Making sure your kids adjust well to the divorce and continue to feel loved and secure is often the most important thing for parents on the brink of a break up. Here’s how to make sure family life runs smoothly post split… Words Kenn Griffiths.

Encouraging good contact
Good planning is a must
When contact goes wrong


During and following separation and divorce kids need a great deal of love, understanding and reassurance from both parents. Evidence suggests that the majority of children want to continue to see people that matter to them. But being under pressure often stops them from feeling comfortable enough to express their true feelings.

The best way to ensure you are doing everything possible to keep your children safe, secure and happy is to enjoy good quality contact – and that means putting their needs before your own and making sure that they are encouraged to see their non-resident parent.

Simply agreeing to contact taking place is not enough – you have to make sure it actually happens. Children have to be continually reassured and actively helped to attend contact with their absent parent. Contact should be seen as a joyous occasion and not an anxiety filled adult-led continuation of the parent’s dispute.

Encouraging good contact
All too often children are used as pawns: contact can happen only if dad pays his maintenance, or mum jumps through some emotional hoop… sounds familiar? It happens all the time. One of the most effective ways to ensure that you get contact right for your sons and daughters is to ask them what they want, to listen to them and then actively alter arrangements to suit their changing needs. This can only be done when both parents co-operate and that includes respecting each other’s views and opinions.

Where possible avoid any sudden changes in the contact arrangements. Children need structure and stability. A recent survey of 2,000 children aged six to eleven, on contact with their fathers, showed that they saw good contact as being:
•    Showing interest in their schooling
•    Preparing meals together
•    Watching TV as a family
•    Playing football
•    Reading them stories
•    Going shopping together
•    Helping them through bad times

According to one child, simply “messing about with dad”, and “being loved” by mum contributed to their happiness. Many of the children that took part in the survey, Time for Children by CAFCASS, did not see contact in terms of getting expensive toys, bikes, computers and holidays, but about having a relationship with and being “looked after” by their parent.

This is exactly what children need and what good contact is really about. Statistics show that only a small minority of parents use the law to sort out contact arrangements. A survey by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Child Contact With Non-resident Parents, University of Oxford Department of Social Policy and Social Work, found that around one in 10 parents had court orders in place. Between half and 60% agreed contact between themselves and between a fifth and a third had no agreed arrangements.