https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=z2qSMz4OYHw
four must-dos after divorce. This is if you want the children to do almost as well as they would in an intact family. Number one, equal amount of time with mother and father. The closer you get to 50-50, even when the child is like a one-year-old or just born, that leads to the greatest possibility of a positive outcome on so many measures. Number two, father and mother live within about 20 minutes drive time from each other. Because when they don’t, oftentimes, they become very resentful of the other parent because they have to go to that other parent’s home and miss their soccer practice. Therefore, they don’t get the skills and the teamwork and the continuity to be good on the soccer team or miss their best friend’s birthday party or whatever. Number three is that the children cannot experience any bad mouthings from mom toward dad, dad toward mom because when the child looks in the mirror, and let’s say the child’s a boy and hears that your father is irresponsible and your father’s a liar, your father is this and that. That boy is looking in the mirror and saying, well, maybe I’m a narcissist like my dad is really damaging to the child because not only is that child half the genes of the other parent, but also the child can’t bring it up to either parent. Because if it brings it up to the parent that made that complaint, it loses the favoritism of that parent. If it brings it up to the other parent that your dad said this or mom said this about you, that destabilizes the child’s future even more. So the child has a terrible secret all the time. The child’s in a state of betrayal all the time no matter what. I’ve seen children used as weapons continually in exactly that manner. Fourth, the parents are in couples communication counseling or relationship counseling, not just when there is an emergency. When there’s an emergency, everything has to be made as a quick decision, and there’s a tendency to see the other parent’s worst intent. Whereas long-term counseling allows the father and the mother to have time to hear the mother or father’s best intent about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Well, so at the bare minimum, that means that the couple gets together in an administrative sense to sort out the necessary details in the presence of a relatively interest-free, commitment-free, bias-free third party. Once you have children with someone, you’re married to them permanently in some real sense. And so that has to be taken care of.