Combat the Effects of Divorce on Children

The effects of divorce on children can impact every aspect of their life. It can cause them to develop behavioral problems, it can impact their ability to develop healthy relationships and it can create emotional and mental illnesses. These negative effects can happen to children of all ages, even adult children. If you want to protect your children from these negative effects of divorce then you need to use strategies that are appropriate for your child’s age. Here is some advice on how to handle children and divorce.

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You may think that very young children are the most vulnerable to the effects of divorce, however, you may be surprised at how resilient they can be as long as you provide them with security and continuity. These two things are critically important during this stage of your child’s development because this is when they are developing their attachment styles.

If you don’t take steps to protect your child from excessive disruption to their normal schedule during and after your divorce, or if you deny them access to both parents under calm and relaxed conditions, then your young child may develop an unhealthy attachment style that the rest of the relationships in their life will be based on.

Pre-adolescent children have the ability to understand what divorce is and they also have the capability to handle the added responsibilities of helping the family unit to remain successful after the divorce. To help your pre-adolescent children to adjust to your divorce you need to talk to them and reassure them that the divorce is not their fault, that both of their parents still love them and that you want to know how they feel about things.

If your kids are having a hard time expressing their emotions then you may want to utilize non-verbal forms of communication like play acting and art projects.

Adolescents are very vulnerable to the effects of divorce. This is because their emotional development has entered a period where they feel very isolated from the world and they feel the pain of divorce deeply.

Adolescents also have a tendency to carry the emotional and psychological pain of divorce with them throughout their lives. Because of this you really need to work with your teens to help them adjust to the changes caused by divorce in a positive manner. This may mean that you will need to visit with a family counselor together to work things out.

While most literature on divorce deals with the effects of divorce on children and on adolescents, there is relatively little information about the effects of divorce on adult children and how you can help them to deal with the changes caused by divorce.

Adult children feel just as estranged and hurt by their parents’ divorce as minor children do. Because of this you may want to talk with your adult children to help them work their way through their grief about your divorce. Because they are adults you can engage them in a reasonable discussion about why the divorce is happening and you can also discuss the positive side of the divorce.