When To Let Go? The Burning Question For Divorced Dads Is How To Hang On.

Many divorced dads live life walking the razor’s edge with children who are so confused and emotionally blackmailed, they can’t recognize real love when it looks them straight in the face.

These guys are surrounded with well meaning friends and family, not to mention internet experts, telling them how to assess when it’s “time to let go”, as if they needed encouragement to lose all hope of ever winning back the hearts and minds of their alienated kids.

“You can’t keep doing this forever” people tell them.

“This is destroying you”.

Imagine a sporting event where your fans stand on the sidelines shouting “There’s no hope! The race is lost! Save your energy!”

If you saw the replay of this year’s Kentucky Derby, you’ll know that miracles are not only possible, but they can be created on command — seemingly out of thin air.

What you need is practical help to stay in the game —training, tools and genius strategies for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

Here’s but one contribution to your efforts:

10 Tips For Hanging On When Everyone Thinks You’re Wasting Your Time.

1. Tell anyone who offers advice about letting go that YOU are the father of these children and the steward of their wellbeing — not their grandparents, aunts or uncles, not your friends, neighbours or colleagues, not your therapist, not your attorney.

2. Take all the breaks you need. Nobody gets to tell you when to rest or for how long. This is how you keep from burning out so you can stay in the game (and if you haven’t won, the game isn’t over yet).

3. Stop yourself from thinking you’re engaged in a “fight” with your ex or a “battle” for your children. Fighting is exhausting and distracts you from your real job. Don’t use those words when you talk about it. There is no fight. A lighthouse doesn’t fight the wind and rain, it just keeps the lamp lit and the beacon keeps sending out its signal.

4. Realize that while you may have been deeply disappointed by the family court system, you don’t have to be hoodwinked. No court on earth can compel you to be a LESS responsible father. Don’t fall for that narrative. You can continue to give your kids what they actually need from you even if a judge decides to make your job frustrating and complicated.

5. This will require considerable creativity on your part and you’ll have to nurture your creativity in ways that may seem to have nothing to do with custody or parenting. Get out and have fun, do new things, be inspired. Your success depends on maintaining a flow of new ideas.

6. Seek out stories from individuals who experienced parental alienation themselves when they were children. You’ll get a lot of strength from hearing them articulate what life was like for them with the alienator and you’ll know exactly why staying in the game means everything to your child, no matter what they say about it now.

7. If you’re not already using a parent communication app, begin immediately. Used properly, this tool will put your ex in a “box” and keep her there between times you need to message her. This will turn down your stress meter by half and give you twice as much control of her behavior.

8. Stop responding to criticisms of your parenting style. Your ex relinquished her right to comment on your parenting when you stopped being a couple raising children together. Her opinions about your parenting are now irrelevant so stop giving them headspace. If someone really wants to help you grow your relationship with your kids, you’ll feel that and take their comments under advisement.

9. Find a support group for divorced dads only. This is no time for political correctness. Regular dads don’t understand your predicament, and divorced moms have different needs than yours. Make no mistake, there IS an appropriately masculine approach to parenting, and you should find some guys to bounce that stuff around with. There is nothing toxic about potent fatherhood.

10. A wise person doesn’t try to play a new game with old rules. The traditional nuclear family has effectively been replaced with something new but the new rules haven’t even been written yet. You actually get to write them yourself.

Imagine playing a bigger game, and actually writing the new rules of family and fatherhood!

Now, imagine doing that together with a group of divorced dads in an atmosphere of high-octane creativity and collective determination to achieve the impossible.

Take a leap of faith and join the first cohort of PATRONUS COLLEGE, School of Magic for Alienated Fathers. Visit undeletabledad.com for details.