For families with divorced parents, the summer months can be tough. Children split time between mom’s house and dad’s house. Parents say goodbye to kids for weeks on end and vice versa.

Has this been your summer reality?

According to Ron Deal of Family Life Blended, it can be very hard for children to be split between households. He shares what divorced parents can do to thrive in the challenging summer months.

“It’s bittersweet, ‘I can’t wait to be with my dad and hang out there, oh, but that means I have to say goodbye to my mom.‘ Saying hello to someone always means saying goodbye to someone else.”

Parents are not exempt from the pain and sadness of separation either.

“They’re saying goodbye for six weeks and they’re saying hello for six weeks. There’s always two sides to this.”

For parents, it’s essential that you help your children talk through and wrestle with the emotions resulting from this separated lifestyle.

It’s okay to be sad when your children leave you, but it’s important that your sadness doesn’t adversely affect your child.

“A mom is going to be sad, she’s going to say goodbye and have some tears, but to go on and on about how she just doesn’t know what she’s going to do, that’s kind of heaping this emotional burden of ‘I’m not okay without you.’

For parents, it is crucial that their children know that you will be okay without them.

“Your children need you to be okay without them, your kids need you to be the grown-up adult, sad yes, but devastated, no. You need to keep that contained otherwise you send your kids off with this incredible emotional burden which makes it difficult for them to go enjoy being in the other home.”

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