Overview

From the author of the bestselling Your Baby & Child comes a book full of completely practical, comprehensively researched information and advice on how you can do what is best for your child when you are going through a separation or divorce. Using the latest scientific research in child development, Penelope Leach covers the various effects of divorce on children in five stages of life-infants, toddlers/preschoolers, primary school children, teenagers, college students/young adults-many of whom are far more deeply affected than previously thought. She explains recent studies that overturn many common assumptions and that show, for example, how many standard custody arrangements for very young children are harmful to children's attachment to their parents and therefore to their brain development. There is evidence to suggest that the practice of having infants and toddlers spend regular overnights with noncustodial parents may be damaging, and the practice of dividing children's time equally between the parents is seldom best for the children. Leach's advice is meticulously considered and exhaustive, covering everything from access, custody, and financial and legal considerations to managing separate sets of technology in two houses, and she includes the voices of both parents and children to illustrate her points. She explains why mutual parenting is the ideal way to co-parent after a divorce and delineates ways to carry this out. And throughout, she makes clear that, most importantly in any separation or divorce, both parents must put their relationship to their children and responsiveness to their needs ahead of their feelings about each other.

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9781504616409

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Reviews

A guide to managing the fallout for children when parents choose to separate and divorce...Leach strikes the right balance between a hard-nosed examination of the data and a compassionate, let's-make-this-work pragmatism. This will allow parents to shore up their children's stability when it may feel like everything else is crumbling down. -- Kirkus Reviews A real go-to expert in child development (Your Baby & Child has sold more than 1.25 million copies), Leach addresses the sorry truth that fewer than half of today's children will celebrate their sixteenth birthday with their parents still together. Her big concern: today's well-meant custodial arrangements can be detrimental, particularly for young children, undermining parental attachment and hence brain development. -- Library Journal

Author Information

Penelope Leach is a research psychologist and one of the world's leading experts on child development. Her books include Your Baby and Child, Babyhood, and Children First. She is a fellow of the British Psychological Society, a visiting professor at Winchester University, and a senior research fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, and at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. She has been a member of the Professional Advisory Council of the American Institute for Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies, a member of the Curriculum Board of Sesame Street, a consulting editor of Child magazine, vice president of the Health Visitors' Association, and president and chair of the Child Development Society. Fran Tunno has been well known in Los Angeles as a morning radio personality and news reporter for more than fifteen years. She is also the voice of numerous radio and television commercials and has been involved in recording for the audiobook industry for several years.

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