Boy, did my blog post, Children In Divorce & Separation, provoke a response! Not in comments, because it’s a painful subject; but in more hits on my website than ever before. There’s obviously a lot of hurt out there, especially around the holidays.

That article dealt with the effects of family breakdown on children – in other words, after the event. So I’m going to follow up with a couple of “before the event” ideas on ways to avoid stress. Hopefully, a few simple strategies should tide you over for the holiday period until you can seek outside help.

First, though, we need to understand the various stages of relationship breakdown.