Tender Talks: Guiding Children Through Divorce With Dr. David Marcus, PhD

In this episode, we dive into effective strategies for communicating with young children (ages 3-7) during a divorce. We discuss how crucial it is to help children develop their emotional language, allowing them to articulate their feelings. By guiding them to use their words, parents can be a soothing presence, helping their children process emotions rather than suppressing them.

We also explore the challenging behaviors that can emerge when young children lack a safe space to express their feelings. These behaviors may include regression, sibling conflicts, or even taking on a caretaking role towards a parent. Understanding these signs can help parents respond with empathy and create a nurturing environment for their children.

Lastly, we emphasize the importance of self-care for parents. By taking care of themselves, parents can ensure they are emotionally available and better equipped to support their young children through this difficult time.

Dr. David S. Marcus, Ph.D., is a leading expert in child psychology with a focus on how children cope with divorce. His work emphasizes the importance of emotional literacy and the role of parents in fostering a supportive environment during significant life changes like divorce.

Connect with Dr. Marcus:

Website: http://parentrx.org/

Journey Beyond Divorce Resources:

• Book a Free Rapid Relief Call: http://rapidreliefcall.com
• Follow JBD on Instagram: @journey_beyond_divorce

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Tender Talks: Guiding Children Through Divorce With Dr. David Marcus, PhD

We are back again with a recent guest, Dr. David Marcus. We're talking about tips for helping preschool and school-age kids navigate the turmoil of divorce. The reason I've decided to focus in on this is that these children are at an age where they're not able to communicate as clearly as older children. We can misinterpret, we can do things that aren't in their best interest. David Marcus is a renowned clinical psychologist with over 40 years of experience in helping families through stressful transitions.

He's spent many years as a psychological evaluator for custody. He's going to take us through some of the key elements to look for, consider, and do when you're dealing with preschool and school-age kids. The other thing that you want to know about Dr. Marcus, because it's a fun fact, is that he has been a musician playing Celtic music since the early 1980s. It's always neat to tell something interesting and different about our guests. Welcome, Dr. Marcus.

Thank you. I love Celtic music, and you're Irish, so this works just fine.

I want to dive right into this. We have a couple of elements that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about a common emotional language for these young children. We're also going to look at the way a parent can communicate. Should it be through words or pictures, or some other way? We're also going to look at how to interpret your young child's behavior and some of the things to look for.

Emotional Language For Parents And Children

Dr. Marcus is going to wrap it up with a couple of tips and strategies for how to do your best while you're navigating your children's reactions. There's also you and all of the stress you're going through, and how that plays into it. That's the broad stroke for what we're going to talk about. David, could you dive into the concept of a common emotional language? What does that mean, and why is that valuable for both parents and child?

All parents that I've talked to actually make the assumption that emotional words that they use have the same meaning as those same words for their children. Typically, we think, “I remember going through that and this is how I felt.” We make a silent assumption that our child is experiencing it the same way. No, the assumptions, anger. Life is anxiety. It's not so because it's based on different types of experiences. A child is having his or her own experiences. That's what they're relating their emotions to, not to what the parents have gone through.

Can you give an example? That's a hard thing for me to wrap.

I'm thinking of a certain child that I saw the parents of, the child is really angry because the kids are dissing him on the school bus. They were trying to say, “It'll get better.” They're trying to make him feel better. Didn't make him feel better. That's why it came to me. When I actually explored it with the child, it wasn't so much anger. It was how hurt he was that his best friend was joining in with the other kids on the bus, putting him down.

The question becomes, a parent who has an upset child, how do we understand what they're feeling and come up with the words that are going to resonate with our child?

Often, the child will come up with their own words if they're allowed to. If the parent doesn't take over the conversation, try to make them feel better.

Right there, I'm hearing like the first tip, which is if your child's upset and your tendency is to just immediately make them feel better, you might be missing the opportunity to understand them and actually help them to feel better.

That's exactly right. Parents do this all the time. We want our children to feel better. I always try to personalize it. It'll make a good example for parents. If you went to somebody as an adult and you started explaining to them something that was upsetting to you. All of a sudden, they just cut in on you and said, “I've been through that. This is what I did. No, things will get better. Bad things happen, some platitude,” that type of thing. I asked what you're laughing already, Karen, because that's not helpful. It's not helpful.

Yet we do this all the time with our kids. Now, as an adult, if you were talking to a good friend, you might say, “Just hear me out.” That's the most therapeutic part of it is getting it from in here to out here in the term that we've used before in somebody else's soothing presence. Instead of doing that, if it wasn't a good friend, you'd say thank you and go find a good friend. See? We do this with our kids all the time. The difference is you don't expect your four-year-old to come up to you and say, “Mom, no, that's not helpful.” They'll sit there and go, “Mm-mm.”

It won't be helpful.

The child gets quiet because you've left them no place to go. You're telling them this is how you feel. This is what you should do about it. Parents come to me when they've done this many times, and the next time something similar happens to the child, they're just as upset as they were the first time. What do you get? “I thought we talked about this, son.” No, you talked to them. You didn't talk with them. You didn't elicit what you need. This is the truth. You may hit it right on the nail that they're the right words that your child is actually feeling, but it doesn't help because they have to say it.

I hear you talking about, we're talking about common emotional language, but a foundation of common emotional language is letting the child process what they're thinking and feeling in their own words.

One of the axioms that we really need to learn as parents and as therapists, for that matter, is that we call people, adults, children. We primarily learn from our own experience by processing our own experiences. We need somebody to process those experiences. When it's a child, obviously, it's the parents. Now these things can get in the way. I'm jumping around a little bit. I don't mean to, but if a parent takes over the conversation, trying to make the child feel better, they're missing the book.

 

If a parent takes over the conversation when trying to make a child feel better, they are missing the book.

 

Talk to us about what's the right way. I think that we've highlighted what's wrong with doing the talking ad.

Let's start at the very basics because we're talking about 3 to 7-year-olds here from. We don't expect a three-year-old to have much of an emotional language. Just another time to develop it. An emotional language comes with practice with the parents. How does the parent help the child develop an emotional language? There are things that they can do. They can start with, for instance, this is a very common one. You can buy pictures of a child that's upset, a child who's happy, and what I do is simply draw a circle with a frown.

I guess I'm too cheap basically to buy the pictures and things. Anyway, I'll have the child name them. That's a happy. I will go through sad, scared, anxious, and frustrated. I'll ask the child, this is young children now, 3 to 4 years old. I've talked to the parents. They've told me something that makes the child say anxious. “Tell me about what picture is when this happens?” They'll point to a picture and I'll say, “How anxious does it make you? We talked about this before this much.”

You’re using your hands, just want to say that because everyone is just reading. You're using your hands a lot.

I'll ask them to come up with a word. I've gotten some really good words. I’ve mentioned that the last time, one boy came up with volcano mad. Some of them, “Big as the universe, Dr. Marcus. I think of all the time, but these are the things.” Now I use them as a reference because those are the words that have emotional meaning to that child. If something else happens, “Was that as big as the universe, scary?”

I want the readers to read this. Think this is brilliant. You're saying a couple of things here. One is to listen more than you talk in the beginning, so that they can process, use images, so they can pinpoint what they're feeling. If it's anxious, but they're saying, “That's volcano man.” Use their words as you continue to talk to them about that particular emotion. What does that do when you're connecting their words to the conversation?

It makes the child say, “He gets it.”

Got it.

There's nothing more important than that. As I said, just a moment, or an adult will tell you, just listen. A child at that age won't because they just won't. Mommy is saying, or Daddy's saying it.

They're hearing you, but they're not listening. They're not processing, they're not absorbing, and you're not actually helping. You might quiet them, but you're not actually soothing them.

The parent assumes that the child is not quiet. I guess everything's okay.

I want to wrap this little piece in a bow, which is not only isn't the child okay, but they haven't processed anything. Therefore what?

Therefore, the intensity of the emotion is still inside them.

If the intensity of the emotion is still inside them, I know we're going to be talking about behaviors. It's got to come out some way.

You're anticipating, that's exactly right. As I say, the more words, the less behavior. It all stays inside. The child doesn't have a way of expressing it verbally, they'll express it behaviorally. This is not news to any parent of a young child. They act on their emotions.

How To Approach A Child Acting Out

Let me ask you this, for all your years, I mean, you have so much experience, you meet a child who is acting out a lot, and we'll get into what those behaviors are in a minute, but let's just say they're in acting out behaviors. Is it almost a certainty for you that part of the problem is they haven't had that common language and that soothing presence and that ability to process and release what those big little emotions are?

That's right. One of the things that I really focus on with parents is exactly what you're saying, Karen, which is how do you connect with your child in this way? It may start with pictures or a story or something close to words and words that they use because that's what has meaning to them, emotionally, and then use those as a referent for the future sessions.

Let me ask you something. When my kids were very young, as my readers now, like 4 to 6, when I told them that “I decided to divorce daddy.” I ended up looking for children's books, and there's a child's book which is very old now, but it was called Dinosaur Divorce. What I loved about that was that my kids could sit, and we could read the book at night together. We were talking about the dinosaur family, but out of that, they were able to use those pictures and those situations to feel safe, to talk about what was going on with them, or to ask the questions that they had. Is that like in the center?

You're right in the ballpark there with very young children. I'll backtrack a little bit and explain why that's so important. Something we talked about in our earlier discussion is that children experience their emotions very intensely. It's a lot easier for a child to talk in the third person about their emotions than about me.

This little dinosaur must be so lonely or angry.

The little pictures I'm drawing, or I said stories, or dolls. I've got it all in my office. You've got to find the right media, like I said. It's all so they can take that and project themselves onto those characters. That's a lot easier to talk about the dinosaur than about themselves. More typically than ever, when I go through this with them, eventually they'll say, “That's just like me.” It becomes safer. They're getting emptied out. They're relieved and can now talk about it without experiencing the same intensity that originally happened. That's the point of the common emotion language is to reduce the intensity.

I think what you just said the word safe, I want to wrap this piece up saying, if you're uncomfortable with your child's big emotions and your tendency is to talk them out of it until they get quiet and think that is going so in the opposite direction of where you want to go. What we're about to talk about next is actually what happens when a child doesn't have that safe space. Of course, we want to be a safe space for our children, and we might not know the right thing to do. Now, Dr. Marcus is sharing that.

I want to add a little piece to this because the parents are going to need this. I'll just put it that way. How do parents know to do this? They can learn it from me or somebody like me. If they got it when they were trying, they had a soothing presence who would listen to them and help them develop a language and make it safe for them to use.

We're talking about the common emotional language. We're talking about the child feeling safe. You just said something interesting when you've been raised with a soothing presence, but we're talking to an audience that is going through a high conflict divorce. My experience has been that most of my clients did not have a soothing presence as children, nor did their spouses.

Common Behavior Of Children Under Stress

Whichever one is high conflict or codependent. I do believe that I just want to say to you, the reader, this may be very new, and I'm finding it incredibly valuable. Relisten and take notes. Dr. Marcus, I want to pivot to the behavior that parents might begin to see from that child who isn't processing and releasing. You had mentioned that there are a couple of different behaviors, and we'll start with regression if we can.

People who are under stress, but you'll see this in children. When they are under stress, they have a tendency to fall back on behavior that they did when they were younger. You might see children start to use baby talk, for instance, even though they are 3 or 4 years old. Bedwetting? We'll be part of that too. There's trying to get attention by being this younger behavior, especially if there's a younger sibling. That's part of the dynamic because the parents are not attending to the children enough.

The child is trying to get attended to. They see the younger child get the attention, so they emulate that. That's not uncommon. Control becomes part of this, too, what you might see in a young child. The high conflict situation is chaotic. The child is experiencing stress. They see the stress in their parents, even though the parents are trying not to show the stress.

The child is exquisitely aware of what's going on, and they see the stress. The child begins to try to help the situation, basically. They try to take control of it and they try to help it because they need their parents to be okay, if they're going to be okay. One of the things they do is they try to take control of something in their life that they can take control of to give them some predictability and some structure to the chaos that's going on in the family.

Like what?

Eating. They might get very fussy. “I'm not going to eat this. I'm only going to eat that.” Control. “I'm not going to wear those clothes. I'm going to wear these clothes.” Children seven. “I'm going to be playing on the Nintendo. My brother's not going to play on the Nintendo.” “I want to play and not what he wants to play.” These are just common things.

Parents see this all the time when their child is under stress. The other thing they may see is that this regression is controlled. It's also taking on a role. This is also very common. A child needs a parent to be okay if they're going to be okay. I keep repeating that because it's so true. That's one of the reasons why parents need to take care of themselves as well as so they can be there for their kids, but that's a different topic, I understand. The typical roles that a child will take on are usually the pleaser.

They'll keep trying to please their parents, hoping that that will put them in a better mood and be more present for them. The placater, they'll actually get in between parents who are arguing and saying, “Please stop,” or try to distract them and say, “I need this. Can we play this game?” Just something to get them away, to stop the parents arguing. This is a dangerous thing. I'm going to label it as dangerous, especially the second one, because that role can stick around. This can guide their relationships going into the future.

Sounds like the root of codependence.

That's as good a word for as any. I've actually seen grown-ups who I saw as children who are in that role and have it happen to recognize that the role they're playing in their current relationships, and that this is not healthy, because they're coming to me because they feel depressed. A role, what I label it, is a not me situation. They're not developing a sense of themselves, they're playing a role.

I think so many of the readers will resonate with that because I think there are so many of us who ended up in these high conflict marriages. I heard once in a 12-Step Program, the very coping mechanisms that keep you “safe” as a child are the ones that create conflict in your adult relationships because they're not healthy behaviors.

One thing that is very important that you're bringing up is that, is this sense of what we've talked before about something that gets internalized. Internalization just for this new audience is subconscious learning, basically, things that you take in as part of your personality that you're not even aware of. I can go into a lecture about all of them, but one of those things is how we react to stress. If a parent is aggressive in their reaction to stress, oftentimes the child will become aggressive.

This is one of the ways, especially if the aggression is against the child, this is what creates child abuse generationally. The internalized, when I get stress, I aggress. I've had parents swear upside down sideways, “I never do to my kids what happened to me.” At that moment of stress, that internalized response comes out, and they do it, and now it's passed on. It's very important that parents realize how they react to stress, and they need to be able to handle their own stress so that they can help their child.

 

Parents must realize how they should react and handle their own stress so they can help their own children deal with stress.

 

Best Parental Care Practices

Perfect. Let's talk about parent care. Parental stress, you were saying, how the parent handles stress is going to be seen, absorbed, and replicated almost by the child. Let's talk for a few minutes about not so much the importance you can touch on the importance of parental care, but what does it look like? What are some of the things that you are recommending for a parent who's under oodles of stress between being a single parent and going through a high conflict divorce, and children who are having a hard time? What's the importance and best ways for them to take care of themselves to minimize that extra stress on their kids?

One word, resources. They need their own resources. It could be a soothing presence in their own life. When people think about who they turn to when they're upset, it's always particular people. A friend or a family member always thinks you shouldn't want to be 2, 3, or 4. Unless you wear your heart on your sleeve, but you know what I'm saying.

Usually, certain people and invariably those people are okay when you're not okay and they listen. In a way, by getting it from in here to out there in their soothing presence, you're borrowing their okayness. When you take it from in here to out here, it's like the analogy I use is like the forest for the trees. If it's in here, it stays intense. It's like your nose is right up against that tree, and the tree looks humongous.

There's no way around this. “I am helpless,” which leads to depression, of course, but okay. When you get it from in here to out here, when somebody's saying, “I hear you,” they don't have to make suggestions about what to do about it. They just need to be okay when you're not. Just hear me out. The analogy is you get some safe emotional distance from that tree and you see, “Now that's a significant tree, but it's got boundaries and there are other trees.” That's when you can start looking at solutions, but not before that.

I just want to highlight what you're saying. If the person that you go to, and this happened to me early on in my divorce, one of the people I was relying on would get more angry, more triggered, more dysregulated than I was. It's so important that you have a healthy support system, that you have people who, as Dr. Marcus said, are okay when you're not people who are going to keep the focus on you, who are going to bring calm as opposed to jump into the sandbox with the chaos that you're in.

Make suggestions or tell you everything's going to be okay. All those different things.

They want to be that soothing presence, which gives you, as we just talked about, this opportunity to process what's inside and to see the forest for the trees. One or two other tips on parent care before we go into the strategies.

As I said, that's one resource. Having a soothing presence in your life, trying to put structure on the chaos. Parents, if they can work together. We're talking about parents that are in high conflict. Let's skip that part. Children do need a structure. They have structure as part of being predictable. What children really need is predictability, especially in a high conflict situation. This is why I tell parents who are in this situation, “Try to get through this and get some solidity. If you're going to get a divorce, get the divorce, move out, start your own life.”

 

Children need structure as part of being predictable, especially in a high-conflict situation.

 

That's going to help your kids. They need predictability. The first thing that a child's going to ask when you tell them we're splitting up is, “When am I going to see mommy?” They need that predictability. They need to be able to predict how the parents are going to react now, and that's tough because the parents are upset. This is why the parent needs their own presence.

This is what I tell parents. When your child comes to you and says something that's going to upset you, this is a very important message that I tell parents to tell their kids all the time. They're going to come back and say, “Daddy, there's for mommy.” You're naturally going to get upset because you're in this situation. The child's going to notice it. You want to keep it safe for the child. You say, “Bobby, what you're saying is tough for me, but give me ten minutes.

Now, then we can talk, I'll just give a timeframe. We'll talk later because that's a blow-off. Don't worry, Bobby, mommy can take care of her own feelings.” That message, that second part, I stress so much with parents because the child says, “My parents are okay.” You see. That is probably the most important message a parent can give to a child, and then take your break and go talk to a soothing presence or count to ten or whatever you're going to do, and then go back. Now we have to talk about how to do it.

I love this tip because I talk about this all the time. One of the things I noticed parents do is when the child comes and says, “I'm upset with the other parent,” they could then criticize the other parent in front of the child. I find that now you're not a safe person. Now they cannot come to you. Now they've like, they have a more limited field of who they can go to for a soothing presence. You're saying number one, take the time, let them know, I need a few minutes. I'm glad you told me I need a few minutes. Let's get back together in ten minutes. When they talk to little Billy, for instance, I want you to talk about what you do and don't talk about in that conversation.

We'll do that, but you forgot the last part that was so important. “Mommy can take care of her own.” That's really important.

What To Say And Not To Say

You're avoiding that tendency of the child to please or placate. You're saying, “I got this. I just need a few minutes. I'm good. I can take care of myself.” What do I say and what do I not say once I start listening and talking to my child about something that the other parent did that upset them, especially if it was like it was upsetting?

That's an excellent question. There's a text. There's an obvious answer that I'm going to give you. Your first tendency to get this out of the way is to defend yourself. “Dad shouldn't have said that.” Something like that. That's not helpful. You got to understand why the child's bringing it up. The child's bringing it up because in some way he was going along with his emotional thing, and when dad or mom said that, it went like, “Something is bothering your child.” “What dad said.”

You're not going to defend yourself. That's not going to help your child because all you're doing is then saying, “This is my perception of the situation versus your dad's perception of the situation. Now you've got to decide on who do you believe?” Who do you defend sometimes? That's the divided loyalty situation. We want to avoid that because then that child is stuck. The child is bringing it up because it bothers them in some way. Assuming the child has an emotional language and you have access, these are the things that we talked about previously. The question becomes is, what did you make of what Dad said?

My guess is it could be confusing because the child's bringing it up because they want to believe their dad, but their own experience with mom may not be that way. They don't know what to do with this. They might feel two ways about it. “I love my dad, but I wish he didn't say it.” That thing. What did you make of it? My guess is you feel more than one way about it. Notice the words, my guess. They're always taking it as a guess. Your child can correct you if you're wrong. If you say, “I'm sure it was like this for you.”

Again, the child's not going to say, “Mom, you're full of baloney. Just let hear me.” You take it as a guess, and you say, “My guess is that was tough.” “How was it tough?” “Was it tough that it made you sad?” You can say these things, but always take it as a guess. “My guess is it made you anxious. My guess is it made you sad.” You can usually can tell how their child is feeling about just by hearing them with their child. How did it make you sad?

What was the toughest part of what you? That's another question, but notice is focused on the child's experience, not on your reaction to what they had actually said. As children get older, they're going to have their own opinions. “I don't think Dad should have said that.” “What do you mean?” “It made me feel like this, and I don't think that's what you do.” “I hear you.” That's it. You don't go into, “Yeah, I agree with you, your Dad's such and such and so and so,” because the reason the child's bringing it up is because he's in conflict.

He loves his dad, but he didn't like what he said. If you go, just like you said, if you start siding with his anger, then the child's going to pick up, “Yeah, that's what I got to tell mom about,” because that's what she agrees with. That's dangerous. That's what you should not do. It's a big temptation to do it because you feel the same way about him, but that is not helpful to your child. Your emotional connection with that other spouse is the ending. Theirs is not. You've got to take this, “What do you make it? What do you think? My guess is it was a tough approach.”

Let me ask you something. I tend to encourage my clients to not direct that, just as you just said. I'm wondering. My thought is, rather than do you feel angry or do you feel mad or do you feel sad, why aren't you just asking the child, “How did that make you feel?”

I'll tell you exactly why, because now you're sounding like a psychologist. A lot of the parents hear what I have to say, and that's how they interpret it. How did it make you feel? After a while, a child just says, “Stop that.” I'll tell you something funny. My son, his name is Seth. I did this with him, and he turned to me one day when he was like nine and said, “Dad, stop playing psychologist with me.”

You're a psychologist. I get that.

That’s what I said, “I'm not playing. I am a psychologist.”

Let me ask you this. You're saying sometimes it's a leading question. That's the term I was thinking of.

It's what you're trying to do.

They process. Is there any more to that conversation?

It depends on what the child says, of course, in response to “What did you make of it?” “I didn't like it.” “Tell me about not liking it.” Mirror back their words. Not your words, not your summing up. “It would make me angry, too.” No, you mirror back. You said, “It was upsetting. Give me some words about being upsetting.” Let them tell you, if they have a language, they'll say, “ I was having a good time with Dad and then he said this about you, and then I just wasn't having as much of a good time, Mom.” “Tell me about not having so much of a good time.”

Just keep digging. Just keep feeling bad.

Stay in their experience. Use their words because those are the words that have meaning. That's that common emotional language part again.

 

Parents must stay in their children’s experience. Use their words because those words have meaning.

 

After you've done that, after they have emptied out, how do you wrap a conversation like that up?

You say, based on how you see it, “No wonder you feel the way.” You validate. You’re not validating what they're saying, just how they are feeling about it. You say, “What can we do about it?” Now notice the we, “I'm in it with you.” We is a merger word. “What can we do?” There may not be a whole lot you can do about it. I'm not pretending this is probably Hannah's, no. “There may not be much you can do about it.” The child might say, “Can you talk to Dad about not saying that?”Since the parent is now understanding it, that gives a child hope that it can be different, which is a lot of the work that I do. “I can try to talk to Dad about it.” I have to talk to the parent about how to approach the other side, or if they're both seeing me, then I can tell them how to.

Let's look at that, though. You're in a high conflict co-parenting situation. If you open your mouth and say anything to the other parent, you'll be just tossing a gallon of gasoline on the fire. Your child is saying, I've had this happen to me so many times, where my kids were like, “Would you please speak to daddy?” I know that me speaking to Daddy is like the worst thing. It doesn't matter how I say it or what I say. If it comes out of my mouth, it's going to be taken as an attack. What do you do in cases like that, because that's the audience you're talking to?

This is a more complicated question.

That's why I have you. You're the expert. What do you have for us, David?

I'll go back to the word resources, and people come to me in those situations and say, “I cannot talk to my spouse. What can we do?” Now I have to go through a way of getting the other parent to come into treatment.

We're not talking about what you do. This is where I don't want you to tell me what you're doing in practice.

All I'm saying is they may need a resource in order to get through to the other side.

You're emptying the child out. You're letting them know that you're a safe person. You're asking them what we can do. Where it goes from there is going to depend on the relationship with your co-parent. It's going to depend on your skillfulness and communicating on their ability to hear anything you have to say. You're saying that at the end of the day, if it's an issue, certainly a significant issue, you have to reach out for some psychological support.

If they don't have them, they cannot speak to them. They're going to need a forum. A safe place to be able to discuss what's going on with the children. We're not going to talk about how you guys relate. We're going to talk about what your child is saying. “I've seen your child, and this is what he's saying. What can we do to make it any better?” I tell children when they tell me this, “We will have gotten the guy with the doctor in front of my name.

Maybe they'll listen to me even if they won't.” The other thing they can do, I don't want to leave you in the lurch, and just say, “Go get these two a therapist.” The other thing that they can do is literally say, “This is what the child is saying. I'm not saying it. Bobby is saying this, maybe you'd like to talk to him about it.” To the other parent. Now he could read the riot act like you told me the last time.

I'm going to leave it at that because that can go well and that can go in a lot of different directions, but we don't have the time to go into the details.

I'm just saying if you can, that would be another thing that you can try to do.

How Parents Should Navigate Their Emotions

Let's pivot as we begin to wrap up here. We've now talked about the common emotional language. We've talked about being that soothing presence. We've talked about if they're very young, figuring out whether it's pictures or words, or a book to help them communicate their emotions. We've talked about the type of behavior that will happen if your child doesn't have the opportunity to process.

If they're holding it inside, you may deal with regressive behavior. You may deal with sibling rivalry. You may deal with them by noticing your stress reaction and trying to placate or please you. What we want to do is leave you. We want you to get the support you need as a parent going through a stressful situation, so that you can show up with your best resources.

Finally, this last piece is going to be how to navigate your emotions versus the kids, and 2 or 3 strategies or tips that Dr. Marcus is going to leave us with that you can implement immediately. Now I know you talked about a bunch of them. This is just, if you can take this time to summarize and then I'd like you to share where people can find you and your very exciting book that is in the process of being written.

What's written is a process of trying to get published.

I stand corrected.

Broad questions like this. I love them. One thing that they can do, the first thing that comes to my mind, is you know the other side, you know how you feel, try to anticipate situations that are going to be tough. You can do that. Try to prepare the child, the situations that might be tough. We're all going to go to the game. “Mom, Dad is going to be there with his girlfriend.” You don't like the girlfriend. What can we do to make it any better? Let them say, “I don't like it. Let me out.” You say, “When you feel that way, what can we do about it?”

Go through that process. You now have a process.

There's a process now. Obviously, you cannot anticipate every situation, but that's one thing that you can predict. Usually, you can predict when you're to be in close contact with the other parent. Usually at social functions or grandma's wedding or whatever. Anyway, that's one thing you can do. One more, you can do is help their child anticipate what's going to happen at the other house.

“I don't like it when Daddy does this.” “What can you do when that happens?” The child may be very limited in what they can do, but you can talk to them through, “You know how Dad is. You can talk to me about it when you get home.” That's what's necessary. Usually, parents set up nightly phone calls. That's very important. The child is somebody if that's the soothing presence is on the other line. For young children, there's something called a transitional object.

They bring something from one home to the other. It could be a picture of mom or their favorite blanket, whoever it might be, because that can be soothing in itself. Such a thing as a security blanket. That's something else. The other house, that parent should be encouraged to let the child set up the room their own way, put things in, and bring their own little stuffed animals and stuff like this. The transition is not as alien. I don’t know if I answer exactly what you're asking me.

That’s great. I have a client with a three-year-old and, in the early stages, a complex shared parenting situation. My question for you is, what can a parent do if the co-parent won't let the child have that private 3 to 5 minutes of FaceTime with the other parent? They're interrupting, they're talking, they're in the space. Yet to your point, that might be the child's opportunity to say, “I really miss you, daddy, or mommy's cranky.” Whatever it is, what happened? Any suggestions? If there's an importance of the child being able to have a couple of minutes of private time with the parent, I'd like to hear why that's so important. If you have any tips on how to communicate that importance to a co-parent who might not be very flexible.

I use the word connection. Your child needs to connect with you, needs to be able to connect with you. In order to do that, because you have several households, they need to have their own privacy. Privacy is something we all require. If he's going to badmouth, meet him on the other side. This is what actually happens in real life. I can say I've been advocating for children with the court for quite a while.

 

Your child needs to connect and be able to connect with you. Allow them to do that by giving them their own privacy.

 

This is not an atypical situation, unfortunately, because that one parent is saying, “I've got to know what he's telling mom because it may come back at me.” Type of thing. It does become a legal issue. It literally does. It becomes, “It's written into the parenting plan that he has some private time with mom each night. If that doesn't happen, we change the parenting plan.” This is sometimes what has to happen. I've gone to court on this.

I think you're referring to those very strict and rigid, parallel parenting settlement agreements, where you put so many boundaries in the settlement agreement to protect yourself from having too much conflict going forward.

You're correct. The basic tenet of any parenting agreement is that each parent supports the relationship with the child with the other parent and their family. That's the rule. Any parenting plan, that's the first paragraph they put in. If you're not doing that because you won't let the child have any private time with the other parent, you're abrogating the agreement. The person can go to court and say, the judge will say, “Twenty minutes every night. Let that child talk to their parents. If not, we're going to change the arrangement.” I hate to get legal on it, if the parent is in on that.

I think our readers are probably a little more apt to have to get legal on it. It's good to hear from somebody who's got as many decades as you. Of course, my two cents is to stay out of court and stop spending money on attorneys at all costs, and just always ask yourself, “How important is it? Is it important enough?” There are going to be times where it's darn important enough to go back to court to protect your kids. There's going to be times when not so much, and you find other ways of navigating.

Part of it can be the visitation schedule. “I'm not going to see Mom for three days. I cannot hold it in that long.” You see that type? There are so many permutations to what we're talking about here, Karen, that it's really hard to just say, “Do this and you're fine.” That's one of the reasons I've had to go to court on this multiple times. It's like the parents said, “They're under the gun here. I got to know what's going on. I have to listen to what he's saying to mom or like that.” Sometimes they've got a point because the mom is sitting there saying, “Yeah, your dad really is such and so and so.” Now the child is in a divided loyalty situation. It's clear as mud is what I'm saying. That's what it rules like this.

I think given your last comment, if, as a parent, you ever criticize your child's other parent to them or in front of them, stop. It doesn't help you. It doesn't do your relationship with your child. It doesn't do your child any good. Bite your tongue. When your child is not in earshot, call your BFF and bitch and complain all you want, but don't do it to the child.

If the child knows it, take a break and say, “I can handle my own feelings.” That's it. That's exactly right. If you have to get legal, then you're going to get legal. You're right. The money is ridiculous. I've seen people spend tens of thousands of dollars. It's not right. Choose your battles.

Get In Touch With Dr. Marcus

Before we say goodbye, I know you have a new website, and I want you to let everyone know where they can find you. You do have a new book coming out.

The website is ParentRx.org.

That's in the show notes.

I also have a new way of contacting me, which is [email protected].

Dr. Marcus has been on before Tender Talks, I believe, was the name of the last episode we did together. This is an expert that you would spend thousands of dollars on if you were meeting with him regularly. His wisdom, his experience, his advice, and his heart-centered desire to support children are second to none. I really encourage you to check out his website to keep an eye out for his book. I hope that you found a lot of value in our episode. I think that it was very rich with tips and suggestions. Thank you so much, Dr. Marcus.

You're welcome, Karen. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Great. If you've been listening to the show, but you haven't yet subscribed or you haven't yet reviewed the podcast, you can actually pay it forward and help somebody else find us by taking a few minutes to subscribe and review. It affects the algorithms, and we'll get in front of more eyes and more broken hearts. I would very much appreciate that. We'll see you again real soon with another episode. Until then, you take care.

 

 Important Links

• Dr. David Marcus
• Dr. David Marcus on LinkedIn
• Dinosaur Divorce
• [email protected]
• Tender Talks - Past Episode -  Guiding Children Through Divorce Amid Conflict with Dr. David S. Marcus, Ph.D.
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