Step 1: Understanding is to acknowledge that children are half mother and half father. Therefore, both biological parents—living or deceased, in their children’s lives or not—will always be keys to the emotional health of their children and must be given considerable respect.
Step 2: Acceptance means that you are to accept life as it is now handed to you. It means to Accept your separation, the fact that you now have an ex, and the reality that your children are going to be raised between two households. It means to Accept your ex’s partner, the partner’s children and family, and to allow them, with safeguards in place, into your life and your children’s lives.
Step 3: Amnesia means to put away the negative emotions of the past, and to treat the other parent as if there has never been a problem between you. Amnesia is to never inform your children of the difficulties you have suffered because of their other parent.
Step 4: Mercy is recognizing a parent’s failures but adding a but, still, yet, or nevertheless, followed by expressions of care and love for that parent. Children are not designed to measure out justice or issue verdicts or penalties toward their own parents: They are only designed to give them Mercy.
Step 5: Neutral—Damaging recognizes that only positive responses between parents, and positive responses between children and parents, build stable internal structures in children. Any other kind of response—Neutral or negative—will continue to damage kids.
Step 6: Benefiting means to do good to the ex and the ex’s new family, now! It’s setting the example for your children. It’s behaving as if you are healed from your difficult past with your ex.
Step 7: The Cost of Doing Business is adapting to the difficult behaviors of the other parent and enduring hardship. It also means making peace for the sake of the stability of your kids.