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Health & Fitness

Holiday Cheer?

For families with divorced or divorcing parents, the holidays can be difficult.

In the TV ads, the families are gathering around the tree and the candles again, sharing the joy of the holiday season.  Yet, it many homes, the holidays are not “the most wonderful time of the year” – but the most stressful.  And if your holiday season feels out of control, the media images of holiday cheer can make you feel even worse.   

For families with divorced or divorcing parents, the holidays can be difficult.  In addition to deciding who spends which day with the children, the parents must also face other concerns - who will pay for family gifts?  What can we afford this year?  Who will stay home from work to cover the school vacation days?  How do you create new traditions for the new family set-up?  The TV commercials may not address any of this, but divorce mediators do.

In divorce mediation, parents craft parenting plans that cover these and other challenging issues.  In mediation, divorced or divorcing couples meet with a trained impartial mediator to develop creative solutions that work for each individual family.  By creating these plans together, parents are more likely to be able to follow them, thereby reducing the stresses of the season.  And reducing stress benefits everyone.  Studies show that it is the conflict associated with divorce rather than the divorce itself which hurts children the most.  Through divorce mediation, families can make holiday plans that make sense for them, bringing the joy back to this time of year.

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For more information about divorce mediation contact Randi M. Albert, JD, or Michelle Weinberg, LMFT, at Westfield Mediation, LLC, at 908.913.0373.  View our website at www.westfieldnjmediation.com or email us at info@westfieldnjmediation.com

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