Ep 239: Divorce Through a Child's Eyes: What Parents Need to Know with Erica Komisar

Divorce is one of the most significant transitions a family can experience—but how does it affect children, and what can parents do to minimize the emotional impact?

In this episode, Dr. Jessica Hochman sits down with psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and bestselling author Erica Komisar to discuss the developmental and emotional effects of divorce on children. They explore why certain ages may be more vulnerable than others, how attachment influences children's reactions to separation, common mistakes parents make during divorce, and practical ways parents can help children feel secure during times of change.

They also discuss custody arrangements, co-parenting, dating after divorce, and what children need most from their parents during difficult family transitions.

Whether you're navigating divorce yourself or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers thoughtful, compassionate guidance focused on children's emotional wellbeing.

About Erica Komisar

Erica Komisar, LCSW, is a clinical social worker, psychoanalyst, parent guidance expert, and bestselling author. She is the author of Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters, Chicken Little the Sky Isn't Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety, and The Parents' Guide to Divorce: What to Expect, How to Prepare, and How to Move Forward.

Learn more about Erica and her work at:

Erica Komisar's Website

The Parents' Guide to Divorce:

The Parents' Guide to Divorce Book

Your Child is Normal is the trusted podcast for parents, pediatricians, and child health experts who want smart, nuanced conversations about raising healthy, resilient kids. Hosted by Dr. Jessica Hochman — a board-certified practicing pediatrician — the show combines evidence-based medicine, expert interviews, and real-world parenting advice to help listeners navigate everything from sleep struggles to mental health, nutrition, screen time, and more.

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Transcript

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Welcome back to Your Child is Normal, the podcast that helps you learn more and worry less. I'm your host, Dr. Jessica Hochman, pediatrician and mom of three. Today's guest is psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and best-selling author Erica Commissar. Erica has spent decades helping families navigate some of the most challenging moments of family life, and her newest book tackles a topic that affects millions of children. Divorce. In this conversation, we talk about what parents can do to protect their children's emotional well-being during and after separation. We also talk about attachment, custody arrangements, common mistakes parents make during divorce, and what a good divorce actually looks like from a child's perspective. Whether you're divorced, considering divorce, or simply want to better understand how children experience divorce. This episode offers thoughtful guidance and plenty of practical takeaways. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Erica Commissar, and if you're enjoying your child is normal, I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment to leave a rating or review, because the more reviews that come through for Your Child is Normal, it helps more parents find the podcast, which really supports the show. Now, on to my conversation with Erica Commissar. Erica, I'm so excited for you. You just wrote your third book. I did. Congratulations. Thank you. So, my first question to you is, what inspired you to write this book? So, I was seeing so many families in my practice, because I do a lot of parent guidance, and parents come to me when their children are struggling, and many times their children are struggling because they're either in the process of separation or divorce, or they're planning on divorcing, and so I had a lot of exposure as a clinician to families that with all good intentions in terms of their children's emotional well-being were divorcing and separating in such a way that it was causing their children intense pain, and so I generally write books that I hope will help people prevent problems, not just fix them. So this book is like my other books, both a way to address the issues, but also a way to prevent future issues, because as a clinician, you sort of get a little tired of just continuing to address problems without also addressing prevention. So that's why I wrote the book. I really appreciated a lot of the nuance that you offered in your book. Some of the things that you said made a lot of intuitive sense to me, but I don't think it's the common way that people talk about divorce and the way that we think about divorce. The first thing that I really wanted to ask you about is you talk about how different ages of a child's life are more ideal than others for when parents go through divorce. Can you explain that a little bit more, because I thought that was a new way of thinking about it to me, so there are critical periods of brain development where children are more vulnerable to stress, their brains are more sensitive, your brain is always plastic, it's always growing and shrinking, but there are certain periods, the first critical period is zero to three, because we know that the brain is intensely growing from zero to three, so much so that about 80 to 85% of the right brain is developed by three, so that's what we call the first critical period of right brain development, and the child is very susceptible to stress, and even a child who is raised in a very secure environment with two parents who love one another, I write books about attachment security and how important that period is to respect how sensitive children are to stress in that period. Adolescence is the second critical period of brain development. It starts earlier and ends later, so we say it starts at around nine and ends at around 25 but the reality is you can't say to parents don't divorce in that huge period, so there are actually broken down, you can break down adolescence into more sensitive times than other times, even in adolescence, so we say that from about nine till about 14 or 15 in what we call the middle school years, but really it's when adolescence bodies are changing, they're going through puberty, and when there's a lot of social drama, when there's an intense kind of feeling of self-consciousness and vigilance to stress, and it's a tough time, so you'd say if you ask any adult, what's the toughest time of your childhood? Most adults would say middle school, and that's without knowing actually why it was just painful, and so you don't want to be adding any more stress to a child at those particular stressful periods. There's another period which is stressful, so if we say avoid like nine or 10 to about 14 or 15, and then in later adolescence, like 15 to 18, it's a little less sensitive because they're a little more secure, they have a little bit more sense of their identity, hopefully they've made some friends, but you don't want to get too close to going to college or do. It right when they go to college, because that's also a very sensitive and stressful period. It's when they are both physically separating from their parents and also individuating, the beginning of trying to discover first of all that they can manage on their own out in the world and be independent, and that who they are essentially. And so it's very common in my generation for people to say, well, let's stay together till the children go to college, and as soon as their freshman goes to college, they tell their kids, like, we're divorcing, we're selling the house. What they don't realize is that secure tether back to the family and something that feels like home base is so very important for the security of that child, so if you're going to do it around that time, if you've waited that long, wait a couple years, so your child can start to make friends, can start to know who they are a little bit, feel a little more secure living away from home, but you can see these are very kind of common sense things, some of this is very intuitive to parents. I found it really interesting for me personally, because my mom's parents got divorced when my mom was in college, and she had a lot of difficulty with it. If you were to still ask her about it today, it was probably the most difficult period of her life. And when I was younger, and I heard, "Oh, your parents got divorced when you were 2021 that doesn't sound so bad, you were a grown up. But to your point, what you're describing is exactly how she felt. She felt really insecure. She was insecure financially. She didn't know where to go home to, and so I thought that was a really validating point that you brought up, that you still benefit from having attachment insecurity even when you're an adult. I mean, listen, the bottom line is, even at 25 if your parents tell you they're divorcing, it's tough, but at least you're more established as a person, right? In other words, your personhood is more established, and so your roots are more established. Maybe you have a significant other. I suppose you could say we all hope that before we pass away as parents, our children find love, right? If anything, I hope most the parents who are listening would say that that's much more important than any career success, or whatever, that they're loved, and so you know, by 25 there's a better chance also that they're loved, and so there's someone that they can lean on, who significant other, who they can give them support while they're going through a divorce, so you know, again, some of it's very practical and common sense, but yeah, those are those are the most critical periods I would say, and I know people are probably thinking, well, you know, going through divorce, can it really wait realistically, but I think, of course, safety is priority, but to your point, if you can't wait a little bit, it sounds like it really is better for the kids, and it's worth knowing about. Well, I would never say to someone who's being physically or sexually abused to stay with an abusive spouse. Never. I mean, I almost say that that is to be expected, that you divorce in an abusive situation, or you get as far away from that situation as quickly as possible. Most divorces do not come out of that. Most divorces come out of disagreement or mismatch, and so those are the divorces that we speak to when we say, well, if you can time it a little bit, so if you don't agree with the person, you don't share parenting practices, you're not in love with the person, but you still can somewhat get on with them, kind of getting together and saying, you know, maybe for the good of our children we don't have to stay together till they're 25 but maybe we can time this a little bit so it does the least harm to them, and get two parents that are somewhat reasonable on board. And then you talk about the other critical time being zero to three, given that you've done such wonderful research when it comes to attachment. Can you explain why it matters that there's a primary caregiver, and why some people feel like it can just be any warm body that holds a child, and why is that not the case. Well, I suppose I would say something again instinctual. The idea that love is indiscriminate is a very strange projection that adults have, because if I asked you if your love is indiscriminate, you would say no. If I said, can you swap your, I don't know, your husband or your wife or your partner, for someone else you would say no. Why would you even ask that? And funny enough, I actually encourage couples not to divorce until their youngest is three, and the reason being that most divorces are going to kind of try to find some time split with parents, and it usually in this country, anyway, comes down to this 5050 which I don't always agree with, meaning they treat babies in the legal system like they're sandwiches that you cut evenly in half, and babies aren't sandwiches, you can't split them evenly in. Half, but so what happens is you're often taking a baby away from a securely attached arrangement with a mother, meaning if a mother is breastfeeding or sleeping with the baby at night, providing what we call nighttime security. So a baby is born neurologically and physically fragile, and it's that connection to that one person in the world who provides them with that sense of security and safety, usually it's the mother, but not always today, but usually it's the mother, because a lot of that attachment security is tied to a nurturing hormone called oxytocin, which women produce when they give birth, and they breastfeed, and they nurture their young, and it makes them very vigilant, it makes them very sensitive and empathic in terms of their nurturing, very attuned to a baby's distress, very soft in the face of a baby's distress. Fathers aren't as soft in the face of a baby's distress, and so that primary attachment figure provides that baby with a sense of safety, and so they cling to that one person, the eyes of their mother, the voice of their mother, the skin to skin contact with their mother, and that provides them with safety, and so if you take a baby who is securely attached and you take them away from their mother for many hours and many days, and you stop the breastfeeding because of this. It basically disrupts the whole foundation on which mental health is built, and I can't emphasize that enough. That if you care about the mental health of your children, you will not take a breastfeeding, securely attached baby away from its primary attachment figure, because of your own needs for fairness, you will make an arrangement that gives you as much access to your baby as possible during the day and even at night, but not overnights, and then doesn't demand that that baby exist without that primary attachment figure for more than a short period of time, and then after that child is three, then you can start with this idea of you have two homes and you spend some time at daddy's home and some time at mommy's home, so that zero to three period is really like the platform on which emotional security is built, and if you get that wrong, it's very hard to repair that. I thought you made a really interesting point when you said that we encourage our children to be resilient, but that's a period, that zero to three period, they're not meant to be resilient, they're meant to be dependent and attached to their parents. That's right, and if you give them that, if you provide them with that secure sense that they can rely on you and trust that you're going to be there, then they internalize that sense of trust, and then going forward in all relationships, they trust relationships. So, remember that already with divorce, you're breaking an agreement, an unspoken agreement with that child, a promise of permanence. We know that permanence is an illusion, even for adults. I mean, you can die or you can get sick, but it's an illusion that children have to grow up safely. And some of what's happening with the world and our children today too is that we've taken away the illusion through news and media and social media, and in the old days you could protect your children more. So, if we think that we're trying to buffer children from as much stress as possible, and already divorce is breaking that illusion, so if you're going to do that, you want to make sure that at least you've given them that foundation of security and love, and even the illusion that you love each other in those early years. So, what it really means is to sacrifice maybe a little bit for your children, at least in that zero to three period. So, if you don't like your partner, okay, I mean, it's always a mystery to me as a therapist that people find each other, fall in love, want to have children together, and then discover that they don't like each other, but it does happen, and the concept is that if you've waited as long as it took to be pregnant and have a baby, wait a little longer till your children are out of that zero to three window, it'll make a big difference in terms of them trusting the world and trusting the environment later on, so when it comes to divorce, just to summarize your, I think, really important point is that if you were to pick an ideal time to divorce for a child's benefit, all else being equal, avoid that time zero to three and try to avoid the time of adolescence, when kids are having tumultuous emotions, and really psychologically need and value that dependence on their attachment figures. Yeah, there's a stable period from about four years old till about nine or 10 years old, and Freud used to call it the latency period, he. Is referring to sexual development, but what he really meant is that sexual development was on hold for other things that were going on, which were building self-esteem, building a sense of competence in the world. So, there's stuff going on, but it's a slightly more stable period. If you've given them enough in the early years, then there's a little bit of stability there, where it's a slightly better time to introduce maybe that stress than other times. I also really appreciate that you encourage families to work on things, because I think my sense is that, of course, this is not true for so many couples, but I do think there's a lot of parents out there that, in my opinion, seem too quick to divorce, I think a lot of couples would benefit from more counseling, more communication, more time to work on things, and not to throw in the towel so quickly. And I know some people that have been through it, it's really hard and it's unavoidable, but at the same time, I do feel like societally encouraging couples to work on things and stay together would be really beneficial. And I think you do that, and I really appreciate that. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's we have to be able to talk about the ideal, and the ideal for children is to be in a family with two parents who love one another and show their love for one another and are physically and emotionally present enough, and that kind of nest, which is very secure with two parents is the best for children. I mean, we know that the research shows that, but there are ways to raise healthy children if you do divorce and separate, but you just have to do it well enough. And I do think that a lot of the divorces that I see, I often feel if I had gotten to them earlier, maybe they wouldn't have gotten divorced had they started couples therapy very early on in the process, they might have stayed together because some of them divorce over parenting practices. Quite a number of couples end up divorcing after they have children because they didn't talk about parenting practices and values and beliefs about children and child rearing and staying home and not staying home and money, and they didn't talk about those things before they had children, and so I think there's a lot of value to prevention and preventative care, which is that if you're thinking about having children with someone, have these discussions before you have children. It goes a long way in terms of understanding whether you're a good match and whether those conflicts can be worked out. And I also think that there is something going on today, which is there's a lack of tolerance and recognition of men and women's differences, and so there is the expectation, I think, because of all this gender neutrality, and we're all the same, we're all the same flavor, and we're not at all different, you know, I adhere to the idea that we are equal but different, and so the concept that men and women nurture children differently. They're not the same, and mothers get very angry at fathers when fathers aren't exactly as mothers, and fathers get angry at mothers because mothers aren't exactly the same as fathers. I'm like, they were never the same, and they'll never be the same, and maybe that acceptance from the very beginning helps you to make better decisions about how you're going to form a team to raise children, but then there's that acceptance doesn't kind of force you into a place where if you're not exactly like me and you're not doing exactly what I'm doing, then we should split up. I find that a lot of couples stop communicating, and I think nobody's perfect, no human being is perfect, doesn't exist, and so the more you can communicate and try to find out what the other person's thinking, try to understand their perspective, where they're coming from, the frustration, the stress, the anger, all of it, the resentment can soften, and so I'm agreeing with you, I think if you're listening and you're having some struggle communicating with your spouse, find Erica or find a therapist. Don't wait too long, go see a couple's therapist. So now you mentioned that a lot of couples now have their kids in a 5050 custody split, and you mentioned that that's not always ideal for children. Why do you say that? I'm curious, because I agree with you, but I'd love to hear your explanation, because for different reasons, developmentally, children need different parents at different times more. For instance, zero to three, a baby is going to need a primary attachment figure, usually the mother, but sometimes it's the father. Today is going to need that primary attachment figure more in those early years, particularly for overnights. That doesn't mean that the baby can't spend time with the father or have kind of connection to the father. In adolescence, sometimes children need their fathers more, and in the school years, sometimes they need their fathers more. So, a good example. Would be families that I work with, where they get very rigid, you know, this 232 split, which is like splitting a baby into like halves, like a sandwich, you know. Children end up feeling like a sack of potatoes, and this is a modern concept, by the way, because the way that divorces worked when I was growing up, I'm 61 so the way that they worked when I was growing up was more like they had a primary residence, a custodial parent, that doesn't mean that parent was quote unquote more important, but a custodial home, and then they would go to the alternative parent on weekends, or one overnight, and two days of the weekend, and so the concept was during the week when they were in school after the age of three, they had a sense of stability. There was a home where they lay their head down five nights a week while they were going to school, they had the same routine every day, and then on weekends, which already were out of the routine, they had a different routine, and they could go to their dads or their moms, or whoever was that changed with this idea of 5050 you know. I love that fathers are more involved with children, and I think it was too maternally centric originally, but I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way, where now it's not taken into consideration what the child needs, and by the way, each child in a family may have different needs. So, the other thing is that the courts and parents treat children as if they're bundles, like going to Costco and getting three ray cans of starch, and then you end up with like bundles of things, children are not bundles, they're individuals, and you have to treat them as individuals. A younger child may need their mother more. An older child might want to be with their father more. And so, on a week when a child is having a really hard time, they may want to be with their mother more, because they may need more of the comfort and the soothing when they're in distress, or on a week when they're doing sports and playing, and they may want to be with their father more, and so this idea that you rigidly split a child in half, it's like a sack of potatoes, I think they called it the hot potato when I was a kid, the party game and birthday parties, like throwing the potato around, and kids start to feel like a sack of potatoes instead of a child, and when they say, I don't want to go back and forth, this is too much for me. No one listens to those children, because it's all about the parents, and it's all about what's fair, as if you're splitting a possession, as if children are your possession. You know, the poets say, and there's plenty of poets, and I can quote them from Khalil Gibran to the Torah, says that children are not, you know, they don't belong to you, they are in your care, but they're not your possession, they are not your possession, and so this isn't about what's fair for you, it's about what's right for that child developmentally at that stage of development, and each child is different. You're their shepherd. You are their shepherd. I also think so many parents become competitive. To your point, it really takes putting your ego aside and really doing some hard thinking about what is best for the child, and I think it takes a lot of maturity to really look at a child and say, even though I want them at my house, maybe at this point in their life it's better for them to be at their mother's house or their father's house. That's right. And it's funny that you say, put your ego aside, because one would say you have to have a secure ego, you have to be secure yourself, you have to be secure in your children's love for you, and understand that this is not a competition, this is not a race to the finish line, that if you handle divorce well and sensitively, and you're attuned to what your children need, not what you want and what you need and what's fair for you, but if you're really attuned to them, then they come out of the divorce situation loving you and respecting you. They may not like that you divorced, but they can still love you and respect you. But if you treat the divorce in a selfish way, in a self-oriented way, you will end up with children who resent you, who move away from you, and it's not a prophecy I'm making, but it is what I'm seeing, even in my adult patients who talk about divorce, because the reason I wrote this book is so many adult patients have been so wounded by the divorce of their childhood and what their parents did wrong, that a lot of what's integrated into the book are the biggest mistakes that a lot of my adult patients say that their parents made. When you talk about the 232 I have to say I completely agree that that does not seem like the right move. I don't want to place judgment if it's working well for some families, but I talk to so many kids. Students who are with their mom Monday, Tuesday, they're with their dad Wednesday, Thursday. Then they alternate weekends, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It's so complicated for them, they don't remember where their toothbrush is, they don't remember whose house has their history book, they don't remember which parent's picking them up when, and they don't feel like they have a home, to be honest. And I hope for those kids that they feel security, because when I hear stories where they're at their mother's Monday through Friday, and then they're at the father's on the weekends, or something that seems a little simpler, a little easier for them to get through their school routine, through their social routine, it just seems more fair to the children. So I agree with you. I don't know how the 223 became so popular, but I appreciate that you're trying to swing the pendulum the other direction. Now I'm so curious, when you just mentioned that as a therapist, when you talk to adults, you've heard enough common mistakes that your clients have shared with you about their own parents getting divorced. What would you say are those common mistakes? Like, if you could pick the three biggest mistakes that you've heard, what would you say they were? Well, some of them we talked about already, meaning this idea of treating them like a possession. The other thing is, when parents.. alienation is a term that has long been associated with divorce, but few people really understand what it means. It doesn't necessarily mean you physically keep your child away from your spouse, that's clearly alienation, but you can emotionally poison your child's mind against your spouse. So, the idea is that when you divorce, you are divorcing your spouse, but your child can never divorce your spouse, that's always going to be their other parent, and they are a combination of the two of you, meaning you are both a part of them, and when you bad mouth your ex to your child, what you're doing, and this is again, I think mostly it comes out of parents being in such great pain that they can't contain their pain, and so parents need some place to take that pain, but taking it to your children, bringing it to your children, is not the right place. And so, when you bad mouth your ex and say, well, your mother had affairs, your father was a drunkard, or, you know, he was a loser, all this does is it emotionally alienates that child from their parent, the one that they're not with, or it alienates them from you. So, the thing you have to realize is when you badmouth your ex, you actually may be accomplishing the opposite of what you think you want to accomplish, which is creating distance with your ex. They may be actually creating distance with your child, because your child will resent you and be angry at you for literally making them have to choose between the two of you, and you've talked about the communication issues. There's a lot of poor communication in couples who have divorced, and so they use their children as messengers to deliver messages, and that's really a common mistake. The competition, trying to win your child, over bribe your child, lure your child away with gifts, and out of insecurity. Again, the best thing you can give your child is not fancy vacations or presents with a TS. The best thing you can give your child is whenever you have them, give them your whole presence, your physical and emotional presence, that's the best you can give to them. I always say that kids prefer your presence way above any presence, and you cannot spoil your children with your love. No, no, that's something that they can't get too much of. That's right. I also think kids are a lot more perceptive than parents, I think. Realize and give them credit for, yeah. And so, if I have a friend who's not a gossip, if our relationship is such that I know they're trustworthy, I don't hear them spread rumors or gossip, they're good at keeping secrets, they're a good friend. When I see that quality in a friend, that makes me more comfortable and trusting of them to tell them what's on my mind, so share secrets with them, and I think kids pick up on the same thing. I think if they have a parent who speaks ill of their father or mother, I do think over time they'll pick up on the fact, hey, this parent doesn't talk very nicely to the other parent, that's not very nice. I agree with you that it's not going to work in their favor over time, so I think whatever parents can do to have a different outlet to speak about that parent, if they need to, just keep it from your own children. It's about over sharing your pain, you know. Don't burden your children with your pain. It's painful. Divorce is painful, whatever the circumstances have been, and usually there's one person who does the leaving and one person who's left. It's rare that couples look at one another and go, I guess we're done and we're amicable, and it just, most divorces don't work that way. And so there's always sort of a perceived victim and someone who's done the leaving, and so it's already just such a painful experience, but when you share that. Pain with your child, then you're burdening your child with pain and stress from that pain that they're not supposed to be burdened with, and that can impair their development, and you need to know that that's a very serious thing when you overshare your pain. So it sounds like the big advice, if I were to glean from our conversation so far, and how parents should talk to their kids about divorce, and how they should handle divorce for the benefit of their children. It would be to try to protect them, meaning try to give them stability, a stable home, not to overshare with them the emotions that the parents are feeling about the divorce, and to really think about putting your love for the child first. Looking at the child and giving them love should be top priority. That's right. And you know, again, the greatest sacrifice you can make is putting your own needs aside for your children's needs. That is the greatest sacrifice. And it's out of that sacrifice that you know mental health blooms. And so in Hebrew, there's a term Yesuria Hava, which means the sacred obligation of love, and it really talks about sacrifice. It's about sacrifice. What will you do for your children to protect them and help them to grow up healthy? Beautiful. And I'm curious, your advice on how parents should handle it with their kids when they start dating. Do you have any general guidance about how parents should introduce who they're dating into the lives of their child? Well, your children have already experienced loss, so we know that you want to protect them from loss, if possible. You can't protect them from all loss, and that's the bottom line, but you try, right? So you try to protect them from too much loss. So introducing them to partners who are not permanent partners, you know, we can never know for sure, right? But the idea that we have the intention and the seriousness of intent to stay with this person, and this is going to be our partner going forward, that's when you introduce your child to your partner, because if you introduce your child to casual dating experiences, or someone who you might not see a future with, you're introducing the idea of attachment and loss, attachment and loss, and eventually your children will, well, first of all, they'll burn out, so they won't attach when you do find someone permanently, but they're having to go through that experience of loss over and over again. So, you really want to kind of protect their psyches from too much loss. The other thing is that it's a really challenging thing for children, even if they like their step parent, to accept them, because even if they're loving and wonderful, and I think people out there who are going to be step parents need to hear this, that it's not necessarily about you. Sometimes it's about you, but mostly it's not about you. It's the fact that you can never replace their parent, and again it destroys the fantasy that child has of reunification between the parents, so even when parents live separately for years and kids go back and forth, and whatever children hold on to this reunification fantasy, this reunion fantasy that their parents will get back together, so when another person is introduced, the reality hits, maybe even after years, the reality hits that their parents won't reunite, and it's really painful for children. So, what I would say is, first of all, don't personalize if your children don't like your new partner, and encourage your partner to be secure enough to not personalize it, and just when you're ready to do it with great sensitivity and empathy and seriousness, and don't do it casually, and don't do it without sensitivity. That's what I would say. That's beautifully said. I think about this concept a lot, because I've met some parents where, for the perceived benefit of their child, they don't want to date until the kids are out of the house, because they don't want to bring somebody into the home, and they want to respect that sensitivity. But at the same time, I feel for the parent who also is deserving of love, and so I think what you're describing sounds right to me. We're all deserving of love. Should a parent who's gone through divorce, find love, that's okay, but just approach the situation delicately, sensitively, and with the child at top priority. Yeah, and the idea sometimes introducing a loving connection can model something different for children. There are benefits too, once you get through the hardship of it, when children see that parents are happy again, or that they experience maybe what a loving relationship looks like for the first time, because you know the truth is, if you live in a family where your parents hate each other, then you're more likely to do what Freud called neurotic repetition, which is repeat the same pattern that your parents did, because it's what's familiar, so you're more likely to get into an abusive. Relationship, or a relationship that's a mismatch, or you're more likely to get divorced. So, the concept is, if you show them what love should be, in terms of two people that are well matched and compatible and affectionate, and respect and admire one another, you're modeling something different. That is a wonderful point, because it's true. I don't know the statistics off the top of my head, but I know for kids that have had parents who are divorced, they're more likely than the average to have a divorce themselves. Yeah, which isn't necessarily true if they go into treatment and they talk about the loss and they really mourn, but if you haven't been in therapy yet, we tend to repeat what what has been done to us. There may be a parent listening right now who's going through a divorce, and maybe they're feeling overwhelmed. For that parent, what would you want them to know? That a good divorce is better than a terrible marriage, and if you do it well, your children can come out resilient and emotionally healthy, but I would say you have to do it well. That you have to really be very self-aware, you have to be very emotionally secure, you have to be a good communicator, and you have to be willing to reach out for help, and that help and that support will help you get through it, you can be the best parent to your children. And is there one thing that a parent could start doing today that can make a difference for their child? What would it be? Listen to your children, ask them what they need, and listen to them, so the next time they say, Mommy, I really, I really want to stay with Daddy for an extra night, or Daddy, I really need to call Mommy, and this is a huge point of contention now, where lawyers and judges are saying when agreements are written, so when you're with one parent, you're not allowed to communicate with the other. It's like I don't know how to say it, it's like craziness, as if you live in isolation with that parent, as if they possess you in all ways. So, there's a piece of jewelry, like a piece of jewelry. It's mine now, and only I can wear it. So, what I would say to parents is, listen to your children, ask them what they need, ask them how they're feeling, and non-defensively, and don't justify, listen to them, and I just want to close with, in your experience, if parents can go through a quote unquote good divorce, the children can come out emotionally secure, they can go on to have good relationships in the future, all of this is more than possible. Yeah, yes, it is. Well, thank you so much for your time. I just want to show everybody your book, The Parent's Guide to Divorce. I think it's going to be very valuable for so many families, and I'm so happy to have it as a resource to refer to families that will benefit from it. So, thank you, thank you, thank you for having me on. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Your Child is Normal. 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