Author Vikki Stark Conducts Over 100 Interviews With Children For New Book About Separation And Divorce
Vikki Stark, a divorce recovery specialist and a family therapist for over thirty (30) years, published this book in 2015. Her stated purpose in writing the book was to make the “telling” to the children of the news that a family was going to be separating as non-traumatic as possible. To research this subject area, the author conducted over one hundred (100) interviews with children and with adults who were children when their parents separated and divorced. She also interviewed parents who had already done the “telling” to their children to learn about their positive and negative experiences in doing so. Finally, she read and researched many articles written by other professionals in the same field.
The main points from Chapter 1, A Bridge to Your Next Life, are as follows:
- You cannot avoid the anger or sorrow that your children may feel; but you can learn skills to reduce the trauma.
- You must become “attuned” to your children’s emotions. Attunement means listening carefully to what they are saying, acknowledging and accepting their feelings.
- Hearing or reading the actual words of children who have
Summer is coming.
A healthy 3-year-old is placed in a foster home. A month later, a 16-year-old with a history of borderline personality disorder is placed in the same home. Without permission, the 16-year-old decides to give the 3-year-old a bath. Tragically, the 3-year-old drowns. Whatever the exact circumstances, and the foster parents’ behavior and liability aside, was it negligent of the agency initially to place the teenager in the same home as the young child?