If There's Still Time, Rethink Destroying The Family

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This is a plea to parents who have not yet separated or divorced but you are seriously considering it. Please read this first and thoughtfully reconsider for your children's sake. One of the saddest things I regularly see is watching kids being traded back and forth between parents. When I go to pick up our little one it is at a police station which is a very popular places for drop offs and pick ups to happen. While I sit there and wait I am surrounded by car after car doing the same thing. And it is excruciating to watch little kids being traded back and forth week after week.

Some cry, some scream. Many just walk with drooped shoulders, heads down. You can feel their loyalties being torn between two sides sometimes. You can feel the disconnect, the sadness, the damage. You also see pain and sadness and desperation on the faces of parents now forced to only spend part of the week with their kids, trading them back and forth with a spouse they can't possibly stand anymore.

I will never forget the words of a dear friend who divorced his wife long after his children were grown. He said, "If I had known the damage our divorce would do to our kids, I never would've done it." This is a man with grown children. One can only imagine how much more devastating it is for children under the age of 18 who don't understand why or what is happening to their world.

There are very legitimate reasons for divorce. Among them I consider abuse, addiction and adultery. But many times families are begun without proper thought and consideration. Many times they are broken up in exactly the same way. I want to stand up for all these hurting children of divorce and say think twice before you marry and think twice before you divorce. Don't put your children through any additional trauma at your hands. Your kids will suffer enough just growing up in the world around them which is challenging enough. Do everything you can to avoid hurting your kids and causing them additional suffering. Don't divorce out of convenience or because you're not happy. It's time to put your kids happiness at the forefront of your life. IF they are happy, you will be happy. If they are sad, you will never be happy.