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    The Divorced Child: Strengthening Your Family through the First Three Years of Separation
    The Divorced Child: Strengthening Your Family through the First Three Years of Separation
    The Divorced Child: Strengthening Your Family through the First Three Years of Separation
    Ebook304 pages5 hours

    The Divorced Child: Strengthening Your Family through the First Three Years of Separation

    By Joseph Nowinski

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    About this ebook

    Divorce is a reality of today's family life, but clinical research has shown that it is possible to mitigate its negative effects on children. Dr. Joseph Nowinski, a family therapist with over 20 years of experience treating families, argues that there is a three-year window in which to acclimate children to the change in family life. Combining case studies with new research, Dr. Nowinski gives parents the information and the tools to work through the transition. Written in a warm and authoritative tone, Nowinski will teach parents to:

    · Focus on your child's new day-to-day reality

    · Identify early signs of trouble

    · Help your child through the separation process and help them develop coping skills that will remain with them through life

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 5, 2010
    ISBN9780230102224
    The Divorced Child: Strengthening Your Family through the First Three Years of Separation
    Author

    Joseph Nowinski

    Joseph Nowinski, Ph.D., is a psychologist and family therapist. Currently the Supervising Psychologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center, he lectures frequently at the Hazeldon Foundation, and the University of Mexico Medical School. He is the author of The Identity Trap: Saving Our Teens from Themselves and 6 Questions That Can Change Your Life. Winner of the Nautilus award. He lives in Connecticut.

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      Book preview

      The Divorced Child - Joseph Nowinski

      Part One

      Child-Centered Divorce

      Before we begin to sort out issues faced by divorced children at different stages of development, let us look at some issues that almost all divorcing parents will eventually need to deal with. Naturally, just how you as a divorcing parent will deal with each of these issues—for example, talking to your child about divorce—will differ depending on how old your child is. That said, these are all bridges that will have to be crossed sooner or later, so it makes sense to examine them at the outset.

      Chapter 1

      The Divorced Family

      Divorce is not something that happens only to spouses. Whenever there are children involved, divorce is a family matter. It is vital that separated parents keep this in mind. It is not only their own lives that are going through an upheaval, but also their children’s lives, as well as the lives of the extended family. Everyone must adjust to a new reality.

      Children are not emotionally fragile to the extent that they are not capable of surviving a crisis such as divorce. As discussed earlier, most children do adjust and emerge from divorce emotionally, socially, and academically unscathed. A minority do not. This book aims to help you as a parent ensure that your child will be one of those who survives and thrives.

      Robert and Julia

      Robert was six and his sister Julia was eight when their mother and father told them that they were getting a divorce. As is typical of children this age, neither one cried. But that did not mean that all was necessarily okay on the inside.

      Julia and Robert had an idea of what divorce meant. Julia’s best friend Emily’s parents had recently divorced. When asked about it Julia replied, Emily’s father moved out. He was hardly ever there anyway. Now I never see him. Asked how she thought Emily felt about her parents’ divorce, Julia said, She’s sad. But she said she just doesn’t think about it most of the time.

      It was true that Emily did not think about her parents’ divorce. At the same time, in that school year Emily was out sick fifteen days. In prior years she’d been out sick a maximum of three days. Moreover, her progress in reading and other academic subjects slid from near the top of her peer group to somewhere below average.

      Although children are reticent to talk to their own parents about divorce, it is a mistake to think that they do not talk to one another about it. In a way this is understandable, since they are reluctant to offend or risk alienating that parent, by expressing anger, for example.

      Robert and Julia’s parents went through an acrimonious divorce. Their father, Jim, openly blamed their mother, saying that she was breaking up our family. He did not mention his alcoholism or recurrent gambling debts. For the most part their mother, Susan, refrained from talking about Jim. She tried to keep their communication focused on the children, not on the issues that had led to the divorce. She tried to maintain contact between the children and Jim’s family, but discovered that only her soon-to-be ex-mother-in-law was open to this. Neither her father-in-law nor her two brothers-in-law wanted anything to do with Susan.

      One month before Julia’s ninth birthday, when Susan brought up the issue of a party, Julia said that she didn’t want one. At first she would not say why. Susan let the issue drop for the moment, but mentioned it to Julia’s teacher, with whom she was in regular contact with. Three days later the teacher called and informed Susan that Julia didn’t want a party because she wanted to avoid the tension that now pervaded the house whenever both her parents were there together. She would have wanted to have the party at the house that she and Robert had moved into with Susan, but feared offending her father. Finally, although her extended family had always come to her birthday parties before, she was aware of the alienation that had set in and wasn’t sure who would come this time or how they would act.

      At age eight, Julia was already on the verge of assuming the role of a peacemaker and a conciliator. If her mother had gone along with Julia’s wishes this could well have become a role that Julia embraced for the rest of her life.

      Child-Centered Divorce

      This brief story contains several valuable lessons for parents who are in the midst of separation and divorce. The first lesson is that children will quickly learn to edit what they say in order not to offend or alienate a parent. Both Robert and Julia were very uncomfortable, for example, when Jim would openly put down Susan, but neither ever expressed this openly. And Julia resisted telling Susan why she did not want a birthday party. As you will see when we address the issue of talking to children about divorce, parents must understand and respect this reticence. Open and honest communication will only come when children feel it is safe to do so.

      A second lesson is this: The business of childhood and adolescence is growing up. Children and teens are quite capable of empathy, thoughtfulness, and generosity (as long as these qualities of character are modeled for them). At the same time, they are necessarily concerned with themselves and their own lives. Childhood and adolescence is fraught with its own challenges and crises. The nitty-gritty of their parents’ divorce does not and should not be something that children be asked to digest, much less approve of or take sides on.

      Third, children survive the upheaval that divorce creates in their lives to the extent that those who love them, including parents and extended family, are able to set aside issues of loyalty or feelings of resentment and focus instead on the developmental needs of the child. In the above example, that would have meant that the whole family celebrate Julia’s birthday. After all, that day is about Julia, not about anyone else. If such a celebration proved impossible, then two separate celebrations might be held, but in neither case should the focus of the day be on anything except Julia.

      Research has shown that if separated parents are able to minimize overt conflict between them in the presence of their children, then frequent contact with their non-residential parent is associated with better overall adjustment. In contrast, more frequent contact actually has an adverse effect on adjustment when visits are accompanied by a great deal of overt conflict. This is all the more reason for separated parents to cooperate as best they can so as to produce a child-focused divorce.

      Staying on Track

      Things go awry for the divorced child when the focus of the parents or extended family becomes the divorce itself as opposed to the developmental needs of the children. That is not to say that the divorced child should become a spoiled child; rather, it means that efforts need to be made to preserve things such as attachments that have been formed to adults, the rules and structure of daily life, and friendships that have been established. That is what I mean by a child-centered divorce. Too often parents and families allow themselves to be led by their emotions in directions that stray from this focus. To the extent that you, the reader, can avoid this, you will also help to insure that your child comes through these three years a stronger and more resilient

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