The Best Interests of Your Children

While conducting some research for an upcoming book within The Smart Divorce® series I had an interesting conversation with a child protection family lawyer about the best interests of the children. From this family lawyer’s perspective and what I see in my consulting practice and watching what goes on around me, we agreed that people often talk about it, but don’t necessarily do it – that is put their children’s best interests first. What does best interest of the children really mean? Is it fitting your schedule into your children’s or the other way around?

Defining Children’s Best Interest

There are many definitions as to what best interest means. The Geneva Convention defines it as acknowledging that every child has certain basic rights, including the right to life, his or her own name and identity, to be raised by his or her parents within a family or cultural grouping and have a relationship with both parents, even if that means they live in two different households. It sounds straightforward, but it isn’t necessarily that easy because divorce is complicated by emotions. And – these emotions if not managed, can impair your parenting skills – causing you to think you are putting your children’s best interest first, but many parents are not! This can happen when parents are overwhelmed with their own emotions causing their parenting skills to be weakened.

Simply put, the best interests of the children means doing what is best for your children. How do you achieve this when you might be feeling raw and bitter? You need to:

• deal with your emotions (use your support network for help such as a therapist, clergy, support groups, friends and family)
• Put your emotions on the shelf so that you can be the best parent for you children.
• Let your children participate in activities and do what they would normally have done if you were married.

Children should not be punished because an

activity falls on one parent or the others time

While a parent might be supportive of an extra curricular activity, they don’t let the children participate because it falls on their time – thinking that it is punishing the other parent, when actually it is the children who suffer.

You need to recognize, that children are not possessions they are not “my children, not your children”– they still have 2 parents, you need to reframe your thinking into these children being our children.