Sometimes, despite your best efforts, the relationship with your partner breaks down and you have to separate or get a divorce. If you have children, it makes the divorce more difficult, as you both want what’s best for your children. It is important that no matter what you are going through, you think of your children first.

A divorce is also a difficult time for them, so it is important you do all you can to try and keep them as happy as you can during this time. Everything that knows about their home life is going to change, and it is going to take a lot of readjusting to get used to the new normal. Family law solicitors in Sydney are essential to ensure you do what is best for your children.

So, during this difficult time it is important to keep your children as happy as possible, and have a read on below at some tips to do this:

Don’t Let The Children Pick Side

It is important that you don’t let your kids pick sides, this also includes letting them pick who they want to spend time with. All this does is put extra stress on them and they may feel like they are letting the other parent down. There is enough stress in the family at the moment, and your children are probably not in the best mindset to make these types of decisions.

You also shouldn’t keep track of how much time the children spend with you compared to your ex. The time won’t always be an even 50/50 split, so you need to be okay with that and allow for a little give and take from time to time. It may seem unfair, but you have to hope that most of it will come out in the wash, and over an extended period of time your time with the children is more even.

Don’t Buy Their Love

It can be a bit of cop out to try and buy your kids anything and everything they want. Instead of doing this, try to spend quality time with them, where you do a fun activity together, like going to the beach or painting a picture together.

By all means, buy them presents when they deserve them, like if they get a good result on a test or if it is their birthday. But if you are just buying them gifts for the sake of it, it will lose its value and they will come to expect gifts all the time.

Don’t Talk Negatively About Your Ex

You should never talk negatively about your ex in front of your children. Your ex is still your children’s parent, and saying terrible things about them will just confuse them and it might even make them upset.

As well as this, talking about your ex in front of your children in a negative way might come back to bite you. Children are notoriously bad liars and they could end up telling your ex all about what you said, which could create more conflict between you two.

Financial Conversations in Private

Your children are probably already really stress about everything that is going on, and something that they don’t need to be concerned about is your financial situation. Therefore you should always aim to have these types of conversions in private, when the children aren’t around.

Your financial situation is of no concern to your children, and there is nothing that they can do about it. So make sure you only talk to your children about things that have a direct impact on them.