LOL, Jabber! "No good deed goes unpunished," was the mantra of one of my good friends from college. I haven't heard it for years.

With young children, I think they need to be assured that the divorce wasn't a result of something THEY did. At least, I know with my daughter, who -- as I mentioned earlier in this thread -- was 5 when her father and I divorced, her biggest concern when we told her -- the thing that brought her to tears -- was her belief that she had CAUSED the breakup.

In her case, she had very good friends at daycare whose parents were divorced, and she had innocently suggested to me perhaps 6 months earlier, that perhaps we could get divorced too. The way she saw it, those kids got loads of extra attention from their parents -- and 2X as many toys at Christmas, because they celebrated twice, once with each parent.

Then, without my being aware of it, she'd changed her tune about the "benefits" of divorce after seeing the movie "Kramer vs. Kramer" on TV. (I had no idea she'd seen it!)

Based on my experience, I think kids can come out of a divorce without being too emotionally scarred if the parents are both willing to work at emotionally (as well as financially) supporting their children and working to build the children's self-esteem.

I just saw a website with a program devoted to building kids' self esteem called "High Self Esteem Kids" or something like that.

Joe Rubino, who is promoting it, is someone I have known for about 30 years. I respect him, and he's got some good people involved. But, in the spirit of full-disclosure, I don't know anything about the program, I am not personally involved with it, and I don't have anything to gain financially from that link.

However, if you want to help children, Di, one thing I think is really imperative is to build their self esteem. It's especially important in a situation where the kids are dealing with divorce.