Growing Up With Divorce: Helping Your Child Avoid Immediate And Later Emotional Problems

In the 1990s, 40 percent of all children growing up in America will experience the often devastating impact of a parental divorce. Now, here are reassuring practical strategies for dealing with your children's varied emotional responses to the event. Using extensive examples drawn from his own clinical experience and research, Dr. Neil Kalter describes the three universal stages of divorce, and how each stage affects children in various age groups--from infancy through adolescence. Inside, Dr. Kalter gives expert advice on how to:
, Recognize the signs of emotional distress before it gets out of hand
, Minimize your children's stress during a wide variety of potentially "explosive" situations--from joint custody to dating
, Pinpoint and mitigate the private fears that cause your children's "acting out" at home, in school, or with friends
, Communicate effectively with your child using a variety of indirect and non-threatening techniques
Written with insight, intelligence, and compassion, Growing Up with Divorce is an indispensable resource for all parents going through a divorce and the professionals who counsel them.

THE CLASSIC WORK ON HELPING CHILDREN OVERCOME

THE TRAUMA OF DIVORCE

For many years, Growing Up With Divorce has offered divorced parents transformative insight, solace, and practical guidance on how to help their children cope with the stresses caused by marital separation.

Every child is unique, yet there are certain common reactions to the stresses of divorce -- anger, a sense of divided loyalties, lasting intimacy issues. Dr. Neil Kalter explains that, for children, divorce is not a single event but is comprised of "a series of events that occur over many years." Identifying three stages of divorce, Dr. Kalter cites the particular struggles associated with each stage and explains how gender as well as cognitive, emotional, and social development also affect how children react.

Dispensing sage advice on everything from understanding and minimizing the anxieties that underlie various troublesome behaviors to smoothing out your child's transitions between her two households to incorporating a new spouse into your family, Dr. Kalter gives parents and the professionals who treat divorced families an indispensable guide to navigating the difficulties of divorce.