When parents separate the negative impact on children can be enormous and long lasting.

However, separation can also present a positive opportunity for parents, reverberating down the generations, as I will explain.

When the established family structure, fractures, the whole family is faced with having to respond and adapt to a completely new reality, a change that in many cases, was never anticipated.

Faced with seismic change, disruption and the loss of time with their children, parents often behave in two predictable ways.

The parent, whose main role prior to separation was to support the children on a day to day basis at home and around their schooling, fearing the loss of their primary role, often asserts that they should continue in this role, insisting that it is the children’s best interests.

The other parent, whose main role prior to separation was to provide the main financial support for the family, fearing the loss of the important time with the children, after school, around mealtimes and bedtimes, often asserts that they have a right to half the children’s time, offering to change their work schedule to accommodate this.

These two positions create a polarised competitive approach and do rather miss the point.

Things are now different, the situation has radically changed for everyone, the parents have separated and time with the children is not some commodity or resource to be competed over, like property, however finite it may be.

In doing so, the parents risk creating a hostile environment for themselves and most importantly for their children, magnifying the negative impact for everyone.

Instead, the process of family separation, however traumatic it can be, offers parents an opportunity to redefine their roles and responsibilities around the needs of the children, working together, not in competition, but in a cohesive, collaborative and responsible way, adapting to the new reality.

In these situations, parents have a significant opportunity to show their children that, however hard they might be finding the whole experience, they are determined to do their best to work together focusing on their children’s needs, rather than their own.

This can be an enormous challenge for many parents but one that often does not go amiss for children who sometimes report years later, with the benefit of life experience, how much respect they have for their parents, knowing what they must have been through at the time, putting the children’s needs before their own fears and needs.

What a valuable lesson for children who will of course face their own challenges in the future and will have to decide how to respond.

What a positive post separation legacy to leave children.