MistressFire70
Posts: 378
Joined: 7/25/2004 From: North Carolina Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: onceburned It really is beneficial to have two parents at home. Dealing with the teen years are hard enough but going alone adds to the stress. (of course, if you have a close knit extended family close by this is lessened) I disagree with this statement. It is not always better for two parents to be present. Kids aren’t stupid; they will figure out something is wrong because of the tension between the parents. And, in most cases, the kids will assume it’s their fault or they will blame one parent over the other. This happened to me. As a young teenager, I was convinced that I wasn’t good enough (an issue, I am realizing, that carries over into today). When I began to see that they weren’t really arguing about me, I began to think it was my mother, who at the time, was a royal bitch. I hated her. I mean HATED her. I used to daydream about killing her (which is also indicative of an early onset of bi-polar). My parents finally got divorced when I went to college. Out from under the influence of my father, my mother became a totally different person. We are now best friends (of course, some of that is me taking charge of my mental health, too). I can’t help but think that if they had divorced earlier where I could have seen my mother’s ‘good” side, I’d have been a LOT better off. I’d still have the whole “not good enough” issue, but I’d have had my mother’s loving support through my teens. So, as long as you sit and talk to your kids about what’s happening (they don’t need to know the sex details, only that you and their mother have grown apart), they can handle it. Don’t just leave without an explanation and don’t rely on their mother to explain it for you. Make sure you’re involved in their lives always. Make sure they’re provided for, just as you would if you we there. You can still give loving support, even if you’re not living with them. Call them every day and talk. If you work at it, I’m betting that you’ll get to know them a lot better than you do now. My two cents, Fire
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