How does counseling help kids of divorce?

Along with producing many meditation CD/MP3’s, such as Meditations for Abundance and Love: Volume I Deserving and Volume II: Manifesting (available here at: http://bit.ly/meditat3), I have also written a best-selling book, The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict, available in print or PDF at inlovewithme.com/books, or on Kindle through Amazon at http://amzn.to/TIRGz4. Individual chapters are also for sale on https://inlovewithme.com/books/e-book-chapters.

Here is an excerpt about counseling kids of divorce:

singleparent2Spending time with a counselor provides your child with one-on-one time with an adult who is focused on them. This can be especially crucial if parents are struggling emotionally. When I work with children, we sometimes discuss and process difficult things. We also have fun together. I always spend some time with each child doing something that they enjoy doing. There is always time in my sessions where the child has complete control. Children can sometimes feel out of control during the divorce.
Children thrive when they feel that they are the focus of the session and this is special time just for them.

Someone to Share Their Feelings With: Children can share with counselors what they may be afraid to share with their parents. Your children may not want to share certain things with you for various reasons. The biggest reason is that they do not want to hurt you or your feelings. They want to protect you. Children are so amazingly intelligent. They have so many amazing thoughts and concerns going through their minds. You would not believe some of the concerns I have heard. I would never believe them had I not heard them directly from the children as I worked with them. Children may be afraid to share these concerns with you. They also may have been asked to keep secrets by one or both of their parents. Once your child trusts their therapist, they can share these concerns with the therapist. I tell all the children I work with that they can tell me anything and I will not share it with their parents unless it is a life-threatening situation and I have to tell. I do tell them that if I think we should share it with their parents, that we will discuss this. This gives children a lot of freedom in being able to work with me to process some deep fears. I want children to trust me because my goal as a therapist is to be there for them. If they can share something with me, and choose not to share it with their parents, I still believe that it is healthier because the child and I can process through the concern. They are able to release a lot of stress in sharing their fear with me. This promotes healthy development for your child.

Shannon R Rios MS is a successful Life Coach and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She coaches parents as a life coach through her life coaching business www.inlovewithme.com so that parents can move forward and create healthy lives and relationships with themselves, their children and others. She is also the founder of www.healthychildrenofdivorce.com

If you enjoyed this article, her best-selling book on parenting after divorce and healing after divorce is The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict and can be found here: https://inlovewithme.com/books

Being Proactive: The effects of divorce on your child

Along with producing many meditation CD/MP3’s, such as Meditations for Abundance and Love: Volume I Deserving and Volume II: Manifesting (available here at: http://bit.ly/meditat3), I have also written a best-selling book, The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict,  available in print or PDF  at inlovewithme.com/books,  or on Kindle through Amazon at http://amzn.to/TIRGz4. Individual chapters are also for sale on https://inlovewithme.com/books/e-book-chapters.

Here is an excerpt on being proactive with the effects of divorce on your child:

Young child holding yellow flower to her face

Some parents may feel bad that their child “has” to see a professional due to their divorce. You should only feel bad if you do not have your child see a professional. My model of working with families of divorce is a proactive model. I do not believe something has to be “wrong” with the child. Children need to process their divorce experience with a professional so that nothing stands in your child’s way of living to their full potential. Even in the best divorce situations, children still have huge feelings; acknowledging these feelings early on is healthy. With every child I work with, I work through the child’s concerns so they can let them go and move forward more easily in life. If they don’t acknowledge them now, they will have to do this work later and it will be far more difficult for them later in life. Give your child the gift of working with someone who can assist them now in living to their full potential. I prefer to work with children early on vs. later when they are having bigger issues such as failing in school, drugs, drinking, etc. I talked with a counselor who saw teenage children for many different issues. Her practice was not focused on children of divorce, its focus was teens with issues. She said, “Most of the children I see are children of divorce. That ends up being a focus of my practice by default.”

National studies report that children of divorce are referred for mental health visits about three times as often as children in two-parent, intact families. Please note, these are not proactive visits, these are children with issues after the divorce has occurred. This is my point. If we take care of children up front, they will struggle less and have to seek less counseling later as teenagers or in their adult years.

Shannon R Rios MS is a successful Life Coach and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She coaches parents as a life coach through her life coaching business www.inlovewithme.com so that parents can move forward and create healthy lives and relationships with themselves, their children and others. She is also the founder of www.healthychildrenofdivorce.com

If you enjoyed this article, her best-selling book on parenting after divorce and healing after divorce is The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict and can be found here: https://inlovewithme.com/books

Food and Health Issue 5: What Can You Do To Get Started?

healthy womanWhat can you do to get started?

  1.  Commit to your health, physically and mentally.  Make a verbal and or written commitment to eating better.
  2. Decide on a period of time 5-21 days where you will either eliminate sugar or wheat from your diet.  My sister used the strategy where she did not eat any white bread or sugar, she changed her eating and exercising habits and lost a lot of weight and felt much better mentally as well.
  3. Know that you have a choice.
  4. Remember this is NOT a diet, it is a way of life.  You are NOT limiting yourself.  Actually eating higher fat allows me foods I have not eating a lot of in the past!
  5. If I have to have chocolate I eat 80% or higher dark chocolate – my favorite is Panama Extra Dark Organic 80%.
  6. Commit to small changes each week.
  7. Get support from an online community, a coach or a natural health practitioner.

Ideas (some things I have done to change my life):

  1. Begin cooking and using coconut oil and coconut milk (the real stuff in the can).
  2. Drink a green smoothie each day (recipe  here).
  3. Limit your sugar.
  4. Read EVERY label before buying anything!  If it has words you can not read or pronounce then your body CAN NOT process them either, put it down and move on to something with less ingredients.
  5. Do not eat anything with added sugars
  6. Do not eat anything with more than 5% sugar per serving.
  7. Take at least the top of your bun off every sandwich and cut your hamburger or meat, and just allow yourself a taste of the wheat if you really need that.

How to Assess Conflict

Along with producing many meditation CD/MP3’s, such as Meditations for Abundance and Love: Volume I Deserving and Volume II: Manifesting (available here at: http://bit.ly/meditat3), I have also written a best-selling book, The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict,  available in print or PDF  at inlovewithme.com/books,  or on Kindle through Amazon at http://amzn.to/TIRGz4. Individual chapters are also for sale on https://inlovewithme.com/books/e-book-chapters.

Here is an excerpt about how to assess the conflict level in your relationships:

Impact your Kids in a positive wayIt is time to lay down the weapons you are aiming at your co-parent. This is important so you do not harm your child in the crossfire. What weapons are you still holding? Weapons that hurt your child can look like anger, withholding visitation, child support arguments, old hurts, small issues you continue to bring up. We have enough war in this world, let’s not have war in our homes. You have direct control over this war.19 Take control and make peace for your child. Continued fighting is your inability to let go of this relationship emotionally. Make a choice to emotionally let all of this old anger that you no longer need to hold on to. Do not bring this anger into the new life you are creating for you and your child. Do this for your child. They deserve a peaceful life. If you are still fighting, you have not let go of this relationship on an emotional level. You must either make the conscious choice to let it go or seek professional assistance to do this.

Shannon R Rios MS is a successful Life Coach and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She coaches parents as a life coach through her life coaching business www.inlovewithme.com so that parents can move forward and create healthy lives and relationships with themselves, their children and others. She is also the founder of www.healthychildrenofdivorce.com

If you enjoyed this article, her best-selling book on parenting after divorce and healing after divorce is The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict and can be found here: https://inlovewithme.com/books

Food and Health Issue 4: Eating and Health Go Hand in Hand

Read First Issue Here:  https://inlovewithme.com/food-health-issue-story

Read Second Issue Here: https://inlovewithme.com/food-health-issue-2-change-course

Read Third Issue Here: https://inlovewithme.com/food-health-issue-3-completing-journey

This was a huge journey of loving myself.

happy dressWow life has changed, eating has changed and they go hand in hand.   Sometimes I fall off the wagon but each time I get back on the wagon and commit to my health, it gets easier and easier.  Eating healthier is a way of life now.  Do I emotionally eat once in a while, of course but it is nothing like it used to be.

I do not do low-fat, I have learned that the right fats are actually so healthy for our bodies.  High fat (good fat as in greek yogurt, grass-fed beef, avocado) is good for us.  This also is a new fact that we have not previously had the correct knowledge about.  It is all about eliminating the things that are not good for our bodies – sugar, wheat, processed foods and chemicals, and bad trans fats (think deep frying).    I also have started a green smoothie in the morning, while it may not taste amazing, I know my body loves it.  I find I crave sugars even less eating this healthy smoothie each day.  It also keeps me full for hours!  It has the nutrients my body really needs.

As we journey together I will share my thoughts, ideas, recipes and remedies.  Food is crucial to our health and our overall life experience.  In all my life coaching and executive coaching, food and nutrition is a large aspect.  Follow my “Love Yourself with Food” blog here:

foodblog.inlovewithme.com

 

Stay tuned for Issue 5: What Can You Do To Get Started? – Next Week!

Understand the Impact of Your Behavior On Children

Along with producing many meditation CD/MP3’s, such as Meditations for Abundance and Love: Volume I Deserving and Volume II: Manifesting (available here at: http://bit.ly/meditat3), I have also written a best-selling book, The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict,  available in print or PDF  at inlovewithme.com/books,  or on Kindle through Amazon at http://amzn.to/TIRGz4. Individual chapters are also for sale on https://inlovewithme.com/books/e-book-chapters.

Here is an excerpt on understanding the impact of your behavior on your children:

Courtesy of David Castillo Dominici Freedigitalphotos.netAlways remember you are a mirror for your child. They model your behavior. You are the person they will learn the most from in their life. They spend the first 18 years with you learning how to be successful in life. If all you demonstrate is fighting and conflict, this is all your children will learn. They learn no appropriate conflict resolution skills. They will not learn how to functionally express their feelings and emotions in a healthy manner… Children learn from their conflicting parents to deal with problems with verbal and physical aggression. In my home growing up, the conflict felt non-stop. My parents lived in continuous fighting and anger without ever issuing an apology. When I went off to live at college, what do you think I created with my roommates? I created all that I had ever known, fighting and conflict. I could not get along with anyone I lived with. I cannot even explain to you in words the heartache and pain this caused me. All I wanted was to live in peace after all the fighting I had experienced at home, yet I had no idea how to live this way. I had never been taught the skills to effectively resolve conflict. I still gravitate towards just one good friend versus a whole group of people. The dynamics of many people together as friends can still overwhelm me. I was and am an amazing person; however, I did not know how to effectively live with anyone.

Shannon R Rios MS is a successful Life Coach and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She coaches parents as a life coach through her life coaching business www.inlovewithme.com so that parents can move forward and create healthy lives and relationships with themselves, their children and others. She is also the founder of www.healthychildrenofdivorce.com

If you enjoyed this article, her best-selling book on parenting after divorce and healing after divorce is The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict and can be found here: https://inlovewithme.com/books