me so.” The father noted that’s how he too had got his information. The child had told …