Helping Children Cope With Divorce

David B. Clark, Ph.D.

Divorce usually is painful for children, but if parents handle it appropriately it need not be damaging. With time, the pain of divorce can subside and children of divorce can lead happy, productive lives with no significant impairments in functioning due to their parents’ divorce. If parents misbehave and do not manage the divorce process or themselves appropriately, however, children can be harmed in ways that leave lasting damage. Here are some suggestions for avoiding some of the more common ways that parents can harm children in divorce.

Protect Children From Conflict

Research has shown that the major risk factor for children of divorce is the degree and nature of conflict between their parents. Children are harmed by chronic exposure to parental conflict, both before and after divorce. Chronic exposure to parental conflict can cause chronic emotional over-arousal in children, causing them to have problems with managing their own emotions such as anger, anxiety and depression. Chronic exposure to parental conflict can cause children to fear that one parent may harm the other, leaving them less safe and secure. Children can even start to fear that parents who are angry and aggressive toward each other can become aggressive toward the child, causing them to fear their own parents. The damaging effects of exposure to parental conflict are compounded by the fact that although children may see the conflict, they may not see the reconciliation later, and may miss the opportunity to calm and soothe themselves.

Children’s involvement in parental conflict is even worse than mere exposure. Not only are they exposed to it, they become actively engaged in it. Parents sometimes actively encourage children’s involvement, but sometimes children “volunteer” to join the battle. Either way, it is harmful to children and should be discouraged by both parents. Children usually do not know the whole story of their parents’ problems (and they shouldn’t) but they still often try to figure out who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy.” Due to their immaturity and lack of complete knowledge, they often are mistaken. Children who elect to or who are encouraged to become involved and take sides in parental conflict risk loosing the relationship with one parent or even an entire side of their family. They also risk developing into adults whose interpersonal relationships are calculating and manipulative and who have difficulty maintaining long-term intimate relationships when others inevitably disappointment them.

Parents should make determined efforts to protect and shield their children from their conflicts. They should understand that children often seek out information that would be best for them not to know, even when parents are trying to keep the information from them. Parents should carefully guard legal documents and other materials relating to the case. Parents should communicate with other people and each other about the case only when the children are out of eyesight and out of earshot, and cannot see or hear those communications. Whenever possible, parents should work on legal documents and communicate about their case and their issues at times when the children are at school or otherwise occupied.

Be The Grown-Up

Divorce is difficult and painful for parents, and sometimes parents fall into what researchers call “parental abdication.” Simply put, parents sometimes stop functioning as parents. They may become mired in their own depression. They may become overly wrapped up in their new social lives. They may become engulfed in anger. Parents whose pain has led them to abdicate parenting put their children at risk for a great many negative outcomes. Despite their pain, parents must continue to function as stable and reliable caregivers. Parents who withdraw from children risk causing anxiety and depression in children of all ages, and antisocial behavior due to lack of supervision in older children. Parents who are consumed by their own emotions such as depression or anger are frightening to children, and make children feel they do not have a safe, secure attachment to a reliable caregiver who can provide for them and protect them.

Parents in pain should not use their children as confidants. This excessively burdens children with parenting their parents. Parents should manage their own mental health needs and not use their children as therapists. Parents also should not use their children as spies to keep up with what the other parent is doing. This places the children in the utterly impossible position of feeling they have betrayed the other parent if they agree to become a spy, or have betrayed the requesting parent if they refuse the request. It also puts children in a loyalty bind when parents ask them to keep secrets from the other parent. Parents should not use their children as couriers to relay messages to each other, especially when those messages are highly sensitive or possibly inflammatory. Communication between parents is the responsibility of parents, not children. Making children responsible for this places inappropriate responsibility on them and exposes them to potential distress and/or loyalty conflicts. Most of all, parents should not use children as a weapon against the other parent. In many divorces parents are arguing with each other about who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. It can be tempting to alienate the child against the other parent, thereby proving to yourself you are the good one and the other is the bad one. To put it bluntly, this is nothing less than exploitation and abuse of one’s own child. Don’t do it.

Separate Spousal Versus Parental Roles

If you are divorcing or divorced, there is a good chance you think your spouse or ex was a bad spouse. That does not necessarily mean, however, that they are a bad parent (or for that matter that you are right about who was the bad guy in the marriage). When parents divorce, they end their spousal relationship. If they have children, however, they continue their parenting relationship. Divorces go much better for parents and for children when parents can make the cognitive shift from a spousal relationship to a businesslike co-parenting relationship. It helps to remember that many of the flaws we see in our ex-spouses and many of the resentments we have are related to their behavior as spouses, not as parents. It helps to remember that your children very likely have an entirely different viewpoint of the other parent’s worth as a human being and a parent than you do. It helps to remember that it is important for children whenever possible to maintain a positive image of both parents, because that helps them have a positive self-image. The parent who fosters a negative image in children of the other parent is undermining the children’s own self-image. Whenever possible, parents should encourage and support children’s positive view of the other parent and should give children a “green light” letting them know that you want them to love and respect the other parent and that you do not consider it a betrayal. Children often feel that to display loyalty to one parent it is necessary to be disloyal to the other. Parents should not encourage this themselves, and should actively discourage it if they see children doing it.

David B. Clark, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Chesterfield, Missouri. His practice includes counseling of children, adolescents and adults; psychological evaluations and child custody evaluations in family law matters; mediation; parenting coordination; and consultation to attorneys and clients in family law matters. He may be reached by telephone at 636-537-8222.

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