Hello,
I separated from the father of my DD before she was 2 years old. Without making this very long with the detail, we'd been together 20(ish) years, and split up due to a fairly seismic change in his life/personality/wellbeing. This makes effective co-parenting extremely difficult, but I am doing my utmost to work with someone I now appear to disagree with on almost everything.
DD is now 3 and beginning to be both aware of our situation, and starting to be able to articulate some feelings. I'd really like to know of any resources about families such as ours and ways of starting to talk about things with her (both as a means of reassuring her, and also beginning to encourage her to talk about anything which upsets/worries her). I appreciate that every situation and age comes with its own challenges, but I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with the task of helping her make her initial steps in the world when communication isn't what it might be in a few years!
Without wanting to dwell on the negatives, I suspect I currently provide the emotional stability in her life and am responsible for trying to maintain a positive view of everyone in her world. She has a tendency to clam up when we speak about her dad/his family and has indicated a few (minor) things which bother her about her time there and I think it's a good thing she is talking about it. It's obviously been a rough couple of years and I'm very keen to give her all of the support I can, so if anyone is aware of any particularly good resources for the very young (or for in the future) then I'd be very grateful to hear about them.
Thank you.