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Children are far more likely to develop abandonment fears and separation anxieties if they are not prepared for the parental separation. The entire divorce process will be much easier for children to cope with if they are told in advance what to expect. All too often children awaken one morning to find that their father is no longer living with them. With limited or no explanation, he is simply gone. Children are told only that their father moved out last night and that their parents are going to "get a divorce."
When a parent leaves a child suddenly and without warning, this shocking and traumatic event can generate frantic anxiety, even if the child has not been especially close to or involved with the departing parent. These children are going to experience strong separation anxieties; they do not know why their father has gone, what their future contact with him will be, or who else will leave.
Parents should tell children about the divorce when it is a firm decision. The best approach is for both parents to jointly talk with the children whenever such unity is possible, and it is usually better to tell children together, rather than separately, so that children can begin to comfort each other. It is critical that parents tell children a week or so in advance. If one parent moves out before they have been informed, the shock will always be highly distressing for children. When parents move apart, they should provide the child with frequent and predictable contact that begins immediately upon the parent's departure. If possible, the absent parent should try to visit or telephone the child every day for the first week or so. It is essential for children to know in advance specifically when and where they will visit their parent again. Visitation schedules should never be random, and parents must carefully follow through and strictly adhere to whatever schedule has been established. This predictability is vital.Helping Children Cope with Divorce
pages 36-37
Parental cooperation, or at least the absence of overt conflict, is essential for children's secure adjustment. Parents must acknowledge that children will not adjust successfully as long as intense parental hostilities continue. Why are children so affected by hatred between their parents? Children are frightened when they see their parents shout at, berate, and threaten each other. Although some older children may try to distance themselves and affect aloof disinterest, they are terrified that harm will befall both their parents and themselves. Children are intensely concerned about the safety and well-being of their all-important attachment figures and rightly know that they are not secure as long as their parents are threatened. Because they are focused on the former spouse, however, combative parents cannot see the worry in their children's faces or recognize the intense anxiety that create the sleep disturbances and hypervigilance that their children usually suffer from.
Whenever I am talking with children of embattled parents I ask them, "If I had a magic wand and could grant you any three wishes you wanted, what would you most like to have?" Without exception, their first wish is always, "I wish my parents would stop fighting." Many children go on to ask the same things with their second and third wishes as well. In other words, children cannot imagine wanting anything other than to have their parents stop fighting. Children are frightened when their parents fight and, poignantly, often secretly pray that they will stop.
Children's intense worries about their parents and anxiety about their own safety and well-being are exacerbated by problems that arise as interparental conflict stresses parents and reduces their ability to comfort and parent their children. And, as if insecurity and loss of effective parenting were not enough, these children also feel responsible for parental hostilities...children believe they are responsible for all the major occurrences in their lives--including parental fighting. This egocentric tendency is exacerbated by the issues that parents often fight about. That is, children routinely listen to their parents fight over them. As a result, there is little doubt in children's minds that they are to blame for this unhappiness, even though they do not want it and feel helpless to stop it.
Finally, although chronic marital conflict is destructive for all children, it seems to be especially harmful to boys. Researchers have found that, on average, boys are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of family conflict and cannot cope with it as effectively as girls. One reason is that in most families girls are more protected from family conflict than boys, both before the divorce and afterwards. Researchers have found that parents fight more and that their fights continue longer in the presence of sons than daughters.Helping Children Cope with Divorce
pages 81-82
The inadequacies of traditional child-rearing roles are more evident in post-divorce family relationships, in which most divorced fathers are too distant and mothers are burdened by the overwhelming demands of single parenting. What can be done to provide children with the fathering and mothering they continue to need?
Parents' answers to this question usually cast blame. If you ask divorced mothers why fathers are uninvolved in parenting, a typical reply is, "I've done everything I can to keep him involved with the kids, but he doesn't want anything to do with them. He never has. The kids don't really want to visit him either. They only go because I tell them they must. Actually, they would rather be home with their friends."
In sharp contrast, if you ask divorced fathers why they are disengaged, they predictably respond, "She makes it really hard for me to be with the children. It's little things, like being late whenever I go to pick them up or having them doing something 'more important' than being with me--like going to a birthday party. I don't think she's ever wanted me to have my own relationship with the kids. She believes, like she told the judge, that children just ought to be with their mothers. Even when I tried to do something with the kids when we were married, she would criticize me and tell me the 'right' way to do it. And now I get squeezed the other way, too. My new wife resents the money I send them and tells me that I give in to my ex-wife too easily. After awhile, it just all starts to feel impossible."
Both sides have legitimate concerns, but these radically differing viewpoints mainly reflect poor communication between angry former spouses and the inevitable polarization caused by mutally exclusive and competing child-rearing roles. Such arguments over mothers' and fathers' rights must cease so that their children can have a dependable relationship with both parents that includes frequent, regularly scheduled, and conflict-free access to both their mother and their father. There are many practical ways to achieve this.
Divorcing parents must realize that the most loving gift they can give to their children is permission to be as close to the other parent as to themselves. Parents need to disentangle their own lingering hostility toward the former spouse from the child's need for a continuing relationship with the other parent. Grandparents can help by not taking sides against their former son- or daughter-in-law and, instead, by discouraging both parents from embroiling children in parental battles and painful loyalty conflicts. Friends can support the father's identity as a parent by emphasizing the importance of his contribution to his children's lives and the importance of his children to the quality of his life. A new woman in a man's life needs to support his efforts to remain involved with his children and not interpret this commitment as a threatening tie to his former wife.Helping Children Cope with Divorce
pages 115-116
[from the hardbound edition]
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