Divorce & Kids

There are few things more intrinsically traumatic to a young child than losing something that stabilizes their reality. When I was a child, I really had only one fear. It wasn’t a huge one, but it was there: fire. I feared our house catching fire, not because I feared for my own life but for our house burning down. I never verbalized it to anyone, not sure why. I eventually outgrew it. But that fire, in retrospect, meant the destruction of the security and the rituals of where we lived, how we lived, where my brothers (and sister) slept, who fought with whom, where mom did her sewing and we each practiced our instruments. Fire seemed to be the only thing that could shatter that.

For children encountering parental divorce, there is far more going on than the burning down of a house. It is the burning down of nearly every last thing that holds their reality, both brick and mortar. With divorce, the two people the child loves more than anyone in the entire world now do not want each other. For that reason alone the child’s life instantly becomes the saddest movie or Shakespeare story, but on crack, in no small part because the child or teen has likely very few abilities to release the very emotional pain that has now instantly become a part of their life.

But far more than that, now the child has two homes (which can, depending on the nature of the parents’ relationship, be a curse or a blessing), potential new school, and not just the division of holidays but the division of families. The child has to begin to watch what they say to whom. The child now develops an interior world full of things that were never there before, and may have no outlet for, whether because the parent who provides it is available less, perhaps due to work or less parenting time, or because there is no professional to help the child, or because the teachers that knew him or her are no longer available. Then, on top of it, if that child is having to deal with one or even two parents dumping their own emotional problems onto the child OR the parent going through an emotional transformation that carries that parent into a dark world, such that a cloud now follows that parent around (much as the cloud of dust followed PigPen around in the comic strip, Peanuts), the child is potentially in some ways dealing with the death of a parent, because the parent is no longer there for them or is a negative energy source in their life. Or, if the child has to deal with a parent who is weaponizing the child against the other parent, and the child feels it, being caught in the middle, being jerked hither and yon, having poison poured into their ear about the other parent, causing them to think ill of someone they love very much, it is one more thing for that child to bear.

All of this and more leads to a massive shitstorm in any child’s life. And you think of any 7yo or 11yo and think it is a terrible weight to place on that child, horrific. So, many parents will turn in the direction of then building the argument that it is best to wait to divorce (note the internal resolve to divorce, the decision is made; it’s now just a choice of when). That way kids still get two parents together and don’t have to go through that hardship when small. It just seems too much for them to bear.

But here’s the thing, it’s worse later, counter-intuitive as that may sound. An 18yo (as if that is some magical age that by graduating from high school a child now has the ability to handle massive negative emotional blows) now cannot somehow handle this life-upsetting news better than that 9yo. In fact, it’s worse later. But let me back up.

How Divorce Comes

Divorce is something that affects us all. You can’t swing a stick without hitting someone who has gone through one, whether as a divorcing party, a child of, parent of, best friend of, or is somehow connected to divorce. And based on divorce statistics, when that stick comes back and hits you in the head it’s bonking one more, because you’ve likely personally been affected by it.

Divorce is a profoundly debilitating, uncomfortable, painful, messy, life-altering period drama of its own, chalk full of emotion and life upheaval. But then you factor in children, whether as supporting players or as adult-children acting like children, and it all gets even harder and messier.

One:

Let’s start with you’re in the marriage and it has been on a downward slope for a long time, whether because of you, your spouse, or the both of you together. But whatever the problems are, they’ve been tried and tried again to be fixed, by yourselves, in therapy, lots of discussions or even arguments, and – tick tock – the passage of time. With that time and the loss of your own sense of life energy you or both of you, or just your spouse, has chosen divorce. Maybe you saw it coming; maybe it hit like a runaway train out of nowhere.

Let’s say, for a moment, as we consider this conversation of children and divorce, that you and your spouse know that you must or want to divorce but the children are young. So it’s the classic “now or 18” discussion, both together and in your own head. The argument for staying together is made by considering all the things that will happen to the children mentioned above, factored into the equation with the financial strain of now having two homes, and just the idea of the kids growing up with the parents together.

But the other side of it is that these two people so desperately no longer wish to be together. Perhaps the incendiary nature of the relationship is screaming that these two people ought definitely NOT be under the same roof together for even one more minute. Perhaps the couple has some toxicity, but staying together is not out of the question. Or, perhaps, this couple is quite capable of carrying a ‘normal’ relationship as quasi-friends “for the sake of the kids” without anyone knowing…supposedly. None of that changes the fact that these two people have already decided that they know they want to get a divorce, but simply cannot decide when.

This is innately a very difficult decision. However, weighed from the perspective of the child, I will say this, it is far better to divorce when the child is young than it is to wait until that child is 18 or 26, precisely because the child does not at 6 or 10 have the skills to deal with it.

Yes, you heard me correctly. Read that again.

The reason is simply this, while there are many factors influencing the situation, there are none more impactful than the emotional charges happening in the child once they get the news. Except in cases of abuse or severe abuse, that divorce news is met with devastating reaction inside the child. And precisely because that small vessel with limited to no abilities to handle it in any way whatsoever cannot handle it, that child cries, screams, retreats, goes silent, gets physical, and a million other things – every day. Or, the child engages in one or two of those but is far easier to crack open and bring aid to at that age than at 20.

See, by divorcing when that child is young, the news and impact are being woven into the life of a malleable child, an entity that can be worked with and influenced to heal. Further, that child at 7 or 9 exists within an existing framework of family, teachers, friends, friend’s parents, cousins perhaps, aunties and uncles, ritualized days with comforting patterns. That same child at 19, off at college or even just living at home while working their first job or going to tech school, now does not have the same batch of friends or normalized patterns, because everyone has scattered; doesn’t have those same intimate relationships with coaches and teachers, built over years; isn’t surrounded by aunts and uncles. Instead, that kid at college or in their first apartment is surrounded by their knucklehead brand new friends they go to the keg with on Friday nights and watch baseball with on Saturdays. They don’t have the same long-standing rituals and the comfort they bring, don’t have the well-established daily relationships, don’t have the immediacy of people they can talk to who truly know them and they can trust, and often feel like they don’t have anyone, especially now that they at times feel like they don’t have mom and dad, or dad and dad, mom/mom, etc. They’re f*cked!

But most insidious of all is what that 18 or 24 year-old does have that the child does not have. For it is this one thing that makes waiting to divorce the most damaging on children. That teen/young-adult has the ability to stuff their feelings down and not think about them, except when they get too loaded at that keg on Friday night and it all perhaps comes spilling out in a fit of rages, tears, or unnecessary and perhaps dangerous sex or advanced drug use or other behaviors.

It is precisely the young adult’s ability, likely in large part acquired by growing up in a home where mom and dad have wanted to divorce since young Billy was 7yo, to stuff down his feelings that works against him most, now in the presence of this destabilizing news and in the decades to come. Even while, ironically, it is this exact ability that causes parents who are still back at the age of deciding whether to get the divorce now or in 15 years when the kids are 20 to think that waiting is better. Parents both naively and foolishly think that a young person’s ability to hold down their emotion is a sign of maturity or is a good thing, when all it really means is less blowback for the parent or less strain on the parent of knowing the young adult is hurting. Many parents who divorce when the kids are young even make this mistake when they see one of their kids ‘acting out’ and one ‘handling it well.’ They blindly assume that because the ‘handling it well’ child is not showing the full range of emotions, if any at all, that child is doing better, when precisely the opposite is true. Because all of that pain, sadness, disorientation, fear, rage, and everything else getting stuffed down inside, on top of everything else that is down there already emotionally and underneath all of the emotions they’re likely to keep stuffing down there, all adds up to a giant mountain of s-h-i-t absolutely destroying that person’s life. Whether at 13 with sex, the bottle, giving up school, drugs, hyper-achievement, or at 43 when all of that hyper-achievement leads to a massive break from reality because it’s so profoundly far from anything that person ever was or because it’s so deeply empty inside, or when that life of addictions and stuffing things down finally all comes projectile vomiting out in a mad destruction of a lifelong-built, but built on the shifting sands of turbulent emotions never disgorged, all lying as the footings of the life ahead.

No, it is precisely that stuffing down that is the problem. And when Billy or Susie gets that news at 18 or 26, it’s going to kick their ass even harder because they’ve had the normalcy of that parent-parent relationship so embedded in the framework of their lives for a decade to two decades more than that 8yo that the destruction of it is all that much more painful. Whereas, the 7yo can have a new reality normalized young and grow into it, again, surrounded by a company of angels who support and love on that child and wherein there is the emotional support, so that when that child’s natural inclination is to ‘act out’ – which is really just parent/adult belittling of a child who hasn’t been taught yet both permission and ways to get naturally occurring feelings out of them – they are allowed, encouraged, and taught how to do so for the long-term betterment of that young life and their life through adulthood. THAT is what divorcing when the kids are young offers that child – a chance to heal safely in a setting wherein the rituals and people can far more stay intact, providing soothing structure and love.

Two:

But there’s that other type of getting the news where it’s not chosen together but it hits you out of the blue. In this case, both you and the children are reeling from what just happened and what is ahead.

What makes this divorce so much different from the other is the obvious: the immediate and utter disorientation that comes from how it is done. After that and hopefully the stabilization of your life, it has few earmarks different from any other divorce. It’s contentious, likely; there is anger, retching, and lots of drama-trauma.

But it is that immediate and utter disorientation that highlights what is the most important characteristic of any divorce, whether the bomb dropping kind that happens out of nowhere or the kind that you’ve seen coming for years, even decades. What they both have in common for the individual parents and especially in the consideration of the best interests of the child is the absolute supreme importance of the emotional impact and emotional life of the parent. In that bomb-drop divorce, there are going to be INSTANT feelings everywhere, spilling out of you sitting at the intersection as you eat your apple waiting for the light to turn to get onto the highway, churning in you as you stare at your computer at work, and blah blah blahing out of you at every cocktail hour with your bestie. It is those feelings that have the most power to enact ultimate destruction, or even just so much unnecessary destruction in every direction in this divorce, worst of all onto the children, worse worst of all onto the children in the slow bleed over time because you never went in deep and healed your sh*t!

Nothing will impact your children more, whether negatively or positively, in this whole mess of divorce and the life that gets built afterward than what you do with your feelings and emotional life. They will mirror you, follow your lead, do as you guide them or outright tell them, open to your ability to hold their feelings because you’ve purged yours. Nothing can bring them greater peace, hope, and power than even just one parent who has healed their own sh*t and is present to their internal life, not just their food, clothing and shelter, extracurriculars and even baths and teeth-brushing. Though, obviously, those are important too, but not nearly so much as what’s going on inside that child. For that shapes the entire belief system that will undergird his or her reality for decades to come.

So, what that means is, you need to get yourself in therapy. Or, at the very least yet the most regular, you need to be journaling out your feelings and every last thought, daily. All of it, flush it out. Look for origins, whys, deeper meanings, hidden agendas and more inside yourself about yourself and your life. There are tools for this, many of which are on the books page of my website, including BADASS WISDOM, which is a simple daily meditational sort of workbook to take you daily into journaling questions to help you understand yourself better and purge your ugly easier and quicker. Or, obviously, my free podcast and parenting video course are great resources too. But you need to be about the business of healing you, like seriously, because all of that benefits your kids most, long term.

Telling the Kids

With that framework of working toward the best interests of the child’s emotional needs, or soul needs, before ever telling your kids that you’re going to be divorcing, no matter what age they are, get them in therapy, even if it’s just one or two sessions. That connection with a professional, neutral party will give your children someone to talk to who will understand them without agenda. This means you will have backup in helping your children do what you are doing for yourself – flushing out all of the emotions and thoughts. You in this time cannot possibly do all of that for your child, when you’re trying hard to do it for yourself. (And btw, if you’re not doing it for yourself, you’re taking that same approach as the knucklehead 19yo’s who just stuffing it down and saying “don’t worry about it,” naively thinking that powering forward is the best or at least the most efficient way. And, as an old Finn I once knew, named Giles Ekola, said, “The shortest way is the longest way, and the longest way is the shortest way. The easiest way is the hardest way, and the hardest way is the easiest way.” In other words, do the hard work now or it’ll bite you twice as hard, twice as long later!).

Get your child in therapy now, also because it gives that therapist the ability to establish a relationship and trust before the cyclone hits AND it enables the counselor to establish a baseline for understanding the child, which future peaks and valleys can be measured from, just as one is wise to get and document regular physicals in their 30s, 40s, and 50s to establish baselines for all markers moving into the aging years when sh*t starts to fall apart.

Also, it is before the dropping of the bomb onto the kids (and it will be an explosion in their lives, even if they saw it coming, because it still brings so much upheaval) that you need to do the most inner-self work, because it is at the moment of impact and thereafter when it’s going to be all hands on deck, and you’re going to have to be fully present to the needs of the child without your own fireworks of emotions going off in you, the fuses of which are lit by the flammability of the child or children. And your own sh*t happening inside you and f*cking things up when the children need you is the very hallmark definition of generational trauma.

So, if you see the divorce coming, you need to be doubling-down on the inner-self work!!!

When you do tell them, it is important to understand that each child reacts in their own way. You shaming them for their reaction, whatever it might be, is not the way to go. The goal is for you to create space for them to be, create or help them find words for what they are experiencing, give them permission and room to express the sadness and anger, as well as the ten thousand two hundred million thousand questions they’re going to have, both immediately and ongoingly. Patience, patience, patience.

You must understand that your job is to be present to the child, not treat this child like an adult, even if the child is 25. You must treat them as a child insofar as you need to be gentle and give them room, permission, and love. That is in no way an okay to be hurtful to others, but they have every right to have their feelings out. And you need to be the bigger person and absorb some blows because you’re doing this sh*t to them, not vice versa.

This gentleness and openness that you daily deliver to them must also exist within the structure and ritual of their normal lives. That means you must refrain from turning your pity or empathy for them into a release from responsibility in life. ‘Responsible’ means in its simplest form, ‘able to respond.’ Thus, you have to leave those expectations of normal life in place – school, chores, healthy eating, good manners, time with friends and family, play time, etc. And their emotions exist within that framework and can come out any time but get filtered into those in-between times when there is safety and room to let them out – after school, in the evening, on the weekends while cooking with dad or driving with mom. In other words, the tendency when putting an extra burden of divorce or some such thing onto a child is to see the sadness or struggle in the child’s emotions and to then alleviate the life responsibilities from that child, in a sort of ongoing “mental health day” of doing less. But that’s precisely the opposite of what’s needed, and is usually (though not always) being done as a result of parental guilt or a parent trying to curry favor with a child. (Sad but true.) The structure of those exact responsibilities, such as taking out the trash and doing homework, going to therapy and chess club, are the rituals that stabilize the child, if for no other reason than it forces them to focus on other things, giving body, soul, and mind a reprieve. Whereas removing one or any number of them provides a free time that they don’t know what to do with. That free time could be constructive if an adult were teaching them how to extract negative feelings and thoughts. But left as mere empty time, it becomes a breeding ground for unnecessary bad habits.

Again, the rich emotional life of releasing all of the feelings can and does perfectly exist within that structure of everyday life if the parent keeps the child in it.

Message to Parents about Your Messaging

You’ve maybe heard me say on the podcast that one of the best and worst pieces of advice I ever got when my first wife divorced me (and we had two kids together) was from a therapist and some studies he encouraged us to read, “Never disparage the other parent to the kids. It’s very painful for the children to hear someone they love most torn down by someone else they love.”

I thought that made a heckuva lot of sense. So, I committed to doing that. It wasn’t until my children were in their 20s that I ever deliberately sat them down and told them even one piece of information about their mother that cast her in a bad light. We had divorced when they were 5 and 2. So that was 15+ years of silence from me.

And trust me when I tell you it was hellish. I had soooooo much I wanted them to know. So much sh*t she was doing. I endured parental alienation (which we’ll get to) to the max. And I had information that could destroy her in their eyes. But I saw the wisdom in what I was told by the therapist and the research he provided us to read on that. I saw how I had to pull myself out of the equation and just constantly, daily, focus on what’s in the best interests of the children. It was hard to stay silent. But I believed very strongly that the last thing a child needs is disparagement of their parent from the other parent.

HOWEVER, that equation only works if BOTH parents are doing it. See, what I hadn’t known was coming when he advised with those words was that if one parent is not doing that, but is actually taking the liberty to disparage the other, then you’ve got a severe imbalance in messaging going to the children. One parent is being fully portrayed as a villain and the other is allowed to self-portray as a hero. Or, as I did, one parent is making the hero-villain situation even worse: I was openly building up their mother to the kids, always saying how gregarious, creative, smart and a good mom she was. Yet she was largely providing the exact opposite messaging about me.

But here’s the thing, the fatal flaw in the equation is not that I should have been disparaging her, too, in return, as if to level the playing field. No, what that psychologist failed to tell us is the contingency plan: if one parent IS disparaging the other, then that other parent absolutely must defend themselves by debunking the myths being put forward by the disparaging parent. Otherwise, the children WILL BELIEVE THEM!

That is when the giant crevasse develops between child and parent, and when it absolutely doesn’t have to.

You have every right to defend yourself by setting the record straight. More importantly, the children NEED you to defend yourself. If you are good, they need to see that good and have it clear to them. They need to know their heroes are still heroes. They need you for what you are, not for what someone is painting you as, because the latter will have profound long-term negative effects on them. Got it?

That means you have to stand up for yourself with the facts to the children, which means if you’re used to bending over and taking it without confrontation and you perpetuate that pattern here, you’re actually harming your children, because they need to see you for the good person you are, and they need to see your strength, too.

As Divorce Moves Along

As you move further into and through this season of divorcing, which is its own chapter, and into the chapter of divorced becoming your norm, it is good to bear several things in mind.

Assuming you have been deliberate and diligent about continuing the work to heal your own insides of all the pain, hurt, and BS beliefs you’ve been taught to believe about yourself, especially those from childhood, you may reach the point, sooner or later, where it is your desire to begin dating again. Maybe not.

But if you do, it is wise to carry a few things for consideration.

1.     You absolutely can have a new, fulfilling relationship with a new person AND have a fully supportive relationship with your children. The latter does not inversely correlate to the other wherein the more of one demands the less of the other. It is neither wise, nor even realistic, to expect that your entire life is now about your children. In fact, in most cases this is unhealthy for you, which makes it unhealthy for the children. For you need to have elements in your life that breathe life into you as a grown-ass woman or man, things that fulfill you that have nothing to do with being a parent. The more you lose that, you lose yourself, which means not only is there less of you to give to others, but also your children will never experience the joy of the full and complete you, engaging that as a strong and viable template for their own lives. However, as mentioned, this situation requires judiciousness in the distribution of your time, resources, and energy, because it is very easy to get swept up in a new relationship and have that repeatedly supersede the needs of your children, thus conveying to your children the underlying message in this pivotal transition in their lives that they’re not important. Or, it is possible to bring in a partner sooner than you know the relationship to have long-term legs, or to give a new person too much power in your relationship with your own family or over your governance of your own children. None of these is good.

a.     What needs to be clear with the new person are the lines you draw and your commitment to your children. Then you must follow through. But here’s the thing, when you meet the right person for you, your lifestyle choices fit with theirs.

b.     Their role in your life and in the role of your kids needs to be thought about in advance by you and made clear to them. More importantly, it needs to be followed through BY YOU. You cannot simply expect that person to honor your expectations. You have to hold them to it at every turn, many times, until the patterns are well established, precisely as you must hold them to the establishing of patterns of how you wish to be treated.

c.     Simultaneously, if you wish to create a lasting relationship with someone new, you must also inside yourself establish what is most, moderate, and less important to you in your parenting of your children. In other words, not everything is a five alarm fire. Not every child complaint demands the dropping of everything by you or the absolute and immediate minimizing of your relationship. But only you can decide what are and are not YOUR priorities for your parenting and your relationship; no one else.

2.     If you’ve lost, for example, a husband in divorce and are wanting a “male influence” in your children’s lives (it could be a wife and you want a “female influence”), apart from your ex, it is important to understand there is something far more critical. You cannot control the amount or quality of the role of their father in their lives. However, what you can and must play a huge role in is helping them purge their own pain, fears, and BS beliefs they are believing about themselves. This is the stuff that is the excrement from the divorce and from the ongoing effects of life. The more you can commit to doing that one thing – in effect being their home listener/therapist while also making sure they have a real therapist – the more you are ensuring that the single biggest thing that will trip them up (an accumulation of inner crud) won’t. And to that end, you need to be flushing out your own crud, as previously discussed, because that’s what’s most likely to end up in them.

a.     Then, you must trust that wonderful male (or female) influences will cross their paths and take them under their wing. You don’t have to actively seek a partner for that purpose. Whether it is a favorite teacher or favorite coach, a pastor or Old Johnny Jones at the hardware, or maybe it’s the fella who runs the stables or the uncle who was always so kind to him; or, going old school, maybe your child will find great mentorship in some author who speaks to his soul. The point is that in life people cross our paths who influence us and take a shine to us. It will be the same with your kid. Yes, if you’re going to have a partner you want someone who will be a good influence, obviously. But you don’t go actively seeking someone to have, just so your kids can have a male influence, in this example. Trust that the right people will come at the right time.

Gentle and Strong

What this means is that you need to be both gentle and strong at the same time. As a single parent the load falls on you. You cannot be all things to your child. But you can allow yourself to be all sides of your personality. You cannot live in fear of your child not liking you, and thus hold back your strength and your need to set boundaries and expectations for their behaviors. Also, you cannot be afraid to be soft or hold back gentleness, because they need that more than anything. You must work on your own inner issues so that you have a full and complete tool belt of parenting abilities. Yes, you’re going to fail at a million things. Every parent does. But the more you are willing to trust your developed abilities and strive to be a deliberate parent, the better their childhood and the more prepared for adulthood they become.

The Role of Children. The Role of the Parent.

Perhaps the single most important thing to remember for all parents, not just newly minted single parents is that the parent exists to pour love into the child’s love cup. The child does not exist to pour love into the parent’s love cup. The parent exists for the child, not vice versa.

The child, no matter the age, does not exist to listen to your problems, to be your mini-me best friend, to be your +1, to hear your relationship struggles or financial worries. Your child is not equipped to handle your issues and anxieties. That’s like pouring a gallon jug into baby’s tippy cup. It’s just not meant for it. It’s the parent taking advantage of the child, and it’s wrong, no matter how good it feels to have someone you can trust, someone who loves you no matter what, someone who is always eager to tell you how wonderful you are.

That child does not exist to serve you. You exist to serve that child, in large part. Invert that equation and the generational trauma rolls on.

But maintain that spirit of service, which also includes preparing that child for adulthood by teaching them life skills, you help that child weather the storm of the divorce process and the new life afterward.

Your children and you can have a good life ahead. And you can learn to co-parent well with your ex. This can work. Plenty of families redefine as new version of a family. This can go well. But it is determined how well it goes by the leaders. That’s you. Good leadership demands deliberateness and courage.

You can do this!

Download my audiobook, There’s a hole in my love cup, or get the paperback or e-book, at BadassCounseling.com. If you prefer to heal and grow in a group setting, join the 48,000-member light group on Facebook, Badass Counseling Group. Or, for a fair monthly fee, join CMTY-PLUS! on the website, with direct access to me, multiple times per month, to get your questions asked and answered.

It’s time to build relationships that breathe life and energy into you, rather than suck it out of you!

Thanks for reading.

HAVE A KICKASS DAY!