Dr. Eric Bender

Or is that some fairy tale that I'm- I think there are times when people come in and say, look, we're, and I've had people call me, we're going to get divorced.

We want to know how to do it in a way that's going to help our kids and not hurt them.

So I think sometimes they come with me, come to me with that idea, or they get referred to me with that idea.

Yeah.

it's often when I see people, they really do want to stay together.

If it's really contentious, I'll say, all right, you need to stop, wait.

And then it gets a little bit more heated and that's hard.

Or with families, because you asked about not just couples, but I see families in groups.

When I'm seeing a kid, I sometimes have to sit with the parents.

Now, if the parents are together, I'll meet with them and talk to them about their kid.

If they're divorced, I will try to meet them separately because what use is it to put them together?

But what I'll do is I'll say things like, okay, I spent about 10 minutes with you.

If your child who lives with you feels any degree of discomfort, the way I feel after spending 10 minutes with you, there's really a problem because I feel completely ignored and your child lives with you.

So I just wonder if you're really ignoring them.

So I think in those moments when there's more than one person in the room, I really liked that there's different dynamics and I could point out to them, look, right now what's going on is you're saying this, you're not even hearing this person and you're saying this and he's not even hearing you.

So we need to figure out what's happening.

So it's the idea of, all right, let's work together.

I think they've missed feeling worked together in a while.

The teaching has always been how the parents communicate during and after the divorce is most important.

To each other?