Divorce takes a toll on both parents and children. While separation may be best for the parents, it’s important to support and understand the child’s perception of such a great change.
When you curl up on your couch to watch a rom-com, which is guaranteed to conclude happily, remember that 194 divorces have potentially occurred by the time the family hits happily ever after status. In America, one divorce occurs every 33 seconds according to the National Institutes of Health.
The normalization of divorce makes the struggles that children undergo become easily overlooked.
“Observing how adults interact with one another is a model for how kids develop and interact with others. It impacts how they see the value in relationships,” ELHS school social worker Brooke McInerney said.
When a child is observing divorce in action, they may try to identify the factors that led to the split such as poor communication or lack of commitment. It is common for a child to absorb these characteristics and apply them to future relationships. Having stable relationships to model off of has a huge impact on how children perceive healthy relationships.
“If kids don’t feel safe to have conversations with their parents because of a lack of communication, then they’re going to feel less safe having conversations in their own intimate relationships, and the cycle is bound to repeat,” school counselor Elizabeth Maiese said.
As they enter into new relationships, children of divorce face the task of avoiding emulating their parents’ issues with communication.
Children witness their parents’ interactions and absorb their communication style. This will impact them negatively if there are no positive interactions.
“I’ve never thought to connect this to my parents’ divorce, but anytime I get into a more serious relationship, I freak out and break it off,” a student who wishes to remain anonymous for privacy purposes said.
Many children feel obligated to mature earlier than necessary when they have to cope with the challenging circumstances of divorced parents. The term over- parentification describes this circumstance.
“Children are becoming overparentified, which means that, particularly in cases where a parent is divorcing, they are
taking on the role of parent to their parents or siblings,” Ms. McInerney said.
Over-parentification occurs in relationships between children and separated parents, where the child feels a need to pick up on household chores and responsibilities otherwise considered adult roles to make up for the problems between parents. That being said, many kids are also forced to grow up faster due to their parents not divorcing.
“I feel like if my parents divorced, it would have given me back my childhood in a way. I wouldn’t have felt the need to shield my sister from everything,” another student, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
Being exposed to the reality of unhappy relationships forces a young child to have a mature mindset at an age when the most of their worries should be making it home by the time the streetlights go out.
“Only a small number of high school students come in with parents divorcing, but by that time it’s almost a relief,” Ms. Maiese said.
After the divorce, children can sometimes discover their parents are happier. Anonymous student #2 said that as an older sibling, they’re “more seen as a third adult in [their] house rather than one of the kids.”
Maintaining adult communication instead of communicating via the child is one of the most crucial- and most difficult- tasks that parents can do to help make a divorce more comfortable for a child.
“Whether you like each other or not, parenting involves considerable amounts of decision-making with your former partner, which is simpler when cooperation and communication are maintained without outbursts,” parent Jennifer Segal, who divorced in 2017, said.
Divorce is extremely challenging for everyone, especially children. With the right support from parents, children of divorce can grow up to be strong and resilient.
