Will My Kids Be Okay?: The First 90 Days of a Divorce Shape Everything & How to Make them Count
Will my kids be Okay?
That's the question that keeps a lot of parents up at night when they first step into the divorce process. But what most parents don't realize is that it's not the divorce itself that's harmful to children — it's how parents handle it that can create lasting challenges for kids.
As therapists and divorce professionals with over 30 years of combined experience working with families of divorce, Hallie and I know that the steps taken and decisions made in the first 90 days shape everything that comes after. They have one of the biggest impacts on the divorce itself, on the future co-parenting relationship, and on your children's long-term wellbeing.
We believe that there are four pillars of a true child-centered divorce: the divorce process (and the attorney you choose), the parenting plan, co-parent dynamics, and your ability to do the behind-the-scenes work of separating yourself from your former spouse and shifting into a new identity.
Here's what each one looks like — and why getting it right matters more than most parents realize.
Pillar One: The Divorce Process
Most parents default to whatever they've heard about — usually litigation — and end up in a process that was never the right fit for their family.
There are actually five common paths through a divorce: litigation, settlement negotiation, mediation, kitchen table (where parents handle it themselves with attorney review), and collaborative divorce. Each one has very different financial costs, time investments, levels of conflict, and impacts on children.
The process you choose shapes how often your kids see their parents fight, how long they live inside the uncertainty of an active divorce, and how much of the family's financial resources are still available to them on the other side. Litigation, for example, can take years and cost tens of thousands of dollars while keeping families in chronic conflict. Collaborative divorce, in contrast, brings in a team — specially-trained attorneys, a coach, and sometimes a child specialist or financial neutral — committed to resolving the divorce without going to court.
The process you choose is, fundamentally, a parenting decision. Most parents have never been told it's one of the most consequential decisions of the entire divorce. Once they hear that — and learn what their actual options are — they make it differently.
Pillar Two: The Parenting Plan
The parenting plan is the operating manual for the rest of your kids' childhood. The schedule. The holiday rotation. The rules around communication, transitions, decision-making, and what happens when one parent wants to move or introduce a new partner.
Vague plans look flexible but almost always produce conflict. Specific plans look rigid but usually produce peace, structure, and routine for kids (three things that are critical for kids, particularly during times of stress).
And remember, parenting plans should be temporary and evolve as your child grows and as your co-parenting relationship progresses. Knowing that you are not trying to make decisions now that you’ll have to live with over the next 18 years can reduce anxiety and increase flexibility and compromise.
The most child-centered plans aren't pulled from a template. They reflect the specific child you have. Their age. Their development. Their attachment needs. Their physical or mental health needs. Their school schedule. Their extracurriculars. The number of homes they're moving between and the time they need to settle into each one.
Most parents come into the planning process underprepared. They sign agreements they barely read and live to regret the gaps two years later. The work of building a strong parenting plan isn't dramatic — it's specific, methodical, and worth the time it takes up front. The hours spent here save dozens on the back end.
While there are resources out there that can help you brainstorm, there is nothing that replaces the support of a coach or mediator who can help you think through all of the decisions in front of you and ensure that you are making decisions based on the needs of your child, not the emotions from the marriage.
Pillar Three: Co-Parent Dynamics
How you relate to and communicate with your co-parent shapes the temperature of every interaction your kids absorb. Children are co-regulating off your nervous system. When you're activated by a text from your co-parent, your kids feel it. When you're regulated, they feel that too — and that's what gives them the safety to feel their own feelings without taking on yours.
The single most important shift in co-parent dynamics is the move from spouse to co-parent. You are not exes navigating logistics. You are parents running a team across two homes. And you are not parenting with your ex. You are parenting with your child’s other parent. That mindset change shows up in everything: how you write the email, how you stand at the exchange, what you say when your child complains about the other parent.
Practical tools matter here. Bill Eddy’s BIFF — brief, informative, friendly, firm — is one of the most useful frameworks for co-parent communication via texts and emails. Validating your child's feelings when they come to you about the other parent or other house, without commiserating against the other parent, protects them from loyalty binds and the need to silo their lives. Keeping adult problems adult problems means your kids aren't carrying messages, holding secrets, or absorbing your emotional weight. Your kids get to keep being kids.
None of this is easy. All of it is essential.
Pillar Four: The Behind-the-Scenes Work
The fourth pillar is the one most parents don’t even think about — and it's the one that quietly shapes everything else.
A divorce isn't just a change in marital status. It's an identity shift. You're moving from married to single. From "we" to "I." From the parent you were inside the marriage to the parent you'll be across two homes. From the future you imagined to one you'll build differently.
None of this happens automatically. It takes intentional and often painful inner work.
Grief is a big part of this. So is nervous system regulation, so you don't make decisions in fight-or-flight that you'll have to live with for years or that detrimentally impact your children. And so is radical acceptance — the practice of fully acknowledging and accepting reality as it is, without denying it, fighting it, or wishing it were different, even when it's painful. It’s acceptance that the marriage is over, acceptance that you ex won’t show up differently to the divorce than they did in the marriage, and acceptance that this chapter will be hard, but it too shall pass.
The parents whose kids do best after divorce aren't the ones with the most disciplined schedules or the most aggressive lawyers. They're the ones who did this internal work — quietly, repeatedly, over time — and showed up steady, collaborative, and stronger because of it.
What's Possible
Here's what we want every divorcing parent in our community to know:
Kids who grow up inside high-conflict divorces carry it. Into their relationships. Into their own parenting. Into the way they handle (or avoid) conflict for the rest of their lives. And a good process can leave a family steadier, healthier, and more whole than they were before. A process driven by fear and conflict can deplete everyone in it for years.
What separates those two outcomes is rarely who is getting divorced. It's whether the parents had the right information early enough to make different choices.
The first 90 days are where those choices get made. If you're in them now — or about to be — you don't have to figure this out alone. You don't have to guess.
Their future is being shaped right now. By every choice you make. By how much information you have. By whether anyone ever told you there was a better way.
There is. We promise. And we created it.
The Co-Parent Collective exists to do what the legal system was never built to do: support the people inside the divorce while it's happening. Our Child-Centered Divorce Playbooks give parents the early, child-centered information and resources we wish every family had on day one. The practical, developmentally-informed roadmap for navigating this without losing yourself, your money, or the version of your family you'll have on the other side.
Course 1 — The First 90 Days — is live. The early, child-centered choices that shape what comes next. Course 2 — Child-Centered Co-Parenting — protocols and communication habits for the long game. Join the waitlist to be first in.
Please note that the blogpost above does not represent the thoughts or opinions of Fresh Start Registry and solely represents the original author’s perspective.