 Welcome to Parenting After Separation. This course is designed to provide you with information and tools so you can better support your child through separation or divorce. You might be completing this course because you have questions and are looking for information about legal issues related to separating and how best to support your child. Or you might be taking it because it is required by the court so you can move forward with your court application. This course is divided into eight lessons. You will have opportunities to participate in exercises and write down your thoughts as you go through the course. There are activities that you will complete based on each lesson in addition to some knowledge quizzes. Throughout this course, you'll hear from different parents and their children who've been through a separation or divorce. They'll be sharing their thoughts and what they learned so that it might help you as you make decisions that can best support your child. It's important to remember that every situation is unique so their experiences might not reflect your own. On this side of separation, it's really difficult and heart-wrenching and, you know, feels broken and like really hard. But when you do have to do it, you're doing it for a better life, right? We knew we had to dig deep into what can happen when two people can't be together anymore and that the burden of that distance between two people need not be carried exclusively by the children. The relationship that both of them had was very much, you know, how do we make sure that we're parenting our kids together? How do we make sure that they feel loved throughout this entire process and into the future indefinitely? Children, like parents, may have many different emotions when their parents separate. We kind of sat down with them and told them and their response at the time seemed very calm. And so I thought, okay, they're taking this really well. Like, there was no big emotional reaction and not a lot of tears and they asked some good questions. And so I thought, okay, you've like done this well and this is going to be fine. And then it took some time for those, yeah, for their distress to really start showing up. Even children within the same family are going to respond to separation differently. For instance, some children are easy going about most things and they adjust quickly. Other children are more shy, cautious, or slow to warm up and will make changes more slowly. Separating from your partner is hard. That's not something that needs to be put on the kids and it's not for you to, you know, spread your anger to your children because they need to maintain that relationship and that's important to them. So it might not be your priority anymore but it's still their priority and so there's nothing helpful about kind of trying to plant that seed of hate for one of your parents. Like as a child you see that and it has the opposite effect. And when you see one of your parents trying to do that to your other one, it's like, it's frustrating and it feels sad, you know, because I'm still sitting in a position of having extreme love for both of my parents. How well parents are able to develop a co-parenting relationship and how well they parent individually will help your child adapt to life after the separation. Let's consider some basic ideas for positive co-parenting. We actually got together and we sat down in the car. We wrote out a game plan. So we actually like took notes of like, these are the things we want to really make sure that we say, that we had, you know, that this was a mutual decision and it didn't have anything to do with them and that we were both still going to be actively parenting them and that they were the most important thing. It's being able to communicate as mom and dad. You're not communicating as husband and wife anymore. The advice that I would give to someone is if the words aren't working because that can even be a trigger probably for some people is you need to move to email, you need to move to text and text may be too quick. Maybe you write an email and you write it at night and you send it in the morning. Lots of times where there were new things that came our way, you know, first time one of the kids wants to go to a party or something we'd be on the phone with each other going, okay, how are we doing this? So we continued to parent together. Domestic Violence By including a lesson on domestic violence we do not suggest that there is violence in your family. If your child has been exposed to domestic violence either by seeing it, hearing it, or being hurt themselves they need to be told that it is not their fault. Your child may be feeling torn as they may love the parent who is also causing the harm. Give them reassurance that you love them unconditionally. Let them know that it is still okay to love their other parent but that the abusive behavior is not okay. When parents separate figuring out what to do next can be challenging. This lesson will look at how family justice counselors can help you, the benefits of mediation and how to work with the other parent to develop a parenting plan. Family justice counselors, or FJCs, are mediators who work in family justice centers and justice access centers across the province. As a family justice counselor we're really here for the families to assist them in working through issues that come up after separation and divorce. We're impartial in what we do and so what that means is that we're not going to be taking the side of either of the people involved. So normally what I do is when parents have separated and they want to figure some things out. So making parenting arrangements, deciding on maybe how often their child or children might go back and forth between their homes. Having an understanding about what kinds of decisions they'll continue to share, maybe not share as they now parent from separate homes. Having an understanding about what their financial responsibilities are. So when parents want to create a plan around that and they want to do it outside of the court process I'll try to help them figure out that plan. We trust that the family members that are involved are the experts on what is best for their children and we want to bring that out and we want to allow them to come together and reach an agreement. That saves time. That allows better communication between the family members. Child support refers to the ongoing financial responsibility parents have for the children after they separate or even when they have never lived together. Child support and the fights about money and all of that takes a different approach. As co-parents you're thinking of it from your children's perspective. Go back to thinking about your child as a newborn and your responsibilities and how the needs have shifted to be supporting this kid to become a functioning and the best started adult. I act as a neutral third party to help parties come to an agreement around child support. The purpose of child support is to ensure that there is a balanced standard of living within each household for the children. It's also to help with the basic needs of raising a child. When separated parents are unable to reach agreement about their arrangements for their children they can file a court application to ask a judge to make a decision for them and their children. You can contact a Family Justice Counselor for information on how to start the court process and what to expect if you have to go to court. Now that you've finished the course you might want more detailed information about some of the topics we have covered. You might also need help in resolving a disagreement with the other parent. For information and assistance meeting with a Family Justice Counselor is a great place to start. After you successfully completed all the lessons you will receive your certificate of completion.