After hacking and puking in my office a second time since I had known her, a delightful, bright youngster wiped her chin and politely asked to go clean up. I was unclear if her embarrassment stemmed more from her becoming sick in front of me, or from how the two people she loves the most treat each other. She suffers from more than simply a broken heart from the loss of her family as she once knew it; her parents seemed to hate each other.
As a child psychologist, I am privileged to peek daily into the lives of the innocent children thrust into the middle of divorce. Children have no choice in a divorce. Numerous scientific studies only help to validate what I have witnessed first hand: How injurious and damaging parental conflict between divorcing parents can be. Parental conflict, not the divorce itself, places children at the greatest risk for social, emotional, and behavioral problems.
The Process of Divorce
Experts agree that if parents cannot control their anger in front of their children, those children will likely experience adjustment problems. Children are 50% Mommy and 50% Daddy. Attacks on a parent overheard or witnessed by the child may be internalized psychologically as an attack on them. When asking children of divorce what they remember most when told of their parents’ separation, many have expressed the same sentiment: “I love my Mom and my Dad.” It makes so much sense that children have an inherent need to maintain their relationship with both parents. However, that child-parent relationship can easily run the risk of being damaged when parents cannot resolve their past hurts, anger, or communication issues.
Divorce is emotional, and for most parents and certainly for their children, it is the most emotion they have ever experienced or confronted all at once. The process of divorce, with its multitude of family changes, only adds to the emotional strain, further complicating the heartbreak and grieving process. A powerful research study concluded that a divorced home is more strongly associated with psychological problems than confronting the death of a parent. Continued conflict by a dependent child’s caretakers acts to threaten their security in the world, resulting in a myriad of reactions and problems.
Parent Conflict and Kids
So many of the disputes that seem to plague high-conflict families do not necessarily have an exact right or wrong answer. From bedtimes, to having their own bedroom, to which sport they will play and who will take them, to which school they will attend, the proverbial “in the best interest of my child” is thrown around most frequently to justify a parent’s agenda. While there may be a clear distinction and solution between parent choices, in my clinical experience, high-conflict parents are frequently entrenched in arguing over personal preferences. The power struggle between ex-spouses for control over their new adult life and their children’s lives, coupled with their emotional baggage, leads to significant complications in problem solving. So too often do parents get entangled in trying to split hairs, this day versus that day, this way versus that way, this thing versus that thing, when neither is categorically right nor wrong. Fighting over who is “most” right can be most destructive.
When dealing with high-conflict cases, despite parents seeming at war and polarized with personal agendas and the resultant legal strategies, the neutral ground of the child therapy office can serve as a sanctuary. While surrounded by Winnie the Pooh, a Lego Tie-Fighter, Play-Doh, my Pokemon card collection, and other things kids find interesting, I explain to children and parents that I am a “feelings doctor” or “life doctor,” prepared and trained to facilitate healing in the midst of emotional and stress overload. In working with separating parents and families of divorce I may serve many roles: child therapist, parent therapist, family therapist, adult therapist, co-parenting counselor, reunification counselor, parenting coordinator, family mediator, collaborative law consultant, parenting plan evaluator, or parenting class instructor.
Helping Kids Cope
It is assumed that in high-conflict families, parents lack the resources to simply rebuild on their own. The many, many human variables involved in the changes and challenges of divorce complicate, aggravate, and further deteriorate an already poor situation. When you add children to the mix, there is almost no way for these kids to not be caught in Mom and Dad’s crossfire. These parents will need guidance and their own restorative process, if they are to successfully co-parent and efficiently help and protect their children.
In high-conflict families especially, the psychologist or experienced counselor may become a lifeline to help children and their parents. While trust may still be tenuous for parents on guard, and with a hypersensitive need for maintaining control, seeing a professional who specializes in helping children, taking a child’s needs to heart, offers a parent hope and their children a safe place to heal. Children of high-conflict divorce certainly deserve comfort and support. It goes without saying, that helping kids cope with a high-conflict divorce can have a dramatic affect on them now, and can certainly have a lasting effect on their lives for years to come.
As I sat with a 50-year old parent while he gasped to catch his breath and his tears, he recounted to me his parents’ divorce. It had been 35-years prior, yet to see him sob made it seem as though he had just heard the news. Divorce had taken a toll on his soul, and again I was reminded of the sensitivity of the human condition, how childhood issues affect our adult lives, and how the profound effects of losing your family to divorce can shape a lifespan. Parents, whether they accept it or not, play a critical role in helping their child/children and family heal. By participating in professional intervention, or recommending it to feuding parents of divorce, you help innocent children and their shattered family work to recover, strengthen, and rebuild a new, transformed, happy family.
-John Grbac, Psy.D.
