Are your worried about how your divorce will affect your children? Are you already divorced but still fighting with your ex-spouse? Studies have repeatedly shown that divorce in itself does not negatively affect your children, but high conflict divorce can be bad for your child. I recently read that as a group, children of high-conflict divorce, especially boys, are two to four times more likely to have emotional and behavioral issues. So, how do you stop the conflict and protect your kids? It depends on where you are in the divorce process.

You can use a divorce mediator from the get-go to first develop a workable agreement and minimize conflict from the start. You can set out which parent has responsibility for different days, different activities. Find the areas where you agree- school, religion, after-school activities, and put those down on paper. And if there are areas where you don’t agree, the mediator will help you come to a compromise solution.

If you have a parenting plan in place that is not working and you are constantly arguing with your ex-spouse, for the sake of your children, you need to find a better way. You can use a Parent Coordinator. Even though the Courts recently announced the end of their Parent Coordinator Pilot Program, Parent Coordinators are not a thing of the past - it means only that the pilot program has officially ended. Westfield Mediation, LLC offers Parent Coordination services. Through parent coordination, mediators will help you create a plan that works for your family.

Is your only choice to continue to file and answer motions about every little thing, because it is just impossible to get your co-parent to change? No. By using a Parent Coordinator, co-parents can improve their communication, decrease their conflict, and cause less stress for their children. So, you can end the expensive and time-consuming cycle of post-divorce motions. Don’t let your child be a statistic in a future study about children with problems coming from high-conflict post-divorce families. You can change your and your children’s future.