[9:00 AM] The stepmother shrugs as she walks out of my office, apparently relinquishing her duties for an hour to me, the boy’s counselor.
Briefly observe the girl for a moment to gauge her condition; I notice that the eleven-year-old girl, slumped in her seat, doesn’t meet my gaze. I can’t tell if she has more bandages on her wrists, hands or neck since last week. She could be cutting herself in the same places. Or, she may have finally found a better way to vent her anger.
[1:30 PM] I wonder if this is becoming a pointless exercise. Every time the mother leaves her five-year-old daughter with me, the girl just has a fit… just like that! They must hear her crying throughout the building. And there’s her mom, coming back and crying too.
We need to find a different way to meet, but she has become very insecure since her parents divorced.
[4:00 PM] I watch him looking at the titles of the books on my shelf. You may be interested in child psychology. You are certainly getting the first hand experience. However, I notice that his gaze is fixed only on the photo of my son.
“Yours?” he asks.
When I answer in the affirmative, he turns to me only to say, “So how long are you going to have it?”
These three examples from a counseling day allow the reader to see some of the effects of divorce when separations are not handled well for children.
While it is commonly held that about half of all marriages end in divorce, the less familiar number would be how many children are affected. Newsweek recently stated that up to 1 million American children each year experience their parents’ divorce. Furthermore, “these children are twice as likely as their peers to be divorced and more likely to have mental health problems” (April 21, 2008, pp. 48,49).
By measuring the impact more clearly, the National Institute of Mental Health shows, in “Post-Divorce Preventive Sessions, Protects Children in Adolescence,” that while most children can handle divorce, a quarter of Teenagers have serious difficulties adjusting to the new relationship. (www.nimh.nih.gov). In “Dealing with Divorce,” the author directs parents to realize that “your attitude shapes your child’s attitude.” Parents’ “words and actions” strongly shape a child’s development during the period of divorce-related trauma (www.helpguide.org/mental/children_divorce).
The beginning of a solution for children of divorce can best be found in the response from Barbara Cochran, a counselor at Community Counseling Services. “Parents do not divorce their children.” she claims.
For example, parents may mistakenly associate their children with the failed marriage. In cases like these, the father or mother is only building walls that make it difficult, or perhaps even impossible, to have relationships with their children. Cochran explains, “I tell parents if you’re still having issues with each other, try to keep the kids out of it.”
In a divorce, the connections between the adults change radically, from a marital relationship, to a parent-partner relationship. Therefore, the lines of communication must also change. The couple should no longer talk about old disagreements and problems between them. Exchanges like these are based on what went wrong in your marriage. After the divorce, your conversations should focus on your children. Each parent talks to his or her children, and either parent can talk to the other parent, but only about matters specifically related to the children and their care. There must be cooperation for the sake of the children.
Cochran described children responding to the conflict in their parents’ divorce in very different ways. Some act with criminal or violent behavior and uncontrolled anger; others simply isolate themselves and fall into depression, substance abuse, or frequent headaches, accidents, or injuries. He also showed how children in high-conflict homes don’t interact well with others or have problems with school. “The bottom line,” says Cochran, “is that children need both parents.”
“All children experience problems adjusting to divorce. Many children fear being abandoned or replaced, feel guilty that they are in any way responsible, and are very anxious about what will happen next,” she adds.
Children of divorced parents need someone they can talk to, and it may not be their parents. From the children’s point of view, they may avoid sharing everything with their parents simply because they don’t want to add to the parents’ problems.
However, “one of the most powerful tips is to reserve 10 to 15 minutes a day for each of your children,” since one of the main causes of behavior problems is the lack of communication between parents and children (Parents Are Forever, 30).
Community Counseling Services is a United Way agency operating with the support of the ADAMH Board of Crawford and Marion Counties.
