Kids Rules

Again I wrote for LinkedIn and want to share it here as well:

Parents, even parents not going through a divorce, often ignore what is in their children’s best interests. I do not mean forgetting meals or not educating them, I mean basic, common sense things. I read a recent Huffington Post piece that made that clear and that I want to share. Click on the link in the next sentence to read the brief piece:

If Your Kids Could Make The Rules of Divorce http://huff.to/uY9K7g,

But generally, the piece is what parents are taught in most court-ordered parenting classes. Things such as “Don’t make children be the messenger”, or “Don’t tell them you hope they don’t grow up to be like, or marry someone like, their father/mother”. Even though this advice makes perfect sense, in the heat of the moment it is easy to turn to a child to complain about your partner; don’t do it! As divorce lawyers, our role is to be a lawyer, but ideas like these are part of why we are also referred to as counselors at law. Let’s take that role seriously and help remind people of the obvious: kids are innocent and their needs and desires, including their needs and desires to love both parents, should be respected at all costs. It is the least we can do for the ones we have brought into this world.