Joint Custody with a Jerk: Raising a Child with an Uncooperative Ex: A Hands-on, Practical Guide to Communicating with a Difficult Ex-Spouse by Ross Julie A. M.A. & Judy Corcoran

Author:Ross, Julie A., M.A. & Judy Corcoran [Corcoran, Judy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2011-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

I remember when my parents split up. I was so sad. And my mother kept saying, “Aren’t you angry at your dad?” After hearing this a thousand times, I actually got angry and didn’t speak to my dad for years. It was a bad scene.

When you are hesitant in reflecting your child’s feelings, you also leave room for your child to contradict or correct you. For example, suppose your child says, “I’m not going back to Mommy’s house ever again.” You might guess that your child feels angry and hesitantly reflect that feeling with, “Gee, you sound kind of angry.” If you’re wrong and your child is really feeling embarrassed, he has an opportunity to tell you that “no, I’m just embarrassed because I got chocolate on her new couch.” When your child does contradict or correct you, it’s important that you acknowledge the correction with, “Oh, I see; I was wrong. What you really felt was embarrassment.”

When children are sorting through their feelings, they need to experiment with finding the right feeling word as well as deciding how strongly they feel, and it’s important to allow them this self-discovery. For instance, if your son says, “I hate Daddy,” you’ll negate his feeling if you say, “No, you don’t.” Saying, out loud, that he hates his father is the way your son is able to express intense anger. Or he may be annoyed and frustrated at his father and is confusing those feelings with anger. Your goal is to simply rephrase, deemphasizing the word “hate” by saying, “Wow, you sure do sound angry.” By allowing your child the space in which to explore different feelings and by validating these feelings, you will help your child eventually be able to express himself fully, not only to you but to your ex as well.

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