Psychology 4-MAT : Hart Review Assignment

Helpingchildrensurvivedivorce.pdf

Home >Psychology homework help >Psychology 4-MAT : Hart Review Assignment

C H A P T E R 8

Anger and the Divorced Child

Every divorced child is likely to be an angry child. I say every because in my experience the circumstances surrounding the rare exceptions I have encountered are so unusual, they are not worthy of attention.

As I pointed out in an earlier chapter, very few children want their parents to divorce, no matter how much conflict is in the home. Older teenagers and adults may sometimes welcome their parents’ divorce as an end to years of unhappiness, but in these instances the actual parenting stage has passed. In cases where one parent is totally destructive to his or her children because of a severe personality disorder, alcoholism, men tal illness, or habitual lawbreaking, younger children might feel relief when a divorce happens. Even here children usually feel a lot of ambiva lence about the breakup.

So whether the child wants the parents to stay together or not, a divorce is bound to cause him or her much frustration and hurt. There is a thwarting of life’s purposes. And the invariable result is a state of anger.

Of course, this anger does not always show itself directly. My use of the term anger is therefore a broad one. I am using it in the clinical sense to denote the underlying, basic feeling of rage that can be totally masked, suppressed, or hidden and not reveal itself in tem per tantrum s and screaming matches. Anger can lie dormant and only show itself through

( 1 0 3 )

Hart, A. D. (1997). Helping children survive divorce : What to expect; how to help. Thomas Nelson Incorporated. Created from liberty on 2024-01-23 15:21:09.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

negativity and moodiness. But just because it doesn’t show itself in a dramatic or obvious way doesn’t mean it isn’t doing any damage.

These hidden and suppressed ways of expressing anger, often referred to as “passive-aggressive behaviors,” can in the long run be more dam aging than explosive, openly hostile behaviors. At least when anger is openly expressed, there is less chance that it will explode in unexpected ways or turn inward in self-destructive ways.

As I will show, however, allowing anger to be openly and frequently expressed is also not the healthiest way to resolve it. This pattern, often referred to as “ventilation,” if repeated, can breed an angry personality— someone who is consistently mad at everything and who believes that the rest of the world has been conveniently provided as a punching bag for his or her feelings. Such people are a pain to be around, literally and figuratively.

Let me set down a biblical principle right at the outset: No one who is angry has a right to take this anger out on someone else. The New Testa ment is very clear in its teaching on this point. Paul tells us, “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves” (Romans 12:18-19). This was good ad vice in New Testament times, and it is good advice now. Parents have a responsibility to teach their children how to effectively cope with their anger and how not to let it become a destructive force in their lives.

When Is Anger a Serious Problem? Steven is twelve years of age. He has never been in any trouble at home or at school. He has always been a loving child, obedient, and his pranks have been within normal limits. Occasionally he would tie a can to their cat’s tail or place stink bombs in his teenage sister’s bath salts, but what little boy wouldn’t want to do this?

Shortly after his parents separated, however, his pranks took a more serious turn. The family car’s tires were found deflated one morning. On another occasion, when no one else was at home, he left the bathtub tap running while he went for a long bicycle ride—deliberately. When his m other found the cat with its back legs tied together, she realized

Helping Children Survive D ivorce

( 1 0 4 )

Hart, A. D. (1997). Helping children survive divorce : What to expect; how to help. Thomas Nelson Incorporated. Created from liberty on 2024-01-23 15:21:09.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

that her son was the culprit in all these pranks and decided something was seriously wrong with his behavior. Wisely, she sought professional help.

Mary is a child of seven. She is the youngest of five children and has always been a little aloof from the others. She resents getting hand-me- downs, but only complains mildly. “No one ever pays attention to me,” was about as cantankerous a rebellion as she could muster. Nor was she very demanding of her parents. She tended to keep to herself, was self- sufficient, and compliantly did everything asked of her.

But then one day this all changed. Her m other had broken the bad news: “Daddy won’t be coming home anymore; he’s found himself a girlfriend and wants to live with her.”

Mary couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand it at first. Perhaps this was just a dream and Daddy would come back, she thought But the days turned to weeks, and apart from an occasional quick visit, Daddy never did come home to live again. Soon he said he wanted a divorce. To Mary this meant he was also divorcing her.

It was then that Mary began to accuse her mother of “chasing Daddy away.” She started to become disobedient. W hen told to go to bed, she would either hide or stay frozen in front of the television set. When told to pick up her clothes, she would throw more clothes on the floor. In fact, she did the exact opposite of everything asked of her. We call it “oppositional behavior.”

Mary also started shouting abuses at her mother. “You make me sick. You make everybody sick. That’s why Daddy’s gone away.”

The m other was at her wits’ end. Should she spank Mary for this behavior? She tried that once, but Mary just passively received the spank ing, behaving as if she enjoyed it. Discipline lost its effectiveness, so Mary’s mother, out of desperation, just threw in the towel and left the girl to herself. W hat else could she do?

Mary’s anger slowly subsided. W ith no one fighting her and perpetu ating her hurt, she came to accept her father’s departure as final and slowly began to reach out to her m other for love and reassurance. As a result, mother and daughter were drawn much closer together and found a new love for each other.

Anger and the Divorced Child

( 1 0 5 )

Hart, A. D. (1997). Helping children survive divorce : What to expect; how to help. Thomas Nelson Incorporated. Created from liberty on 2024-01-23 15:21:09.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

These two stories illustrate two extremes of severe anger reactions in the children of divorce. Both could have had disastrous consequences. In Mary’s case a spontaneous and natural healing took place that did not need professional intervention. Steven, on the other hand, needed professional help, but the m other sought it in time to avert serious damage.

This leaves us with a dilemma: When is anger behavior serious enough to warrant professional attention? When can we expect a natural heal ing to take place?

There are no simple answers to such questions. Experts disagree on the specifics of when help should be sought. Some believe, and I tend to agree, that in every divorce the reactions of the children need to be care fully reviewed by a trained counselor or psychotherapist. Parents can not always trust their own assessment of anger, because they usually have too strong a need to believe that everything is OK.

This doesn’t mean that all children of divorce should be taken to see a counselor. But I am suggesting that at least one of the parents, if not both, should seek advice from a third party, preferably a trained and impartial person, who can help them decide whether or not a problem exists.

Are there some signs one can look for that could alert a parent to a serious problem? As a general rule I would say that if a child’s anger, expressed as either total passivity or nonreactivity, or as behavioral act ing out, lasts longer than four or five weeks, the problem is serious enough to warrant more expert attention than you can give.

Another helpful rule is to remember that about 23 percent of the children of divorce will have a severe enough anger reaction as to war rant some sort of intervention. Do not hesitate, therefore, to seek help if you are in doubt. Prevention is the best cure for the problems of unre solved anger.

Understanding Anger To help you assess the seriousness of your child’s problem, I need to begin by helping you understand the nature of anger better.

( 1 0 6 )

Hart, A. D. (1997). Helping children survive divorce : What to expect; how to help. Thomas Nelson Incorporated. Created from liberty on 2024-01-23 15:21:09.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Anger is the most confusing of all human emotions, especially to us as Christians. The ability to get angry is designed into us by God and involves many body systems, including parts of the brain and hormonal system. Basically, anger serves a very im portant function, yet it has a tremendous potential for sin and damage.

Bringing these two aspects of anger together, its purposeful nature and its potential for sin, is a major task for every Christian who wants to understand anger. I don’t have space here to elaborate in detail on this complex emotion. For our purposes, therefore, I simply want to point out that there are four causes of anger in all of us, and if we can keep these in mind we will be better equipped to handle our own anger as well as help our children with theirs. The four causes are:

Anger as instinctive protection

Built into all humans (and animals too) is an instinctive anger reaction whenever we are threatened or attacked. This reaction is intended for dangerous situations and is designed to give us the energy and courage to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Every policeman knows this type of anger. It keeps him or her alive in dangerous situations. But it can also open the door to a lot of trouble if it isn’t kept in check. When this anger takes over, it can cause even the most gentle and kindhearted policeman to become violent and abusive. We blame the policeman, but it is really an instinctive reaction gone wrong.

Anger as a conditioned response Anger is not only instinctive, it can also be conditioned or learned. Here is an automatic response to a situation in which we have experienced anger before.

For example, we may have learned at a very young age how to get angry at people or how to throw a temper tantrum . Anger has been conditioned in us as a way of manipulating people or for obtaining our way. Having learned to do this as children, we continue to manipulate people in adulthood. Sure, we no longer drop to the floor, scream, and kick our legs wildly. The adult version of a temper tantrum is the “silent treatment.” We shut up and turn the cold shoulder so as to display our

Anxiety and the Divorced Child

( 1 0 7 )

Hart, A. D. (1997). Helping children survive divorce : What to expect; how to help. Thomas Nelson Incorporated. Created from liberty on 2024-01-23 15:21:09.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

anger in the hopes that we will get our way, or if not get our way, at least to punish the offender. M arried couples know this conditioned response well!

Anger as a response to frustration

It is a well-established psychological fact that whenever we are frustrated by a blocked goal, we get angry. This is a natural law built into us. Its function is to give us the courage to overcome the cause of the frustra tion. This reaction worked well in primitive times when it was a tiger and you stalking the same deer, and you were hungry and desperately needed to secure this catch for your family. Your frustration gave you anger and the energy and will to fight off the tiger. But the trouble with this type of anger, which is still with us, is that in many instances the obstacles are such that no am ount of anger can remove them. They are people, not tigers!

By frustration, of course, I mean anything that prevents us from getting our way. For children of divorce, this is a major source of anger. Divorce sets up many obstacles for them and removes many privileges. It blocks many dreams and demolishes many ideals. What can a child do in the face of these obstacles? The natural reaction is anger, but often the child doesn’t know how to express this anger in constructive ways. This dilemma cre ates more conflict, more frustration, and consequently, more anger. It is a vicious circle that seems not to have an end for many children.

Anger as a response to hurt

This brings me to the most im portant source of anger for all of us in our modern world, the anger that is aroused when we feel hurt. It is the most common form of anger.

The hurt that sets up this anger reaction can be physical, as when some one tramps on our toes. We immediately want to lash out in anger. Or the hurt can be psychological, as when someone criticizes or judges us un fairly. O f course, people don’t hurt us physically so much anymore, they beat up on us with words! Most hurt anger is, therefore, psychological.

Why is this type of anger so damaging? Because the hurt we receive sets up a strong need to hurt the offender back, literally to take revenge.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 0 8 )

Hart, A. D. (1997). Helping children survive divorce : What to expect; how to help. Thomas Nelson Incorporated. Created from liberty on 2024-01-23 15:21:09.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Anger and the Divorced Child

So we lash out with equally venomous criticisms or, if we can’t hurt back immediately or if it is not safe, our brains store the memory of the hurt. We call this resentment. It is the storage of hurt memories with a view to getting revenge at some future time.

For the child of divorce, any of these four can cause anger. Divorce can trigger all of them even in the most placid of children. Fear and insecurity triggers an instinctive need for self-protection, and a child will naturally lash out at the very one on whom he depends for love and security. Patterns of learned or conditioned anger can be triggered by the loss of a stable home, friends, school, and financial privileges. Being torn between two opposing parents can set up many conflicts and frus trations. Finally the feeling that you have been abandoned can cause much hurt. Because parents are often caught up in their own hurts, they can easily pass these on to their children without realizing it.

Anger As Protection Whatever the cause, the anger is intended to be protective. Parents should understand this. Your child, when angry, is only doing what he or she is designed to do. Anger is essentially a warning signal. In this respect, an ger is to the mind what physical pain is to the body. For the mind, anger warns of the presence of conflict, hurt, or threat. God designed anger to be a system of defense more than to be a system of attack!

Unfortunately, for most of us, the life-situations that trigger anger no longer need this protection. For instance, our anger that was intended for a more primitive lifestyle has to adapt to the more sophisticated, psychologically oriented lifestyle of our modern times. Most of our natu ral means for expressing anger, such as lashing out or using physical means for dealing with troublesome people, are inappropriate for mod ern life. But we still experience this anger.

It is im portant that the parents of an angry child understand this dilemma. Every child should be allowed the freedom to feel angry. The child should then be taught to express this anger in nonphysical ways. The ONLY healthy way to express anger is without hurting others.

A child who is not allowed to feel any anger will only suppress the

( 1 0 9 )

Hart, A. D. (1997). Helping children survive divorce : What to expect; how to help. Thomas Nelson Incorporated. Created from liberty on 2024-01-23 15:21:09.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

urge to act out in anger until a later time. Suppressed anger also creates a greater risk that the child will use passive and indirect ways of express ing anger. This may become a lifestyle. It is always healthier to be al lowed to feel and talk about anger. When we can do this freely, the need to act it out in aggressive behavior diminishes.

Passive Anger I want to examine passive anger in a little more detail here because it is so common in our culture. Unlike certain expressive European cultures (who shall remain anonymous) that prefer to explode and shout, we prefer to use passive ways to deal with anger.

What are some of the passive and indirect ways that children learn to express their anger? Negativity is the most common way. Have you ever seen a negative child? He sees the world through negative-tinted glasses. He resists all encouragement. Everything is seen with a pessimistic bias. The child seems to be constantly irritable. He withdraws and isolates himself, becomes critical of siblings and parents, and resists going to school or performing chores. Such a child is showing all the signs of suppressed anger being expressed passively.

Some angry children turn to more serious kinds of negative acting out. They become antisocial or engage in petty criminal activity—all as a way of indirectly expressing their anger.

One fifteen-year-old boy I worked with developed a compulsion to damage other people’s automobiles. He would walk down the street in the early evening and deflate tires or scratch the paint with a nail. His internal, unrecognized rage was so great he just had to damage some thing.

What was causing this rage and why was he focusing it on automo biles? As you can guess, his parents had recently divorced after his father had left his mother for another woman. His father loved automobiles. They were the pride of his life. In a symbolic way the boy was trying to harm his father.

Even in such cases as this, the feelings of anger are natural and appro priate. W hat is wrong is how the boy expressed his anger. He should

( 1 1 0 )

Hart, A. D. (1997). Helping children survive divorce : What to expect; how to help. Thomas Nelson Incorporated. Created from liberty on 2024-01-23 15:21:09.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Anger and the Divorced Child

have been taught by his parents at a much earlier age to recognize his anger and talk about his anger, preferably with the person causing it. This is the best way to avoid passive-anger behaviors. This is precisely what therapy did for him. It helped him to openly admit his anger and find an outlet for it through talking. Shortly after he started therapy, his compulsive behaviors stopped.

How Much Expression of Anger Should Be Encouraged? The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question facing every parent and coun selor trying to deal with an angry child is: How much anger should a child be allowed to express in direct ways? Should a child be encouraged to vent angry impulses?

To answer this question it is im portant that I first distinguish between anger as feeling or emotion and anger as behavior or aggression. The feeling of anger should never be punished or inhibited. A child should always have the freedom to feel anger. In fact, the more open a child is in admitting when he or she feels angry, the better. Being in touch with the feeling of anger helps us to recognize that something is bothering us. It signals that we are being threatened or hurt. We should all learn to ac cept angry feelings, and then try to discover what is causing it. This then leads us to the steps we must take to deal with the cause of the anger.

But the feeling of anger also creates in us an impulse to fight back. We want to attack the cause or repay the hurt we’ve experienced. This ag gressive behavior is what gets us into trouble. To feel our anger is healthy. To express it in hostility or violence is not healthy. This is why Paul says to us in Ephesians 4:26, “Be ye angry and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” The New English Bible translates this verse as: “If you are angry, do not let anger lead you into sin.”

My understanding of what Paul is saying here is that it is not anger itself (as feeling) that is the problem, but the fact that anger has the potential (in behavior) to lead us into sin.

In dealing with an angry child, therefore, a parent needs to remem ber this distinction. It is im portant that you help your child recognize and talk about his or her feelings of anger. At the same time you must

( 1 1 1 )

Hart, Archibald D.. Helping Children Survive Divorce : What to Expect; How to Help, Thomas Nelson Incorporated, 1997. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/detail.action?docID=6654127. Created from liberty on 2024-01-23 15:25:28.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

make it clear that certain kinds of angry behavior are not acceptable. A child should be able to say, “I feel angry and I hate you for what you have done,” without the parent falling apart or becoming upset and defensive. This, o f course, is not easy for divorced parents, who usually feel very guilty for what has been done to the child and whose guilt is usually intensified by an expression of the child’s emotional pain. Parents must make a deliberate effort to set aside their own pain if they are going to allow their children a freer expression of anger.

The Father’s Role in Dealing with Anger Problems This brings me to a very im portant point that I want to drive home with all the emphasis I can: The father must play a significant role in dealing with children’s anger.

Two of the im portant findings of recent research are that children are more likely to feel anger toward the divorcing father than toward the mother, and that anger problems are more likely to be present in boys than in girls. I suspect this is because we raise boys in our culture to express anger differently than girls and because it is more customary for fathers to leave home than mothers.

Whatever the reason, this research shows how very im portant it is for the father to participate in healing a child’s anger. An absent father, or a father who has difficulty in dealing with emotion himself, is going to aggravate the problem further. So, Dads, keep your emotional life in good shape!

It is a lamentable feature of our culture that it teaches males to hide emotion. Men, as a rule, don’t feel as comfortable with emotional m at ters as women do. This is why so many more women are willing to seek therapy than men. It’s not because women are more neurotic, but be cause they tend to be more honest about themselves and their feelings and have the courage to confront themselves at a deeper level. I believe that men, because of their tendency to conceal their emotions, are gen erally less healthy emotionally. They are certainly more difficult to do therapy with, if you can get them to therapy!

Please forgive my generalization here. Of course there are women

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 1 2 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Anger and the Divorced Child

who have difficulty dealing with their emotions, just as there are men who feel comfortable with their feelings. Exceptions abound, thankfully. And girls as well as boys can display anger problems. But overall, men need to work at their emotional expressiveness more than women.

How can fathers help their sons overcome anger problems? Here are my suggestions:

♦ Be available. An absent father cannot help anyone. Spend time with your child. Once a week is not enough. Two or three times a week is better.

♦ Be alone with your problem child. If more than one child is involved, spend some time with each child separately, but especially with any child who seems angry. Just your frequent presence in the child’s life, giving him personal attention, can work miracles.

♦ Work at becoming a better listener. Men tend to be advice- givers, not good listeners. Work at your listening skills. Ask questions that encourage your child to talk about his or her feelings of anger, and try to receive these feelings without defending yourself or shrugging it off.

♦ Watch for indirect signs of anger. Persistent teasing, tattling, sarcasm, negativity, and resistance are common. Sometimes the anger reveals itself through physical complaints such as stomachaches, asthma, vomiting, and sleeplessness. These are all signs of anger, so treat anger with all the patience and understanding you can muster. Try to reflect that you under stand why your child is angry.

♦ Accept the anger as normal. Encourage the child to talk about it instead of acting it out. Never encourage your child to take his or her anger out physically by hitting you or any other person or object. Anger can be resolved by talking about it; it does not need behavioral expression through aggression. Vigorous exercise such as running or bicycling may help some children vent their frustrations harmlessly, but such exercise should never be a substitute for talking through those feelings.

( 1 1 3 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

♦ Model, through your own behavior, how to deal with anger. This is the most im portant thing you can do. Even if you blow it through bad listening or giving too much advice, if you can model self-control and openly express your feelings, you will have won the battle! Tell the child how you feel, but do not dump your feelings on him or her. Try to show the child how to be honest with his or her feelings without aggressively acting them out. Such modeling, especially from a father to a son, can be worth a million words.

Every child, not just those who are divorced, should be exposed to adults who can talk about their feelings openly and honestly. If a parent is incapable of this sort of sharing and communication, then take your child to friends or relatives who can and make sure that they spend time around healthy people.

This is the wonderful thing about emotional healthiness: It is conta gious. It spreads through modeling. It affects every part of you when it is all around you. You can’t help being healthy when you have to live with it every day. So, Mom, Dad, above everything else, work at your own healthiness. Your children will call you blessed for it.

( 1 1 4 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

C H A P T E R 9

Improving Your Child’s Self-Esteem

Divorce is never a pleasant experience, even when the spouses mutually agree on ending a marriage. When the breakup is full of resentment and bitterness, the consequences are potentially even more damaging.

A major injurious consequence of every divorce is the crushing blow it deals to the self-esteem of all those involved, especially the children whose self-concepts are still in the process of being formed. For them, divorce is a preamble to a chain of events that can leave permanent scars and deal irreparable damage to their self-esteem.

Damage to a child’s self-esteem usually comes, not from the loss of united parents or not having a single home, but from the indignities caused by other people’s reactions. The child fears what other people think about them. Adding insult to injury are the legal processes and the way the child feels battered emotionally. When children are treated like pieces of property to be bartered, when their feelings and wishes are ignored, when they are used as hostages by one parent trying to gain a material or emotional advantage over the other, or when a child is used as a weapon to satisfy an urge for revenge against the other spouse, you have a circumstance that has the potential to do a great deal of harm to the way a child values himself or herself.

Such behaviors should clearly not characterize Christian believers. They violate every principle of love taught to us in the New Testament.

( 1 1 5 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

And yet there are many Christian parents guilty of these abuses. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I can only assume they act out of igno rance. If they were better informed, their behaviors would have been different. Hopefully, this book will contribute to this change.

The Christian and Self-Esteem There is a lot of confusion in the minds of many Christians about the appropriateness of the self-esteem concept. Before I can offer advice to parents about how to help their children to build their self-esteem during and following divorce, I need to first clarify a Christian understanding of what it is we try to do when we talk about building self-esteem.

Much of the current confusion arises because the psychological con cept of the self and self-worth is not clearly understood. Biblical teaching on the basic sinfulness of the self and the human person is seen to be in contradiction to notions like self-esteem.

It is true that Scripture teaches us not to be self-seeking, even to deny ourselves. We are called to a life of self-sacrifice and consideration for others. But the word self means different things in each of these phrases. It is this difference in meaning between these different selves that is the cause of the confusion. The self that we deny is not the same as the self we affirm or esteem, The one has to do with selfish ambition and self- centeredness, the other with who we are as people. My book Me, Myself, and I (Servant Publications) clarifies this confusion, and I would refer the reader to that source for further information.

Suffice it for me to say that none of these biblical teachings is in opposition to the need every person has to feel valued and to have self-respect. The term self-esteem refers simply to the attitude we have toward ourselves—and everyone has such an attitude. In fact, claim ing to have received God’s forgiveness should have a dram atic effect on your attitude toward yourself. It should change it from one of self- hate and self-rejection to self-respect and self-acceptance. If God loves you, who are you to hate yourself? When you continue to feel no self- respect or self-esteem, you are denying God’s love for you.

But the whole notion of self-esteem as it is presented in secular

( 1 1 6 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

psychology does have some problems. This has led many critics o f psychology to rightly question what is m eant by self-esteem notions. Christian parents should be clear, therefore, about a Christian under standing of self-esteem.

It is true that there is a form of self-love that is not acceptable to us as Christians. It is a type of self-worship that places ourselves above others (even God) and causes us to selfishly pursue our own needs regardless of how doing so affects others. Some think that this is what self-esteem is all about. Is it? Absolutely not!

This form of self-worship or self-love is not the same as self-esteem. It is called narcissism and has long been seen as undesirable. It is noth ing more than conceit rolled up in selfishness. In fact, it is really an exag gerated compensation for very deep feelings of low self-worth.

W hat then is a healthy self-esteem? It is how a person feels about himself. Each of us has a self-image, a picture in our mind’s eye of who and what we are. This image is formed early in our lives, and our par ents play a major role in establishing it, which is why divorcing parents must pay particular attention to what they say and do to their kids. As the child forms his self-image he also places a value on this image— either good, or bad, or somewhere in-between. It is this overall judg m ent of ourselves that forms our self-esteem.

When we say a person has a high self-esteem, we mean that he or she has a strong sense of self-respect and feeling of self-worth. By low self esteem we mean that a person does not place much value on herself. Low self-esteem is really a form of self-hate. It is this respect for oneself, coupled with a high level of self-acceptance, that we should try to instill in our children.

Improving Your Child’s Self-Esteem

A Christian Approach to Self-Esteem My understanding of New Testament teachings is that self-esteem is similar to, but not identical with, the self-love of which Jesus speaks in Mark 12:31: “A nd . . . thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The no tion of self-love, however, causes me to squirm simply because I have no idea what it means to love myself.

( 1 1 7 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

In fact, when Jesus told his followers to love their neighbors as them selves, he was rebuking them. A more accurate interpretation of what he really said is: “You already love yourself so much, why don’t you go and love your neighbor as yourself!” The primary emphasis is on loving your neighbor—not on loving yourself. Jesus assumes that we already do this!

Low self-esteem as we know it today was almost unknown in New Testament times. In Africa, where I have had contact with many people of different tribal backgrounds, low self-esteem is also rare. People de rive their self-esteem from knowing that they are members of a great tribe that has accomplished many things in its history. Their self-esteem is derived from who they are, not from what they accomplish, which is the exact reverse of our culture.

In our society we cannot rely on tribal identity to give us self-esteem. We have to work to prove to ourselves and others that we are worthy, and herein lies many of our problems. The divorcing parent has to work even harder to protect his or her child’s self-esteem because divorce will not only create feelings of unworthiness, but will also disrupt a child’s ability to perform, with a consequent loss of good feelings.

Paul gives us some help with the problem of low self-esteem when he tells us, “Do not be conceited or think too highly of yourself, but think your way to a sober estimate based on the measure of faith that God has dealt to each of you” (Romans 12:3, neb).

Here Paul is addressing the major self-esteem problem of his day— not low self-esteem, but its whitewash, namely, conceit. The remedy he offers is the same for all self-esteem problems. When he tells us, “Think your way through to a sober estimate,” he is actually advising us to do two things:

1. Develop realistic self-knowledge (an accurate self-image), and

2. Have the courage to accept ourselves for what we are (total self-acceptance).

These two conditions are mandatory for developing a healthy self esteem in all of us. So the task is to help our children develop an accurate picture of themselves, then to give them courage to be who they really are.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 1 8 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

How Parents Influence a Child’s Self-Esteem Since self-esteem depends primarily on what sort of image we have con structed for ourselves, how and when that image is formed is crucial. Parents are the critical source of information to each child that tells them what sort of person he or she is. In divorce, parents need to double their efforts in feeding an accurate and positive self-image to their children. You are the mirrors into which your children look for information about who they are.

Children are constantly looking for evaluation and feedback from parents. “Daddy, look how strong I am!” “Mommy, see how I tied my shoes!” “Look at my school report; I did better in math this time!” When children are successful in building a healthy and accurate self-image that they can respect, it is because the parents have sent clear messages like, “You are a worthy person,” or “I love you just because of who you are.” Sadly, many parents send few positive messages.

Sam is the father of two boys aged nine and twelve. His own child hood was an unhappy one. His parents fought continuously and finally divorced when he was ten. He never forgave them for this and hardly ever visits them. He is angry most of the time and feels he is a failure in life. Although he is a foreman in a factory, deep down he believes he should have been something better, perhaps a lawyer or an engineer. He mopes about this often and quite unconsciously has developed a strong need to make sure his two boys make something of their lives. W ithout realizing it, he has resorted to using a dirty trick to motivate his children into becoming something. He criticizes them constantly, hoping they will rise and prove him wrong.

This trick has been tried since the dawn of time, but it has never worked. It didn’t work when my father tried it on me, and it didn’t work in Sam’s case either. It’s a mystery why it has existed so long.

Sam started when his oldest boy was four. “You’re just stupid,” he would say, thinking deep down that this would help his son prove to him that he wasn’t stupid. “You’ll never amount to anything. Everybody is better than you.” Slowly he dug away at his son’s self-esteem, feeding the boy distortions of who he really was and thus creating a distorted self-image.

Improving Your Child’s Self-Esteem

( 1 1 9 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive D ivorce

Not all the messages were verbal. Scowling, pushing the child away, destroying projects his son had tried to build—all these actions sent messages as clearly as if they were being screamed to the boy: YOU ARE NO GOOD. But this m irror was distorted; he was projecting his own disappointments in himself onto his son.

When his second son was old enough, Sam started on him, too. Sam’s wife didn’t know what to do. She loved her husband but could not con trol his attitude or behavior toward the two boys. Understandably, Sam’s two sons developed major self-esteem problems. It will take many years of therapy to correct their distorted self-images. Some scars will prob ably remain for the rest of their lives.

Most parents don’t go to these lengths, but many, through their words and wordless messages, create in their children a distorted picture of themselves. You can never have a healthy self-esteem when you don’t know who you really are.

It is im portant for divorcing parents to remember, therefore, that children can only see themselves through the reflections of your atti tude toward them. They come to believe what you say about them.

Divorcing parents are particularly prone to distorting their children’s self-images. This is because the parents are hurting, too; their self-esteem has also been lowered. Parents should put a guard on the messages they send that might damage their children’s self-confidence or make them question their value as persons. Divorce raises enough problems for chil dren without parents projecting their own resentment, bitterness, and anger on their offspring.

Divorced parents need to particularly be sensitive about verbalized judgments and avoid using labels like “monster, horrible, evil, devil, self ish, ugly, and no-good.” Abolish these labels from your vocabulary when you talk to your children.

How Does Divorce Damage a Child’s Self-Esteem? Quite apart from the distortions to a child’s self-image a hurting di vorced parent may cause, there are a number of other factors in divorce that can undermine a child’s self-esteem:

( 1 2 0 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Improving Your Child’s Self-Esteem

The stigma of divorce It is quite erroneous to think that children don’t experience divorce as a stigma just because divorce is common today. One father, in trying to jus tify his intention to separate from his wife, kept saying to me, “But Peter (his son) won’t feel my leaving. All his friends’ parents are also divorced.”

“W hat difference does that make?” I asked. “It is probably a point of pride to your son that he still has a daddy at home. The fact that his friends’ parents are divorced is not going to make your divorce easier for him to accept. It may even make it worse.”

In Christian circles especially, the stigma of divorce is still very real. Even though I am a strong advocate of saving marriages, I wish we would not stigmatize divorced people like we do. Some divorces are inevitable. One cannot always control what a spouse does. Not every divorced per son is to blame. But the reality is that one has to face some stigmatizing if you divorce. It hurts the parents, but it also causes the children to feel ashamed and less worthy as individuals. They may be teased by their peers or even shunned by some families.

Help for a child who is suffering from the stigma of divorce should focus on providing understanding and giving support. Communicating an awareness of how difficult it is for the child can provide some relief. It is im portant to remind him or her that self-worth does not depend on what parents do or don’t do. Don’t underestimate the power of your words of reassurance to correct a child’s faulty thinking or beliefs.

In extreme cases where a child is being very badly treated, it may be necessary for you to consider moving to another neighborhood, church, or school. They don’t deserve you, so find a place where you will be respected. Get your child out of a destructive and unsympathetic atmo sphere while you can. A fresh start may help avoid long-term damage to your child’s self-esteem.

Disruption o f the family When families break up, especially when some children go with the father and others with the mother, the stability of the family is disrupted. This creates feelings of insecurity for the children and undermines the foun dation on which their self-esteem is based. When families are fractured,

( 1 2 1 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

there is no longer the same core of reliable feedback that is essential to the formation of the child’s self-image. When a home is conflicted or when one parent is absent, it takes extra effort and deliberate planning on the part of parents to ensure that children receive reliable feedback to form a positive self-image.

A climate of love is lacking

To develop a healthy self-esteem, a child also needs a climate in which there is honesty, caring, and a willingness to accept failure. In short, children need a climate of unconditional love. Even though a parent may not approve of everything a child does, there should be enough freedom to allow that child to explore new behaviors and even fail, if necessary. When failure occurs, love should be there to pick up the child and, in a nurturing, tender way, point him or her again in the right direction.

The model here that we must follow is clearly what God does for us. W ithout approving of our behavior, he is constantly waiting to pick us up, heal our wounds, forgive our failings, and help us start again. We call this God’s unconditional love, and it is a pattern that every parent can follow when trying to build a child’s self-esteem.

Before, during, and after a divorce are probably the most difficult times for parents to show unconditional love, although I know of par ents in stable marriages who don’t show love this way either! I once consulted with a couple who have had a stable marriage for twenty-five years but whose twenty-three-year-old daughter had gone completely off the rails. After a long absence the daughter had just returned home, remorseful for her behavior and pleading for a chance to start her life over again. What was the father’s response? The father told me, “I just can’t find it in my heart to forgive her. I am too angry about what she has done.”

My heart wept for that daughter. How far this father’s response is from the story of the prodigal son! How could a Christian father be this unforgiving? Was it possible that this very attitude was what had shaped the daughter’s problems? I think it was.

The father defended himself. “If I forgive her I will be condoning her

Helping Children Survive D ivorce

( 1 2 2 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

actions.” He persisted in this rationalization even when I reminded him that God forgives us without condoning our behavior!

As we talked, it became clear to me that the real reason behind this family’s problems lay in the father’s unloving, unforgiving spirit. While he persisted in this attitude there was little hope of healing either the daughter’s emotional wounds or the rupture in the family.

Many divorced parents develop such unforgiving attitudes. At first it is focused on the ex-spouse, but slowly it generalizes to include every one around. To avoid this, a parent must be constantly on guard against forming an unloving, unforgiving spirit. Even if the parent’s feelings of anger and hurt can’t be changed, his or her behavior can, and the cli mate of love that will result will do wonders for the child’s self-esteem.

The child’s depression

Diminished self-esteem is one of the major by-products of every de pression. The depressed person not only sees the outside world as bleak and sad, his or her inner world looks that way, too. And this is especially true for children who are depressed because of their parents’ divorce.

A fourteen-year-old girl described her feelings to me this way. “When my parents told me they were divorcing, I didn’t want to live anymore. I don’t know why, but I thought it was the end of the world. Perhaps I was too scared to face my friends—I don’t know. The fact is I didn’t want to see anybody or do anything. What scared me even more was that I be gan to see myself as no good. I hated myself. I don’t know why, because I hadn’t done anything. I didn’t blame myself for the divorce—I know I wasn’t the cause of it. Yet I felt like nothing. I didn’t want to get up in the morning or get dressed or even wash myself.”

The loss of interest in life and in oneself is common in depression, and it lasts as long as the depression does. If the depression is not re solved fairly quickly, however, these feelings can become part of the child’s permanent belief system.

Depression can start a series of events that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. For instance, a child may be depressed over a divorce, fail to study adequately, and then receive low grades in school. The loss of face over these grades creates more depression and further feelings of low

Improving Your Child’s Self-Esteem

( 1 2 3 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

worth. The child’s self-confidence is shaken, and he or she may become too afraid to study for fear of failing again. A self-defeating pattern of poor study and poor performance has begun that can become perma nent if nothing is done to interrupt the cycle.

Depression in a child should be resolved quickly because it has the potential to create other, more serious, lifelong problems. I will be ad dressing these in the next chapter and showing how children who are depressed over their parents’ divorce can be helped.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

Building the Self-Esteem of the Divorced Child Both parents should accept responsibility for building the self-esteem of their children. Even if the parent who has custody remarries, the absent spouse still has some responsibility for participating in this process.

My own stepfather was kind, considerate, and very loving toward me. In most respects he was the ideal stepfather. But he could never replace my real father. I needed my real father’s approval more than his, and noth ing could change this. A word of praise from my father was worth many hundreds from my stepfather, not because he was more of a person, but because I knew he was my real father. The absent divorced parent should, therefore, not underestimate his or her role in shaping self-esteem.

Before setting out the im portant steps for building self-esteem, let me summarize the major points of what I have said about self-esteem thus far:

♦ Self-esteem is how a person feels about himself or herself. It affects how he or she lives his or her fife.

♦ Self-esteem is derived from a person’s self-image, how one sees oneself. One’s self-image is largely determined by what parents say or do; they are the “mirrors” that reflect back to the child what he or she is like.

♦ High self-esteem is based on a person’s belief, gained from experience, that he or she is lovable and worthwhile. It requires self-knowledge and self-acceptance.

( 1 2 4 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

♦ Unconditional love, the kind of love that God gives us, creates the most stable self-esteem.

♦ Conceit is not the same as high self-esteem. Conceit is a cover- up for low self-esteem.

W ith these general guidelines as background, let us now look at some of the specific ways in which a child’s self-esteem can be enhanced:

Be kind but honest in the feedback you give your child.

Since our tendency as parents is to criticize as a way of motivating a child, we may tend to be too critical. This is not honest feedback; it is often a negative distortion of what the child is really like.

Teach your child that to be imperfect is acceptable.

Nobody is perfect. The most beautifu l people of all are those who know they are not perfect but who are comfortable with that fact. If parents can model this attitude, the child will have little problem with forming a healthy self-esteem.

Be careful not to communicate, even unintentionally, standards that your child cannot m eet Unrealistic expectations can make a child consistently feel inadequate. My middle daughter had a very difficult time during her first college year as a psychology major. I was totally unaware that she felt she wasn’t measuring up to my expectations, although she was receiving Bs and Cs in a very com petitive college environment. One day she called me from college to con front me about her feelings of not measuring up. I told her honestly that I didn’t care how high her grades were—only that she was happy in her school- work. My daughter’s relief was quite dramatic. Once she realized I was not constantly evaluating her, her grades showed a marked improvement

Build your child’s ego with unconditional love.

Even when your own heart is aching, work at showing your child un conditional love. Do not withdraw your love as a means of punishment

Improving Your Child’s Self-Esteem

( 1 2 5 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

or discipline. Your child needs and wants your love regardless of whether or not you approve of his or her behavior. Give it unconditionally.

Learn to value what your child is good at.

If you value sports and your son tends to be an academic, you are bound to be communicating your disappointment in some way. Try to change your values so that they match your child’s abilities. It is a mistake to force your child to be good at something for which he or she has no talent or interest.

One minister I knew wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. This desire became an obsession with him; he showed disapproval at every thing his son did that wasn’t consistent with becoming a minister.

But his son didn’t want to be a minister. He was only interested in m otor mechanics. He loved stripping engines, repairing them, and put ting them back together again. Slowly a rift developed between the fa ther and son that could have split the family. But the father was sensible enough to seek help and gradually learned to see the value of mechani cal things. He asked his son to show him how he repaired engines and worked at developing an interest in what his son was good at.

After a while, the father found that he too enjoyed tinkering with en gines and that he also was good at it. Auto mechanics became an interest ing hobby for him. His son never became a minister, but he is a very active layperson in his church and now runs a successful motor-repair business.

In this instance, disaster was averted because a father changed his values to match his son’s interests and talents. Christian parents must learn that they cannot force a child into a mold of their own making. The child must participate in shaping his own mold if he is going to develop self-esteem.

Help your child find compensations for the areas in which he or she is deficient. I have three daughters. Two of them have natural singing ability—one readily admits she does not. When they were young, not having a talent for singing was a sore point for this daughter, so my wife and I set about exploring her other talents. We soon found that she had natural danc ing ability and was a gifted artist. We shifted our values to include her

( 1 2 6 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

talents also, and soon my middle daughter began to blossom in her own way. If we had not helped her find these compensations, I am sure my middle daughter would have become jealous of her two sisters and would have left home feeling that she was inferior to them. As it is, she has no such feelings.

Correct distorted peer feedback. Children can be very cruel with each other. A child who is different— either in appearance or ability—can be treated most unkindly by other children. Be alert to this cruelty and correct the damage it does. You may have to say to a child, “Yes, it’s true that you are not a brilliant scholar, but there are other things you can do that are more important.” Or, “I know children tease you because you have a limp, but it’s because they are afraid something can happen to them also, so try not to take it too seriously.” Teasing is most times a defense against the fear that the teaser could also suffer the same fate. If a child knows this, he or she can more easily dismiss the teasing for what it really is. Sooner or later, the fear passes and the teasing stops.

Teach your child that spiritual values provide true inner beauty. Whatever our imperfections, it is Christ who makes us whole. It is the person who feels totally self-adequate and perfect who has no need for God. Our children should, if we teach them correctly, come not to fear their imperfections, but to accept them as a part of who they are and learn to overcome them. Paul tells us that when he prayed for his imper fection to be removed (he called it a “thorn in the flesh”), God told him, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weak ness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

No self-esteem is complete without the wholeness that Christ brings. Without this wholeness we are always incomplete, totally imperfect. Com plete self-acceptance is almost impossible without the sufficiency that comes from knowing God. This is as true for children as it is for adults!

Improving Your Child’s Self-Esteem

( 1 2 7 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

C H A P T E R 1 0

Depression and the Divorced Child

P eter is nine. His mother and teacher are concerned that he is not achiev ing at his grade level. A year before he was doing so well at school that he was placed in a class for gifted children. Everyone at his school believes that Peter is a child o f superior ability. They are puzzled as to why his academic work has deteriorated over the last six or eight months. Even Peter can’t figure it out. He knows he is smart, so why isn’t he doing better?

Peter doesn’t seem to be able to get up the energy to do anything. He hasn’t done any homework for weeks. He just sits and stares at it. He used to be able to zip through it quickly and even enjoyed it. Now he feels like a zombie.

More recently Peter has begun to withdraw into himself. He refuses to participate in class events and won’t talk to his friends. When one of them asks him, “What’s the matter, Peter?” he angrily replies, “Stop both ering me. I don’t want to talk to you!” Even getting him to go to school has become a major project. His mother has to force him out of bed and almost carry him to school. He resists every strategy to motivate him and frequently mumbles, “I just wish I were dead.”

W hat is wrong with Peter? Does he have some strange disease? Is he showing the early signs of a severe brain disorder? His mother feared so and took him to see a specialist in children’s problems. Examination

( 1 2 9 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

and testing showed that he is indeed of superior intelligence but achiev ing far below the level of his ability. It also revealed that he was extremely sad. Lethargic is what the psychologist called it. Peter was also experi encing a lot of insecurity and lacked motivation. In short, he was suffer ing from a severe reactive depression—the label given to that form of depression that is a response to a major loss. It is the same depression we experience when someone we love dies.

What was causing Peter’s depression? A few personal questions di rected to his mother quickly revealed the cause. Six months previously, Peter’s father began making threats about leaving home. Occasionally, at first, but gradually more frequently, Peter’s parents began to fight. Not all the fights were confined to just hollering at each other. Occa sionally they turned into physical encounters.

Every fight, however, ended with the father threatening, “I’m going to divorce you; just wait and see.” To this his m other would reply, “Go ahead—see if I care.” They paid no attention to the effect their conflict was having on their son.

Finally, Peter’s father left home and filed for divorce. That’s when the final straw broke for little Peter, and neither the father nor the mother realized that Peter’s problems were related to the conflict and final death of their marriage.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

Divorce As a Depression Trigger Every unhappy marriage, not just those heading for divorce, places an emotional strain on the children of the marriage. The law at work here is a very simple one: The greater the conflict, the greater the emotional strain.

The strain is not caused solely by the separation and divorce. The divided house, the tensions leading up to the separation, and the events that follow all contribute their share.

Some parents desperately hold on to the erroneous belief that chil dren are not affected by their parents’ conflicts. I can understand this desperation. Their guilt is overwhelming. But it just isn’t true, no m atter how much guilt it takes away. Unhappy homes make unhappy children,

( 1 3 0 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

and every divorce will take its toll unless some corrective steps are taken. The point of this book is to help divorcing parents minimize this toll.

What form does the emotional toll take? This depends on the person ality and emotional healthiness of the children and on the way parents behave toward them. Some children develop anger problems or severe anxiety disorders. Others develop sleep disturbances or anger difficul ties. Most will become physically sick at some point, while others will later become rebellious.

Whatever the specific outcome of the emotional disturbance, almost every child will experience a degree of depression. For a few—as in the case of young Peter—the depression will be severe enough to be the major focus of his disturbance. Peter will have difficulty with depres sion the rest o f his life if something is not done to help him!

It is not my purpose here to deal with every aspect of depression. I have done this in another book. (See Dark Clouds, Silver Linings, Focus on the Family.) But I do believe that divorcing parents need to understand some thing about how depression develops in the children of divorce. Most importantly, parents, grandparents, and teachers need to be able to recog nize depression in children and then know how to deal with i t

How Loss Causes Depression The type of depression with which we are concerned here is generally called reactive depression. It is the depression we experience as a re sponse to severe loss or even the threat of loss.

Most adults fear depression because they don’t understand it. True, there are some forms of depression so severe (I wish we had another name for them so that we wouldn’t get so confused about them) that they are very frightening. Paradoxically, however, it is these severe de pressions that are the easiest to treat. They are usually biochemical in nature and respond well to antidepressants. The reactive depressions don’t respond well, if at all, to medications, so they are harder on us.

At the outset, let me make this very im portant point: We are designed to experience reactive depression. It is not an accident, and we are not failures because we get sad. It is the way God has designed us to deal

Depression and the Divorced Child

( 1 3 1 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

with life’s losses. The Bible tells us that, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” Especially, there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to m ourn and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3 :1 , 4 niv). Reactive depression is all about grieving. It is the depression that helps us come to terms with our loss.

Reactive depression is part, therefore, of the grieving process. Griev ing is more than just being sad about a loss, including death, but it is nonetheless a depression. It is the normal response we are all designed to experience when we have something we prize wrenched from us. Think about it for a moment. This is exactly what every child of divorce is experiencing—the loss of what he or she prizes above everything else: a united family and both parents who live at home.

Depression is nature’s way of helping the body and mind adjust to loss. It helps us to find ways of getting on in life without the prized person or object that has now been taken away.

Why does divorce cause depression in a child? Because it creates a loss of many things that are considered prized or essential. The depar ture of one parent (usually the father) is a profound personal loss for the child. There are other significant losses as well, and we will look at these later in this chapter.

What Purpose Does Depression Serve? This question has intrigued me for many years. I am convinced that depression, like many emotions, serves im portant functions if it is al lowed to run its course naturally. W hat are these functions?

If we examine the major symptoms of depression we find that to gether they serve to protect us. They are not accidental but are designed by an intelligent creator to protect us in times of loss.

W hat are the major symptoms? First, there is profound lethargy—a loss of energy. Second, there is a loss of interest in normal activities. Third, there is a profound sadness. These symptoms all have the effect of slowing us down and making us lose interest in our environment. This forces us to retreat to a place where we can regroup, evaluate the loss, adjust to it, and then having let it go, return to normal functioning

( 1 3 2 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

again. In a nutshell, depression helps the grieving process. W ithout it there can be no grieving.

We understand this well in bereavement. The death of someone we love is about as painful as it gets, and our grief is a call to adjust to the loss. For the child, indeed for one or another of the parents as well, di vorce is the same as death. It is the death of an intact family and can create just as great a sense of loss and depression as real death. The symp toms of depression force the child to retreat from the world so as to deal with the loss. Depression is not an intruder here, but rather the process through which healing comes. This is why parents need to know how to help their child through the depression—not to bypass it.

In many ways divorce is worse than death. Death is final. You can’t reverse it. You are forced to face the finality of the loss, and this forces depression and grief on you, which actually helps you to get over it more quickly. In divorce a child is confronted by a loss, but yet it is not a loss. One parent goes, but doesn’t really go; in most cases the departed parent stays in the vicinity. The grief process begins, but it can’t be finished. The loss is there, yet the child can still hope for reconciliation.

Because of this off-again, on-again state, the child of divorce is sub jected to a series of contradictory losses and nonlosses. This is the worst type o f grief a human being can experience, so it is no wonder that de pression is so common in the children of divorce and that it so often leaves permanent scars.

The Other Losses in Divorce It would be a mistake to think that the loss of a parent is the only signifi cant loss experienced by a child. Divorce precipitates many losses. To complicate matters further, no two children experience these losses in exactly the same way. To help a child through a reactive depression, it is im portant to discover exactly what aspect of the divorce she or he is grieving over. It is not the same for every child.

W hat other losses are represented in a family breakup?

1. Sometimes there is the loss of other siblings, as when children are split between the parents.

Depression and the Divorced Child

( 1 3 3 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

2. There is the loss of the “ideal” home. An intact home with both parents present has an im portant symbolic significance for children. It is their ideal and preferred lifestyle.

3. There is a loss of hope for the future. Children are full of expectations about how the parents will fit into their future lives. They dream about it! Divorce shatters these expectations.

4. There is a loss of financial security. Most husbands start divorce proceedings by saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of all of you. You’ll have everything you need.” It usually ends with, “Now you know this is going to be expensive and I’m not a millionaire, so you will all have to tighten your belts.”

For most children, divorce means a drop in the standard of living. A single, divorced parent is our newest poverty class! And this can cause a lot of insecurity for the children involved.

5. The saddest loss of all for the children is the loss of faith in their parents. Divorcing children often feel betrayed. It is as if they are saying, “You received me into the world and led me to believe I was wanted and that you would give me love and a secure life. I trusted you. I made myself vulnerable to you. Now you drop this bomb on me. You make me feel like I am an intrusion.”

6. Loss of faith in parents can become a loss of faith in God. “I prayed for help that God would save our family, but God doesn’t listen to me. I don’t believe there is a God!”

There are many other losses as well, but space doesn’t perm it me to list them all. From the examples I have given, a parent should be able to identify other specific losses that a child is experiencing. For example, I remember that when my parents divorced I acutely felt the loss of my father’s workshop and spending time with him repairing or building something. I was only twelve, but I loved making things with him. All his reassurances that the workshop would always be there didn’t help me. The fact is that I didn’t really feel that I belonged there any more. After the divorce, I would always be a visitor!

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 3 4 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

The Signs of Masked Depression At the time of their parents’ divorce, nearly all children are depressed to some degree. But children do not always show or experience depression in quite the same way as adults. They may be too young to have learned appropriate ways of expressing their grief. Because of their more lim ited life-experience and slightly different physiology, children often show depression as rebellion, negativity, resentment, and anger. These are re ferred to as masked, meaning simply that something else is masking a deeper, underlying depression. Parents often do not see the real prob lem, because they are focusing on the mask.

A recent case is a good example. Sandra (not her real name) was an attractive though slightly overweight sixteen-year-old who showed much promise as a musician. An only child, she was conscientious in her de votion to music; she had mastered the piano and planned on being a music teacher one day. She dated a little, but on the whole did not give boys a lot of attention. She knew her priorities.

But then the divorce struck! W ithout much warning her father an nounced his intention of leaving the home. To all outward appearances, Sandra took the news calmly and without much emotional upset. Shortly afterward, however, she stopped playing the piano. Boys became her obsession.

Six months passed before the real blow struck. Quite by accident, Sandra’s mother discovered that her daughter had been pregnant and had had an abortion. Naturally, the mother was devastated. Talking to some of Sandra’s friends, she discovered that Sandra had become sexu ally promiscuous. This apparently was her way of acting out her intense reaction to her parents’ impending divorce.

In the months of psychotherapy that followed, Sandra began to re veal her deeper emotions, and the depression that was masked by her rebellious and promiscuous behavior finally emerged. Sandra’s acting out ceased. She was now in touch with her true feelings; she could begin to work on them and move toward emotional healing.

Children mask their depression in many ways. They may regress to wetting the bed or turn in anger and attack siblings or friends. They may

Depression and the Divorced Child

( 1 3 5 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

revert to being clingy and refuse to leave the presence of the parent Other masks for depression are a marked deterioration of school performance and persistent requests for an explanation as to what is happening.

Occurring less frequently, but still serving as a mask for depression, are increased lying, telling exaggerated and often bizarre stories, obses sive or blatant masturbating, and food hoarding. The hoarding of food, often found rotting at the back of cupboards, is also a sign of a severe anxiety reaction.

Helping Children Survive D ivorce

The Signs of Depression When depression is experienced more directly, it is much easier to recog nize. Among the more im portant signs of depression are the following:

1. The child appears to be sad and unhappy, but does not necessarily complain of unhappiness.

2. Physically and psychologically the child is “slowed down.”

3. The child loses interest in all normal activities and gives the impression of being bored or physically ill. This often leads the parent to believe there may be a concealed illness.

4. The child may begin to complain of headaches, abdominal discomfort, or insomnia. He or she may lose all appetite and refuse to eat or become preoccupied with food and overeat.

5. The child appears discontented and gives the impression that nothing can give him or her pleasure. He or she may blame others for this, complaining that “nobody cares” and project ing feelings of being rejected by parents, siblings, and friends.

6. Depression is both caused by and is the cause of much frustration. This frustration can make the child irritable, short-tempered, and very sensitive. The slightest provocation may trigger an exaggerated anger response.

7. The child engages in self-rejecting talk. He or she says things like, “I am no good at anything.” Such remarks are indicative of self-rejection, self-hate, and self-punishment.

( 1 3 6 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

These signs of depression can appear in different combinations and may vary from tim e to tim e in the same child. A typical example of a clear-cut, directly expressed, depressive reaction occurred in Billy, a thirteen-year-old boy, whose m other was of Korean heritage and had m arried his father when he was in the armed services.

Shortly after the parents told Billy that they were going to separate, Billy went into a depression. In anticipation of what was going to hap pen, Billy lost all interest in his friends, hobbies, and recreational activi ties. He had become an avid surfer who spent many free hours at the beach, but that too stopped when the separation was announced.

To encourage Billy, his father offered to spend a day at the beach with him. Reluctantly he agreed, but when they settled down on the sand Billy refused to go into the water, saying that he was afraid something terrible would happen. His father became angry at Billy’s refusal to surf, so Billy reluctantly picked up his board and ambled into the water to do a few token surfs.

At home Billy appeared sullen and sad. He never smiled or laughed. Since the separation announcement came just before summer vacation, his parents thought he would quickly get over his mood as he got into summer activities. They were soon to be disappointed! Billy established a pattern of getting up around ten in the morning, going downstairs to lie on the sofa and watch TV, then going back upstairs to bed late in the evening. He had no energy and no interest in doing anything. He spoke very little and appeared to be constantly sad.

The impending loss of home, father, and stable environment was too much for Billy to bear. His psychological and physiological systems did what they were designed to do: go into a grieving process. But no one realized that he was deeply depressed—and that he was entitled to such a reaction! He was blamed for being “a difficult kid” and his feelings shunted aside.

Depression and the Divorced Child

Helping Your Child through Depression Every parent should be able to help a child deal w ith depression. It ought to be a skill taught in kindergarten so that children can grow up

( 1 3 7 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

understanding that life is full o f the potential for loss and that we should all know how to grieve.

While the more severe depressive reactions should be referred to a professional for treatm ent, there are many depressive reactions that can be adequately dealt with by a caring parent. Certainly, if your child does not respond to your attempts to help him or her within a few weeks, you should seek professional help. Doing so does not reflect poorly on you as a parent. You are not a failure because you get outside help. If any thing, it takes a more caring and mature parent to recognize his or her limits and seek help!

Here are the essential steps in helping your child cope with depression:

Try to see the loss from the child’s point o f view.

Don’t minimize it or make light of it. Try to understand what it is your child is feeling. This can be painful because it will only increase your own guilt feelings, but unless you start here you will only blow it.

It does not help, for example, if a m other says to her son: “I don’t think that your father’s leaving is such a big deal. He never treated you kindly anyway, so why are you upset?” Such an attitude, no matter how true the facts, only communicates to the child that you don’t under stand. For the child, the loss is very real and severe. If you try to play it down, your sincerity will be in doubt.

Parents differ in their ability to interpret the world from a child’s per spective. Some are good at it, others simply are way off track. If you suspect that you consistently misinterpret your child’s world, ask some one else to tell you what it is like and don’t trust your own perception.

The problem can be further complicated by a tendency many chil dren have to conceal what they really feel, even from themselves. I asked one mother who was getting a divorce how she thought her fifteen-year- old daughter was taking it.

“Fine,” she replied. “She is more polite to me than ever before. So she must be doing OK. She can’t be having any troubled feelings if she can be so kind to me.”

When I saw the daughter, she spilled out her deep emotional un happiness to me. She was in real pain. When I m entioned her m other’s

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 3 8 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

comment to me, the daughter replied, “O f course I treat her kindly. I want to protect her. I don’t want her to know how I’m really feeling.”

So much for that understanding mother! She was content to take at face value what her daughter was saying because that was what she wanted to hear. She totally missed her daughter’s true feelings.

Accept the child’s depression as a normal reaction.

By “accept,” I don’t mean ignore it. Just don’t try to take it away or short- circuit it.

W hat usually happens is that the child’s depression triggers guilt feel ings in the parent who then, to relieve the guilt, tries to get the child to stop being depressed. “Come on, snap out of it, it’s not the end of the world,” is a very common response. But this only increases the depres sion because it makes the child feel even more reprehensible.

If grieving is a normal response to severe loss, and it is, then it is natural that your child must be allowed a period of grief to adjust to that loss. Grieving takes time and is best accomplished in the context of support and understanding.

Help your child experience the depression as fully as possible.

This is the step that really frightens parents. Whenever I give this advice, whether to parents or to relatives of depressed people, I get a shocked reaction. “But shouldn’t we resist the depression? If we allow the child to be depressed, won’t we just prolong the sadness?”

My response is to ask them what they would do if the child’s father had died. “Sure, I would let the child be depressed because that would help the grief.” Well, divorce is no less a death for the child!

As a culture we need to understand the importance of allowing the grieving process in all losses, not just those associated with death. Give the grieving person space. Allow the depression feelings. We need to feel our pain because this is part of the grieving process. So be patient and give your child space to work through his or her grief. The grief of a divorced child needs the same careful encouragement and help as any other grieving.

Depression and the Divorced Child

( 1 3 9 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

Avoid perpetuating the depression. I have stressed that it is normal and natural for a child to experience a period of grief during and after a divorce. Theoretically, there is an ap propriate depth and length of time that should be allowed for this de pression, and children differ in their capacity to grieve.

How long should it take? There is no hard-and-fast rule. If a child is allowed to do his grieving fully and completely, he will complete the grieving in the shortest possible time.

The problem is that many parents are impatient. They usually don’t allow the child adequate time to grieve. Or the child himself may resist the grieving. In many ways, therefore, the grieving process is interfered with and secondary losses are created. For example, the child feels rejected be cause he isn’t doing what Mommy or Daddy is saying he should. This rejection is itself another loss, and it causes more depression. So the child’s depression continues longer and more severely than it otherwise would.

Paul was ten years of age when his parents divorced. Both Paul and his m other became deeply depressed. Whenever Paul was around his m other and showed his depression, however, his m other would punish him. She did this partly because he was reflecting back to her how she herself was reacting, but also because she was preoccupied with her own misery and Paul’s depression was too much for her to handle. Paul, there fore, could not grieve around his mother. He tried to put on a brave face, but since she was the only one who could give him the comfort he needed, he could not grieve in a healthy way.

So Paul withdrew from his mother, experienced this as another loss, and went into an even deeper and more prolonged depression.

Punishment and parental anger can easily prolong depression in a child. So can fear and insecurity.

Children also perpetuate their own depressions. Their imaginations, fed by fear, can exaggerate the losses of the divorce. If a child is not kept in touch with reality, the depression can easily be aggravated by all sorts of imagined losses. Parents need to provide reassurance, but it is essen tial that accurate information also be given. This helps to keep the child’s imagination from running wild.

( 1 4 0 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Help your child accept the reality of the loss. Be honest and open. Vagueness and innuendo feed imagined fears. W ith out being cruel, gently help your child accept the reality of the divorce. This may appear to intensify the depression initially, but it will actually speed up the grieving process.

Often the problem is with one of the parents. If it has been hard for such a parent to accept the reality of the loss, that parent will naturally have difficulty helping a child accept it as well. So make sure you are dealing with reality as well.

W ith very young children the task of helping the child accept reality is not as easy as with older children. The child asks repeatedly, “Where is Daddy?” or “Where is Mommy?” These questions should be responded to honestly, but gently: “Daddy doesn’t live here anymore, but he will be coming to see you soon and often.” It’s not easy to be forthright, but it is the best in the long run.

Build a new perspective on the loss for the child. One of the major functions of depression is to give us time to develop a new perspective on our losses. W ithout it, we would be left with moun tains of ungrieved losses.

I clearly remember that when my parents divorced, my saddest thought was realizing that our family would not be visiting my grand parents’ country home for vacations any more. My brother and I would still go, bu t we wouldn’t be together as a family. I had come to relish the three or four times a year when we would travel a hundred miles into the country and visit w ith my grandparents, often spending whole vacations with them. We would play games together as an extended family in the evenings, listen to the world on Grandpa’s short-wave radio, and pick fresh tomatoes from the enormous, naturally fertilized garden. The figs from the large tree in back of the house were gigantic and sweeter than candy. Even the remembrance of them makes my m outh water!

But now that would all change, and I was confused about how it would now be. Since they were my paternal grandparents, would my mother

Depression and the Divorced Child

( 1 4 1 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

let me visit them? Even if she would, I felt that the visits would never be the same again. Something had died!

Painfully and slowly I adjusted to this loss. My grandfather reassured me that we would still visit and stay with them for the school holidays, but we would do it without Mom, and this was painful.

W hat made the difference, finally, was the realization that what was most im portant to me was being with my grandparents, especially my grandfather, whom I adored. This freed me to see the loss in a new way, my perspective changed, and it brought healing.

An im portant way to help children develop a perspective on loss is to allow them to talk about it. This helps to clarify what they are thinking. When we grieve we need to talk about the loss, to relive the experiences and savor the thrill of time past. Speak to any grieving widow, and you will find that her favorite topic of conversation is past experiences with her departed husband

For a while then, the child may want to spend a lot of time talking about the absent parent or times of fun before the divorce. Difficult as this may be for parents, this is an im portant part of the grieving process and should not be discouraged.

One of the greatest blessings God gives us as his children is the ability to change our perspective on life’s tragedies. Knowing God in Christ should make a difference in the way we view catastrophes. When parents have faith and Christian values, their children will be the beneficiaries. So, despite the horribleness of the tragedy, try to see your divorce from a new perspective. Believe that God will help you work out your future. In this way your child’s depression will be greatly helped. It will reassure your child that you know that God remains on his throne and rules over his kingdom, and this rule embraces your tragedy as well. Your divorce does not dethrone God. If any thing, it brings out his power and releases his healing in new ways.

Pray with your child. Prayer brings healing. Prayer keeps us sane. Prayer helps us to see things God’s way. So pray with your child. Don’t pray at your child, which is so often how we pray with our children. Doing so is patronizing and not conducive to faith-building.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 4 2 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Imagine a parent praying, “Lord, help little Billy get over his sadness. If he were only a better boy he wouldn’t be feeling this bad. So make him into a good boy so he doesn’t cry.” Well, I know such a Billy. His mother prayed this prayer with him often. He is now fifty-five years old and a top business executive, but he hates his m other for the way she treated him in her zeal to “get God into his life and his crying out.”

What was the real message she sent to him? Subtly she implied that he was depressed because he was bad, not because he had lost a father. He also got the message that he was to blame for the breakup of their home—a terrible burden to place on a young boy’s conscience. So pray with your depressed child, but pray wisely and sensitively. Pray that you will both have the strength to receive life’s blows with grace. Pray for understanding and patience. Pray for God’s peace to fill both your lives and for God to show you how to be loving and forgiving toward the one who has harmed you. Pray so that you communicate a deep and genu ine understanding of your child’s feelings. Every child will receive heal ing from such prayers and, at the same time, find a deeper sense of trust in God.

Depression and the Divorced Child

Useful Hints In closing my discussion on depression and children of divorce, let me provide a summary list of useful hints that can prevent aggravating your child’s depression.

1. Provide distraction for your child, especially during the recovery stage of a depression. As soon as it seems that your child is beginning to improve, take him or her on a trip, provide a new hobby, or increase privileges.

2. Work out rules that you can implement consistently and with gentle discipline. A parent should not allow herself to be manipulated by a child’s pain. Understanding that a child needs clear boundaries and consistent rules, regardless of depression, can avoid catastrophic complications when a child has “gone too far.”

( 1 4 3 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

3. Be careful what you say around your child. Put a guard on your mouth. W ithout realizing it you can easily make things much worse for the child. I once tried to help a m other who was in a panic because her husband was threatening to leave her. “Be careful how you behave; Daddy may leave us,” was her constant message to her son. Statements like this place an unreasonable burden of guilt and responsibility on a child and should be avoided at all costs. Respect the rights of the other parent. Accept that your child needs to love and must go on loving the other parent. To sabotage this will create a greater sense of loss and therefore more depression for your child. The child is emotionally the healthiest when there is a minimum of conflict between the divorcing parents.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 4 4 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

C H A P T E R 11

Your Ex-Spouse Is Still a Parent

Every child has a right to go on seeing and loving both parents. Divorce does not change this. This is crucial to the child’s postdivorce develop ment. It is the responsibility of every divorced parent—no matter how deeply you have been hurt, rejected, abused, or maligned and no matter how guilty the other parent is for the way you have been treated—to ensure that this right is protected.

Unfortunately, not every divorced parent wants to hear this. They would prefer that their child not continue to see or love the other par ent. In fact, in an effort to hurt or get revenge, a parent will sometimes go to great lengths to set up obstacles between the other parent and the child. Abundant evidence for this is available in the stories published in every local newspaper!

O f course, this is destructive to the child. I would say it is also de structive to the resentful parent. Whenever you interfere with a child’s basic right to love both parents, there is the potential for great emo tional damage to everyone involved. In fact, as much harm is caused by the battles over custody and visitation rights as by any other aspect of the divorce.

Every psychologist or marriage counselor, after just a short time in practice, can tell horror stories about such damage. In some divorces, all the damage can be attributed to this factor.

( 1 4 5 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

Why do parents do it? It is not always intentional. I am sure that the average parent would not want to deliberately harm his or her child. No, let us give the average parent the benefit of the doubt and say that when they do something damaging, it is usually out of ignorance. Sometimes they have so much pain and so many problems in their own lives, they cannot think about what is best for their children.

Unfortunately, for some it is not just ignorance. It is in the nature of humans when they are hurt to feel the need to retaliate. In divorce, chil dren are too often the unwilling weapons used by parents who try to hurt each other. Revenge is sweet for many!

W ithout the regenerating work of Christ in our lives, there is no way we can escape this natural urge for revenge. Sin sees to that. Even if we outlawed custody battles in the courts and forced both parents to con tinue to take care of their offspring, parents would still find ways of hurting one another through their children.

This is not to say that there are not legitimate times when custody must be an issue. Occasionally, and it is not as often as some would believe, one parent is not fit to be a parent. But parents must make every endeavor to take into consideration, above their own needs, the needs of their children. Too often custody battles are nothing more than per sonal revenge strategies!

What perturbs me most about these battles is that Christian parents often behave no differently from their secular counterparts. They too en gage in bitter custodial battles, not out of consideration for their children, but for retaliation, thus interfering with their children’s right to love and have free access to both parents. I can see how this happens to unbelievers, but believers have no excuse for harming their children in this way!

The Importance of Real Parents There is, I believe, universal agreement among counselors that the most crucial factors contributing to a good readjustment by divorced chil dren are a stable, loving environment and a continuing relationship with both real parents. It helps if there is minimal friction and if tension has been dissipated through a forgiving spirit.

( 1 4 6 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

A tall order? Of course it is! Difficult for most parents? You bet it is! But it is what is expected and definitely attainable for the Christian par ent who has availed himself or herself of the forgiveness and healing resources accessible through Christ Jesus. In fact, I would say that this should be the goal for every Christian couple who, for whatever reason, plans on getting divorced. If you can’t make your marriage work, then at least try to make your divorce work. See to it that you do the very best for your children.

Paul and Cindy, a Christian couple in their late thirties, were having a rough time in their marriage. Deep-seated personality differences and an inability to work out their conflicts finally led Cindy to ask for a di vorce. Paul was devastated and deeply hurt. Basically an insecure per son, he was frightened by the prospect of being rejected and of being alone. He feared he would never be able to build a successful marriage with anyone again.

Paul and Cindy’s pastor worked with them to try and save their mar riage, but without success. Finally, he referred them to a marriage coun selor who also was not able to break the deadlock.

Cindy demanded that Paul move out, and he had no choice but to comply. Deeply hurt, he threatened to take the children with him, ac cusing Cindy of not being a fit mother. Their three children, a girl aged fifteen and two boys aged twelve and ten, became the rope in a tug-of-war struggle. Paul, now very angry, did everything he could to destroy Cindy’s reputation. She retaliated with a ferocity that startled even herself.

The battle continued until Cindy eventually came to her senses and sought divorce counseling. W ithout condoning divorce, this form of counseling recognizes that when a breakup is inevitable, the couple must work to minimize the damage that follows.

The counselor helped Paul to realize he was hurting the children by fighting the divorce. Cindy changed her attitude to the point that she could cooperate in planning how Paul and she would continue joint parenting their children. Neither had immediate plans for remarriage, so Paul took up residence a block away and set up a spare bedroom so that the children could stay with him half of the time.

Your Ex-Spouse Is Still a Parent

( 1 4 7 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

W ith a minimum of hostility, Paul and Cindy carefully planned the details of visits, parenting responsibilities, and finances. Cindy agreed to work part time to help pay the increased cost of keeping two homes.

The effect on the children was dramatic. They even participated in some of the planning sessions and, by being honest about their feelings, helped their parents avoid misperceptions and incorrect assumptions. The signs of an anxiety disturbance in their younger son and of depres sion in their daughter vanished as if by magic, and for the first time in years, Paul and Cindy felt like they were normal people again. They even began to like each other.

W hat were the im portant principles that guided Paul and Cindy to an amicable readjustment of their family?

♦ Both accepted the importance of each child maintaining a continued relationship with both parents, even if one or both intended remarrying.

♦ Both realized that neither spouse stops his or her parenting responsibilities just because they are divorced.

♦ Both accepted the crucial role the father plays in the adjust ment of all the children of divorce.

♦ Sacrificing personal hurt and needs for revenge, they both determined not to let their jealousy and competition for the children’s love be a source of disruption in their parenting tasks.

♦ Realizing that much of what was needed to avoid damaging their children emotionally was beyond their human strength, they trusted God to help them overcome their hostility and fear. They had the faith to believe that they could do it—and they did.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

When a Parent Remarries Most real problems don’t begin until one of the parents remarries. When both remarry a new game begins with new challenges and pitfalls.

( 1 4 8 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

The impact of remarriage depends largely on the age of the children and the degree to which the noncustodial parent continues to accept a parenting role. Generally speaking, the fact that one or both parents have remarried does not change the general rule that both real parents should continue to parent their children.

Take the case in which a noncustodial parent remarries. His or her parental responsibilities do not change. He or she may not be able to do all the disciplining, but he or she must share in the regular care, feeding, clothing, and educational responsibilities and must work to provide the emotional support base that children need for healthy development. A stepparent cannot provide all these needs, no m atter how caring and concerned such a person is.

Regrettably, this does not always happen. I know of a number of Chris tian families in which the absent father, because he remarries and “ac quires” children from his second marriage, adopts the attitude that his ex-wife must take all the parenting responsibilities for their children. “I pay the child support, you take total care of the children,” he says to her. He then refuses to look after the children when the mother is away, and when the children are eighteen and he no longer has to make support payments, he abandons them to whatever resources they can find. There is little concern for the children beyond his financial obligations, and even this slowly becomes a vanishing point.

My heart aches for mothers who must bear the full emotional bur den for their children and for the children who must learn how to rec oncile their father’s claim to being a Christian with his actions.

“I want my children to have a reasonable standard of living and do the things their friends are doing,” one struggling divorced mother, who was near the point of total exhaustion, told me. She had been forced to go to work full time by a Christian ex-husband who had divorced her and was now living with his new wife in an upper-class neighborhood and earn ing an extremely good salary. His new wife didn’t work; she stayed home to take care of the children from her previous marriage. My client, how ever, was struggling to make ends meet and was on the verge of total collapse.

W hat was her ex-husband’s attitude when he was asked to provide

Your Ex-Spouse Is Still a Parent

( 1 4 9 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

some extra help for his children’s educational needs so she could cut back on her working? “I have my own responsibilities. I can’t be ex pected to keep two homes.”

On the contrary! He is responsible. Not only has this man lost a mar riage, he has also lost two beautiful children who will have great difficulty believing that the Christian gospel is anything more than a convenient myth.

W hat about the case where a m other (or a custodial father) remar ries? Does the real father abandon his responsibilities to the stepfather?

In my opinion, he does not. Perhaps some parenting responsibilities are transferred, depending on the age o f the child, but not many. W hether the absent parent likes it or not, each natural child still needs to feel that the absent parent continues to be involved in his or her life. This need is so strong that children who have been totally abandoned by a father or m other early in life often develop a serious obsessional disorder. They spend the rest of their lives looking for a surrogate par ent, a substitute for what they have been deprived of. Their relation ships often become overly possessive; they tend to be extremely jealous and have difficulty developing real intimacy for fear that they will be abandoned again.

Further Complications The problem of helping a child develop a good relationship with his or her absent parent is further complicated when the absent parent moves away from the hometown. This reduces the contact time the m other or father can spend with the child, and the distance between them may set up barriers. It is a fact of life that people who don’t spend time together grow apart; even parents and children will begin to feel like strangers to one another if they never spend time together.

Financial limitations may restrict how such a parent deals with the problem of distance, but with a little ingenuity a number of ways can be found to maintain contact. Regular telephone calls can be made. Have the children live with you over the summer. Extend business trips so you can visit them, or take your children on business or vacation trips

( 1 5 0 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Your Ex-Spouse Is Still a Parent

with you. On my way home in a shuttle from the airport the other evening, the driver told how he regularly has one of his three sons ride in the van while he is working in the evenings. They love it, and he gets time to spend with them individually.

It is very im portant that the absent parent accept his or her role and parental responsibilities at all levels. Financial help, advice and counsel, and emotional support should be there at all times. If it isn’t, a long distance parent may find that love has been eroded.

The Loyalty Dilemma Adjusting to life between two homes after divorce is difficult enough as it is and certainly confusing for a child. He or she is forced to make many changes. Most children don’t get to choose who they live with, and there isn’t always agreement between the parents about what is best for the child. Sometimes custody battles are used to settle these issues. It is a pity that the courts are used to settle these battles; it would be pref erable for them to be resolved through counselors or psychotherapists, in an atmosphere in which the best interests of the child can be taken into consideration.

Whatever the outcome, each divorced child ends up with two homes and one big dilemma: “Where should I place my loyalty?”

In the early stages of divorce, children are likely to feel more loyal to the mother, who will be perceived as the more vulnerable parent. Later the allegiance may shift. Parents battle with each other to win their children’s allegiance and to place blame on the other parent. If these struggles are not brought to a halt very early, irreparable harm may be done through forcing the child to take sides with one parent against the other.

Forcing children to take sides is an extension of the resentment and hurt problem. It can only be stopped by resolving the resentment. This may require professional help. But whatever it takes, parents owe it to their children to get their personal problems under control so that their children can be free to make the substantial adjustments needed to build happy lives for themselves. If parents would accept that every child must

( 1 5 1 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

be allowed to love both the m other and father freely and without restric tion or fear of punishment, the loyalty dilemma vanishes.

The Role of Grandparents Grandparents are God’s great healers. Even when they’ve messed up their own children’s lives, they become healers to the next generation! Other concerned adults such as family friends and teachers can also be of tre mendous help in bridging the divorce gap and in providing a stabilizing force in the tempestuous life of a divorced child.

I have already mentioned what a healing resource my grandparents fu l filled in my life after my parents divorced. They invited my brother and me to come and stay with them as often as we wanted. Their home in the country was always open for us. Whereas before the divorce we would only visit them over school holidays, once the divorce proceed ings had begun they would invite us for weekends and long holidays quite regularly.

My grandparents’ love and acceptance were comforting and reassur ing to me. They never pushed me to talk about problems at home, yet they were always good listeners if I said something. They provided dis tractions from the emotional pain I was suffering, and above all, they restored my faith in God. I can’t tell you how im portant that was! I came to see that God transcended the paltry problems of human existence. God was there despite what my parents were doing. His presence could not be destroyed by human suffering, and he offered dependable help in the midst of that suffering. I hope I will always be such a grandparent for my own grandchildren!

Some Rules for Improving Your Child’s Relationship with Your Ex-Spouse

Stop bad-mouthing your ex-spouse.

Yes, I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to get your m outh under control! Children don’t want to hear bad things about either of their parents,

( 1 5 2 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Your Ex-Spouse Is Still a Parent

and they especially do not want to take sides. Since they usually feel that both parents are to blame, regardless of the divorce circumstances, they are more neutral than you want them to be.

No purpose is served, therefore, in criticizing the other parent to your children. Don’t be surprised if, when you attack your ex-spouse in front of your children, they will defend your ex-spouse and attack you back. Children have a keen sense of justice and will quickly punish you when you are unfair.

Do not use your children as spies.

A father might try to get a child to tell him everything the mother does— whom she goes out with, where she goes, what time she comes home, and what she buys. A m other may try to find out how much her ex- husband is earning, who his latest lady friend is, and where they go.

No child should be asked to act as a spy. They should be given the freedom to enjoy each parent without hindrance or fear of being cross- examined.

Children become very angry when placed in a spying position and can easily withdraw from both parents. If you are not sure whether you are using your children as spies or not, then ask them! You may be blind to what you are doing and so preoccupied with your bitterness and hurt that you cannot see what is happening. They’ll tell you!

Encourage your children to call you on your behavior if they don’t like what you are doing. You may have to be brave to receive their com plaints, but doing so will improve your relationship with them immensely. Children respect honesty and feel better if you are open with them and nondefensive.

Do not use your children to carry messages to your ex-spouse.

There is usually a period of time following divorce when one parent is afraid to encounter the other, either for fear of letting out feelings of bitterness or for fear of what the ex-spouse will do or say. Under these conditions, a parent may become cowardly and hide behind the chil dren. “Tell your father he hasn’t sent the alimony check yet,” or “Ask your m other if you can go fishing with me next week.” These messages

( 1 5 3 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

place your child in the role of having to act as a buffer between the two parents, often getting dumped on just because he carried a message. In Roman days, messengers who brought bad news lost their heads, just like children do today.

The child usually comes to resent both parents for having to carry messages. To avoid alienating your children, do your own dirty work! Be courageous and assertive. Speak directly to your former wife or hus band and protect your children from being message carriers. This will free them to relate to both of you without hindrance.

Deliberately, and very explicitly, give your child permission to continue loving the other parent. So often I hear a mother say, “But Peter knows I don’t m ind his loving his father. I’m not stopping him.” This is not enough! Peter may or may not know that his mother doesn’t mind, so his mother should not take it for granted that he knows he can love his father. It is more likely that she is sending a mixed message—saying one thing but implying the oppo site. We are not always completely honest with ourselves, and we don’t always know what messages we are sending our children. It is safer, there fore, to be explicit even if it feels redundant. Tell you child specifically that it is OK to love and go on loving his or her father or mother. You’ll be the one your child respects.

Encourage your child to express his or her feelings openly and to tell you what he or she is thinking. The open expression of feelings always creates a healthier environment. But freedom of speech does not mean freedom to insult or punish. Chil dren are often so frustrated and angry at the world that they would readily dump their hostility on you and turn you into an emotional punching bag. This should not be tolerated. Anger should be talked about, not acted out.

But sometimes parents do not allow children to talk about their an ger, and this eventually leads to a need to act out through explosive outbursts. It is far better to allow children to talk about their feelings as they occur than to have to pick up the pieces! Allowing angry feelings to

( 1 5 4 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Your Ex-Spouse Is Still a Parent

accumulate, to the point that it takes a volcanic eruption to get rid of them, is never healthy.

Start to talk about feelings when your children are young and you will avoid many painful encounters with them later in life.

Try to be flexible in every aspect of your relationship with your children and your ex-spouse. This can help you avoid many mistakes. Flexibility means that you are willing to compromise some of your demands and, if necessary, negoti ate for others. The most im portant area where you will need to be flex ible is that of visiting rights. Conflicts with your ex-spouse in this area will always affect your children. They will create tension and interfere with the quality of the visits.

Perhaps this is the unconscious reason why many parents avoid be ing flexible—to keep their children from enjoying their visits with the other parent. This is not fair to the children! So be ruthlessly honest with yourself and work to avoid rigidity and inflexibility.

The need for flexibility should not be taken to mean that a parent should surrender all of his or her rights to the other. To do so would be to invite manipulation. But if you are going to stand and fight, choose your battles carefully. There are many issues that are not im portant in themselves, so don’t stand on principle just for principle’s sake. Remem ber, you can communicate Christian love far better through being rea sonable than by being obstinate.

Encourage as many activities between your ex-mate and your children as possible. The more time they spend together, the better. It is an unfortunate fact that most absent parents gradually become less involved with their chil dren after a divorce. The initial frequent contact slowly fades away.

Fathers are more apt to maintain contact with sons than with daugh ters. Since both sons and daughters need to have contact with both par ents, it takes a concerned and wise parent to be creative about maintaining contact between fathers and daughters. Personal bitterness has to be set aside and activities with both mother and father encouraged.

( 1 5 5 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

When Your Ex-Spouse Is Totally Unsuitable As a Parent Everything I have said so far assumes that the noncustodial parent is normal. But what should happen if this parent is extremely maladjusted or immature?

At the outset let me sound a warning. Most parents are so bitter after a divorce, especially if they have been rejected, that they invariably ac cuse their ex-spouses of being universally disturbed or unchristian. This is usually the product of their hostility. They confuse their rejection with their partner’s pathology!

This may not feel fair to some readers, but it needs to be said. No m atter how badly you have been mistreated by your ex, no m atter how abused you may feel or how disgusting your feelings are for him or her, this does not necessarily disqualify him or her to be a parent. How a spouse treats a spouse is not a reliable predictor of how children will be treated.

But in case my comments here are being misinterpreted let me has ten to add: There are parents who are totally unsuited to the parenting task. They could be alcoholics, criminals, severely maladjusted, brutal, or grossly immature people, It is clear from research data that children exposed to such an unsatisfactory parent do not adjust well. In such cases, the parent who has custody may be doing the right, and I believe the Christian, thing by taking steps to lim it the parental involvement of such disturbed persons.

The custodial parent should not attem pt to make this decision by himself or herself, however. Deciding whether a maladjusted parent is a threat to a child’s well-being is not easy. So consult a therapist or coun selor, or talk to your minister before you take any drastic steps. If your children are old enough to understand the issues, they should also be allowed to participate in the decision.

I have encountered many instances in which an ex-spouse is irre sponsible and unsuitable as a marriage partner but is still a good parent. It is my belief that a parent must be grossly disturbed before he or she no longer contributes anything meaningful to a child.

I know of one case in which a father divorced his wife because she

Helping Children Survive D ivorce

( 1 5 6 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Your Ex-Spouse Is Still a Parent

was mentally disturbed and had to be hospitalized for a chronic condi tion. There were two children in the family, a boy aged four and a girl aged two, when the divorce occurred. Because the m other was in a state psychiatric hospital, the father prevented all contact between the chil dren and their mother. Many years later, when the children were teen agers, they demanded that they be allowed to see their mother. The reunion was very moving, but what impressed me most was that both children felt that they had been unnecessarily robbed of contact with their m other all those years and blamed the father for it. “No m atter how sick she is,” said the daughter, “I would rather grow up knowing who my m other is and what she is doing than live in complete silence about her. She is my real mother, and I need to know her!”

The words of this deprived daughter pretty well summarize my strong feelings on this matter!

( 1 5 7 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

C H A P T E R 1 2

Becoming a Stepparent

Many divorced Christians struggle with the question of whether or not they should remarry. This struggle is not always due to a theologi cal hesitation, but it often has to do with questions about what is best for themselves and their children. If you are struggling with the appro priateness of remarriage, I would suggest you consult your pastor or a Christian counselor. The ethical and theological issues involved are very complex and cannot be set down in a set of simple rules to be followed. Every divorce situation is different, and you need to determine what is right for you.

My focus here is on how to make the m ost of your parenting re sponsibilities if you choose to remarry. Your new spouse takes on an extremely difficult task as a stepparent. Perhaps you also take on stepparenting responsibilities if your new partner has children. You will be faced with a whole new set of challenges as you try to make your new marriage work. Stepparenting can be tricky and treacher ous because the pathway is strewn with unexpected obstacles. W ith some extra effort, however, mistakes can be avoided. This chapter, then, is directed at both you and your new spouse. Perhaps it should be read together as a way of bringing about a m utual understanding of the task that lies ahead.

( 1 5 9 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

To Marry or Not to Marry Before I launch into the topic of stepparenting, allow me to comment on the question of whether or not one should remarry when you have children.

It may seem to some to be a straightforward matter. After all, isn’t one entitled to a happy and fulfilling life? For many divorced parents, the answer isn’t clear, and they struggle to know what is best.

One should not lightly, or too quickly, jum p into a new marriage. There are many issues to be considered, and I would strongly recom mend that everyone contemplating remarriage should get some good counsel on the matter, if only from a trusted friend.

To illustrate the complexity of the matter, let me describe one case. Cynthia was a forty-five-year-old divorced Christian who consulted me on the matter of whether or not she should remarry. Together we prayer fully reviewed her life-history, her personal needs, her present family responsibilities (that included an aging m other who needed constant care), and her unique personality (that included a strong attachment to and a sense of responsibility for the care of her mother).

After carefully and prayerfully considering all the facts, Cynthia came to the conclusion that she should not remarry, at least not now. This decision could change in the future as her circumstances change. She was being sensible and rational about her life, not allowing her feelings and natural impulsiveness or insecurity to drive her into a second mar riage. She felt the risk of failing again was too great!

I must say that I was deeply impressed with Cynthia’s maturity. My natural inclination is to project my own needs into situations like this, and I always have to work hard to keep my own feelings out of the way. She knew best. Far too many divorced persons rush into remarriage pre maturely, without weighing all the consequences carefully. O ur culture puts tremendous pressure on us to be married, and it takes some strong resistance not to just do what others pressure you to do. Marriage the second time around does not get easier; it often gets harder! And if all the conditions are not right, your children pay the penalty for this sec ond mistake!

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 6 0 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Remarriage from a Child’s Perspective Milicent is an eight-year-old whose parents have been divorced for six months. Her m other has become friendly with a man, and about once every two weeks this friend comes to dinner.

About two days before each expected visit, Milicent becomes agitated. “Do you want to m arry your friend?” she asks her mother, not once, but fifty times. “What do you do when you are with him?” “Why does he sit so close to you?” Bombarded with these questions Milicent’s mother becomes overwrought and confused. She likes the man but seriously questions whether she should remarry. Her male friend has never been married. If she marries him, will he be a good father to her daughter? Will her daughter go on being so angry? Could it even be harmful to her? Questions like these flood her mind.

Over the months that followed, the daughter’s fears intensified. “Please don’t get married again, Mommy. I don’t want a stepdaddy,”

Milicent pleaded. When she started waking at night screaming from nightmares, her m other decided it was time to seek professional help.

Milicent’s behavior is typical o f many children o f divorce. They fear having to deal with a new stepmother or stepfather. They fear losing their parent to the affections of someone else. They basically fear the unknown! So how a child’s feelings are handled can significantly affect how your child adjusts to your remarriage.

Most children resent the intrusion of another person into their family unit. They naturally resist the idea of their parent falling in love with a new partner. While they generally accept that parents have a need to make new friends and widen social contacts, they don’t easily allow it to happen.

W hat lies behind this resistance? There are basically four issues for the child:

1. Most divorced children develop a fantasy, if only unconsciously, that their parents will ultimately get back together again. Anything that obstructs this fantasy will be fought vigorously.

2. Children fear that a new spouse will usurp their place in the parent’s life. There is an instinctive jealousy of any intruder.

Becoming a Stepparent

( 1 6 1 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

3. Children fear that they will not be compatible with the new stepparent. After all, it is the parent, not the child, who selects the prospective partner.

4. Children usually see a potential stepparent as disrupting existing family patterns. They feel powerless to control or lim it this disruption.

O f course, this is a two-way street. Often the potential new spouse is jealous of the children and sets up hostile relationships. The long his tory of relationship between the natural parent and the children may be resented by a suitor.

A potential spouse may also see the children as intruders in the dat ing relationship. Children demand time and take the parent away from dating opportunities. Children limit the privacy of dating. It is com mon, therefore, for the new friend to resent the very presence of chil dren. This feeling is not always owned as such, and the children are branded as “spoiled, demanding, and manipulative!” Naturally, these feelings of resentment are reciprocated by the children.

So bad feelings between suitor and children are common in the early stages of building a new relationship. They spell confusion and insecu rity for children who are already shattered. A wise parent will accept these bad feelings as normal and temporary but will seek to understand the apprehension and not get angry. By doing so you can avoid aggra vating an already tense and potentially explosive situation.

Children of Various Ages React Differently While there is no best age to gain a stepparent, the most difficult stage seems to be from puberty (around twelve or thirteen) to late adolescence (around seventeen or eighteen years of age). Very young children and those who are in college or who have already left home tend to adjust more easily, although initially they may protest quite vehemently. In- between are the children aged six to twelve who will have mixed reactions.

There are a number of reasons why adolescents find it more diffi cult than younger children to adjust to a parent’s dating or remarriage.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 6 2 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Becoming a Stepparent

Adolescence is the stage at which the child has the most ability to resist change. Younger children don’t have the power to resist, and young adult children don’t have to make many major changes so they take the changes in stride.

Furthermore, an adolescent is also more likely to have created a pro tective armor for him or herself—a facade of toughness, indifference, and denial. This defense conceals real feelings and slows down the whole process of adjustment.

Adolescence is also the age at which personality conflicts are greatest. It is tough for a parent to survive an adolescent’s rebellion in the best of circumstances. Divorce and the addition of a new stepparent don’t make it any easier to cope with.

Typically, therefore, teenagers withdraw and try emotionally to escape from the new marriage. They remain distant and refuse to be incorpo rated into the new family unit. The problem may be further complicated if the new spouse also brings children into the marriage. Children have to adjust to both a new stepparent as well as stepsiblings. Not an easy assignment!

With children aged six to twelve, the greatest problem is anxiety and fear. These children are not yet old enough to foresee the future realisti cally and may demand an excessive am ount of the parent’s time. They will either try to sabotage the dating or demand constant reassurance, or both.

These children may feign sickness at the most inconvenient times. They play hard to get, resist going to bed, and refuse to go to school. These are attention-getting tactics, and they need careful and skillful handling to avoid making matters worse. If the suggestions I will make later in this chapter don’t help, then let me say again: Get professional help. It is easier to nip beginning problems in the bud than to pick up the pieces from a broken family.

Very young children, under five years old, are not fully aware of the changes taking place. By and large this ignorance protects them from much of the traum a of change. Provided the new stepparent accepts the child and a way can be worked out for the child to relate to his or her absent parent, the least difficulties should be encountered here.

( 1 6 3 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Finally, don’t expect ready acceptance of the new spouse by any pre adult or adult children. The new partner will be a stranger to them, so it will take time for new relationships to develop.

Setting the Stage for the Stepparent It is generally accepted that the way a previous marriage ended and the success with which children have adjusted to the divorce will determine the ultimate success of the new blended family. This is why some time should elapse between a divorce and remarriage. Children should first be given an opportunity to adjust to the divorce before having a step parent thrust upon them.

Building a blended family is not easy. All your troubles are not over when you remarry. One study of over two thousand stepchildren, most of whom were the products of divorce, found that there was a greater am ount of “stress, ambivalence, and low cohesiveness” in stepfamilies than in prim ary families. Interestingly, they also found that it was more difficult to be a stepmother than a stepfather, and that stepdaughters have greater difficulty adjusting than stepsons.

W hat this means is that if you are a stepmother to stepdaughters, you will have to work harder to build healthy relationships with your step daughters than stepsons. It will demand a lot more grace, patience, kind ness, and long-suffering and a greater dependence on God for you to make it work. I am sure you can be successful, but if progress seems to be slow and difficult, don’t blame yourself. The cards are stacked against you. Don’t expect a downhill coast but an uphill grind. I am sorry to seem so negative about it, but this is reality! Not all new spouses are that helpful once they have landed you. So be kind and forgiving of yourself. If the task seems hard, it is because IT IS HARD!

Most remarriages involve a m other with her children incorporating a new husband as a stepfather. Occasionally the father brings a child or two into the household, and very occasionally it is a stepmother who takes over her husband’s brood, though this is more common after the death of a spouse.

The death of a spouse presents quite a different set of circumstances

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 6 4 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Becoming a Stepparent

than divorce. Though the loss of a spouse through death is a terrible tragedy, remarriage is in some ways easier because there is no real par ent hovering in the background and interfering with everything you try to do.

Perhaps the situation most fraught with pitfalls is the one in which a rejected spouse remarries before having overcome his or her feelings of resentment toward the previous spouse. W ith much unfinished busi ness lurking in the background, this parent is going to have to fight two battles simultaneously: the ongoing conflict with the ex and the adjust ment to a new spouse. Children are the ones caught in the middle of this conflict.

In one family I worked with, a fifteen-year-old daughter was caught in the middle of such a painful situation. Her mother, who had been rejected by the father, had remarried on the rebound and far too soon. Her energy was divided between trying to get back at the old husband while learning to tolerate a new one.

Even though she was a Christian, she could not bring herself to for give the first husband for the deep hurt he had caused her. Finding a new and loving husband did not, in itself, resolve the deep hurt she felt over the rejection.

Knowing full well what she was doing, this woman used her daughter to hurt her ex-spouse. “Go and ask your father for extra money. He is the one who divorced me, so he has to pay for it!” Often she would say, “You don’t know what a terrible man your father is; let me tell you what he did,” and a long litany of infamous misdeeds would follow, most of it probably distorted by her resentment.

She made it difficult for the daughter to visit her father and often accused her of taking his side whenever she made a favorable comment about him.

But this wasn’t all! To crown the daughter’s misery, her new husband (who intensely disliked the daughter) would find little things about her to complain about. If it wasn’t some hair left in the sink, then it was letting the kettle whistle too long after it had started to boil. He was a nitpicker par excellence!

Having to fight battles on two fronts took its toll emotionally on both

( 1 6 5 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

the mother and daughter, and the daughter finally had to leave and live with her father. This helped the daughter, but it made the mother’s life even more miserable.

My point here is simply this: The sooner all unresolved issues are dealt with and removed, the easier ALL adjustments to a new stepparent can be made by ALL the parties involved.

Matching Your New Spouse to Your Family Not many divorced parents realize that they can INTENTIONALLY match a new spouse to their family. At least, one should try one’s best to do so!

Just as premarital counseling is an absolute must for everyone in tending to get married for the first time, I believe that remarriage coun seling can make or break a second marriage. It is very easy, not only to m arry the wrong person, but to get m arried for the wrong reason. Be fore remarrying, therefore, a divorced parent needs to face up to and do something about the unfinished business left over from a previous marriage.

Since every divorce is different, there are no universal laws here. There are, however, a few im portant points to keep in mind when thinking about a new partner. Watching your step can help you avoid a cata strophic mistake.

The drama of divorce and remarriage has three acts:

1. The children’s family of origin is dissolved. 2. The children and the custodial parent reorganize their lives

around a new center and find new ways of relating to the absent parent.

3. The parent remarries requiring the children to make a third major adjustment to their lives.

This drama requires time to play itself out. Prematurely forcing a child into a new family increases the risk of emotional damage.

Most experts believe, and this is corroborated by my own clinical ex perience, that it takes between two and three years for a child to play out

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 6 6 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Becoming a Stepparent

the first two acts of the divorce drama. Of course, many parents can’t wait this long to get remarried, but this is the time frame that must be taken into account.

What can a parent do to maximize the possibility of successfully in corporating a new partner?

Very early in the courting relationship you need to carefully assess how well your new partner fits your family.

Evaluate how suited you are to each other and how suited your kids are to him or her also. Radical? I suppose it is. But too much is at stake not to consider the suggestion.

Complete self-honesty is called for here, as this has far-reaching im plications. If you allow the relationship to proceed too far before you consider this fit, you may find it more difficult, if not impossible, to extricate yourself from the relationship. A sensible decision early in your courting can save you a lot of heartache later.

Pay carefu l attention to how your children and friend get along in a variety of situations. Make sure you vary these times together. It takes a little while for friendship to develop, but if after many weeks or months of contact between them tension and unpleasant feelings still persist, you may want to consider terminating the relationship.

Intentionally prepare your children for rem arriage.

Children need to know your intentions, so be open about your dating. Children also need to be free to express their feelings, fears, and expec tations regarding how the new family will function. Allow them the free dom to express these feelings. Listening is the only way you can get at and resolve unreasonable fears.

Prepare your prospective spouse for rem arriage.

Share how your children are feeling and how they perceive their future stepparent. Also, discuss the role you will each play in the newly consti tuted family.

Im portant questions to consider are: Should the new spouse change his or her expectations for your children? Should the stepparent take

( 1 6 7 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

over certain parenting responsibilities such as disciplining, or should he or she remain impartial—a virtual outsider when it comes to discipline? Many serious conflicts can be avoided if these issues are talked about ahead of time.

Make sure you give adequate time to your children during the courting period after your remarriage.

Your new spouse should accept that you will need to share yourself. Your children continue to have certain rights and a claim to your attention over and above the rights of your new spouse. This is the price you pay for remarriage.

Do not surprise your children with remarriage plans.

There should be a period of open courting that can help your children adjust to the prospect of remarriage. On the other hand, don’t intro duce a new friend into the family until you feel there is a serious rela tionship in the works. Nothing can be as disturbing to children as to see parents courting a wide variety of suitors or changing “friends” fre quently. If you are not seriously considering remarriage and your dates are casual, it is preferable that you not expose your children to these dates. Children should be protected from having to meet a wide variety of strangers.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

Adjusting to a Stepparent When you finally do remarry, your family will then need to make a se ries of im portant adjustments. These adjustments fall into three clearly identifiable phases.

First, there is the “honeymoon” phase. Everyone is polite to each other. The atmosphere may be a little strained, but no outward friction is evi dent yet.

Second, there is the “conflict” phase. The honeymoon is over and re ality emerges. Everyone is short-tempered, impatient, and intolerant even of small mistakes. Little things irritate, and at times it seems as if the family will blow apart.

( 1 6 8 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Becoming a Stepparent

Third, there is the “contented” phase. If the marriage survives the sec ond stage, a final contented stage emerges. All the necessary adjustments have been made, the corners have been knocked off tempers, and the irritating habits of the new spouse have become acceptable to all. At last, familiarity brings comfort.

Making it to the third stage requires careful attention to the follow ing points:

Do not force a new spouse to become a substitute parent to your children, even if your ex-spouse has totally abandoned this role. In my experience, this is the single most destructive issue facing a newly constituted family.

What usually happens is the following: The custodial parent is still very angry at the absent parent and labels him (or her) an incompetent father (or mother). Since the children will need a good male (or female) model, the new spouse is expected to “become the ideal father (mother) to my children.”

Can a stepparent ever really substitute for the real parent? Hardly ever, in my opinion. There are exceptions, of course. The absent parent may abandon the children or may not be available to continue parenting. When very small children are adopted by the stepparent, he or she may be able to successfully take over the functions of a real parent. But in the majority of cases, the real parent continues to be around and should preferably take responsibility for discipline and parenting, jointly with the custodial parent.

Let me give a personal testimony here. My stepfather was a wonder ful example. He did more for me than most fathers would, but right from the outset he made it clear to me that he could never replace my real father. I didn’t fully understand what he meant by this, but it be came evident over the ensuing years. The result was that, not only did I have a real father, but I had a very special stepfather as well. Instead of double jeopardy, I had a double blessing!

This does not mean that a stepparent should not help with or have any say in discipline matters. But any usurping of the real parent’s role will only lead to trouble down the line.

( 1 6 9 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Don’t rush the second phase of the remarriage process.

Every stepparent needs to earn the right to be a friend to his or her step children. You cannot force the pace of friendship. Pressure at this stage will only polarize the family and drive the first wedge into its splitting.

Keep communication with your children open at all times.

Know what your children are thinking and feeling and you will have no difficulty understanding them. They will also trust you more. Misun derstanding always has a lack of information at its root. Similarly, keep an open line of communication with your new spouse. Talk about what he or she is experiencing. This will help both of you keep the problems that arise in proper perspective, and it will help your spouse find ways to overcome these problems.

Don’t take sides, either with your children or with your new spouse.

Don’t allow yourself to be triangled between your children and your spouse. Try to remain impartial if it is appropriate. Privately, you may tell your children if they are doing something to hurt or offend their stepparent and do the same with the stepparent. If you keep your com ments private and honest, even if they are words of chastisement, nei ther party will feel like you are siding with the other. Wisdom must be your watchword!

Remind your new spouse that it is very normal for children, especially in the early stages of remarriage, to feel a sense of betrayal and to be angry.

This anger will subside if the stepparent does not overreact with his or her own anger.

Keep all discipline free of anger.

Show your children by your own behavior that you can resolve your conflicts and overcome your frustrations without giving in to your an ger. Your actions will speak louder than your words. There is just too much anger surrounding all aspects of divorce.

Helping Children Survive Divorce

( 1 7 0 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

C H A P T E R 13

Becoming an Effective Single Parent

Every single parent I have ever met has had one question on his or her mind: “Can I be as effective as a single parent as I would be if I were m arried” My answer is YES—loud and clear! But it does take some work.

Parenting is always a compelling challenge. It doesn’t come easy for any of us. If you feel you are a perfect parent, you should offer yourself to the Smithsonian Institute for perm anent display. Why? Because even if you are a pretty good parent, you never feel you’ve been perfect! Or dinary parents constantly feel like they are failing. It comes with the territory.

If this is true for married parents, how much more of a failure will the average single parent feel! Parenting seems to be more instinctive when there are two of you. A marriage partner provides checks and bal ances and different perspectives that help keep you on track. There is always someone around to tell you when you are making a mistake. But when you are a solo parent, everything depends on you—and only on you.

Single parenting is a far more arduous task than when you have a partner. But this does not mean that you are less effective in your parenting. It simply means you will have to be more intentional and more attentive to your parenting tasks. You have to be on your toes at all times and ahead of the game.

( 1 7 1 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

The Children of Solo Parents Can single parents turn out great kids? You better believe it! Through the years I have met many outstanding people. W hat has intrigued me is how often it turns out that they had been raised by a single parent, usu ally a mother. I have made it a particular point of interest, therefore, to find out whether someone who is impressive to me was raised by a single parent. I am no longer as surprised as I was years ago by the results of my inquiry. With extreme regularity, I usually discover that such a per son was in fact raised by a single parent.

It happened again just a week ago. I was speaking at a prestigious con ference center back east. The person who collected me at the airport stood out immediately as someone I would label as outstanding. Not only was he a very gifted person, but he seemed to be extraordinarily wholesome and healthy. At the end of the conference, as he was returning me to the airport, I broached the topic of who had raised him. Sure enough, he had been raised by a single mother. His father had walked out of the mar riage when he was only a baby, and he had not met his father face to face until he sought him out in his late twenties. This person gave credit to his m other for doing an outstanding job of raising him.

So, with a lot of conviction I can say that many of the most magnifi cent people I have ever met, including a few personal friends, were raised by single parents. Some had lost their mothers or fathers to untimely deaths, others through divorce. A few had fathers who had never mar ried their mothers. They grew up with no idea of whom their father might be. The circumstances of the mother’s or father’s absence didn’t matter. They still turned out to be incredibly gifted and competent people. A part of the reason for this may have been their determination to com pensate for what was missing in their lives. I know that I did a lot of compensating. But I believe it is more than this. The parent who did the raising gave him or herself to the task with great determination to see that they did a good job.

Does this mean that one is better off in a single-parent home? Of course it doesn’t. This is a ridiculous suggestion. For one thing, not ev eryone raised in a single-parent home turns out great. There are many

( 1 7 2 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

failures. Far more than in intact homes, unfortunately. All things being equal it is far better to be raised in an intact home. Not every child in a single-parent home turns out to be well adjusted and successful. No, what I am saying is that being raised in a single-parent home is not a hopeless situation. A single parent who intentionally sets about being a good parent succeeds with remarkable regularity.

Creating a Single-Parent Family For many divorced parents, remarriage is not an option, either because a suitable mate is not available or became they choose not to remarry. For these parents the challenge is how to raise a family as successfully as possible. It won’t happen automatically, however, hence it is im portant to attend to the basic principles I will try to outline in this chapter.

There are two im portant points, made in previous chapters, that need to be reemphasized here, because they are foundational to everything else I will say. The first is that even though a parent, especially the father, may not be living in the home with his children, he is still needed to fulfill the role of a father in bringing up his children. Second, the way we have structured family life in our culture is such that most parenting responsibility falls on the mother. In some quarters, it is not politically correct to make such a statement publicly, but it is true, whether we like it or not.

It is unfortunate that so much of the burden falls on the mother. While it is changing, the working world and our cultural expectations for males still demand that the father be the prim ary breadwinner. This naturally takes him out of the home most of the time.

In our changing culture, the mother’s earning potential is growing, and in some cases it is advantageous for the m other to be the prim ary income generator while the father takes on the parenting role.

For most situations, however, the well-being of the m other and the quality of the mother-child relationship is usually considered to be more influential on the child’s development. This is true whether the mother is divorced or not, and whether the father is present or not.

Why am I emphasizing this point? Because the biggest mistake a

Becoming an Effective Single Parent

( 1 7 3 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping Children Survive Divorce

divorced person can make, therefore, is to rush into a second (or third) marriage just because he or she fears being a single parent. Single-parent families can function well. It is not essential that a replacement spouse be found as quickly as possible to serve as a resident substitute parent.

Many second marriages fail precisely because one of the partners feels rushed into a second marriage just to ensure a two-parent home. Since it is primarily the absent real parent who must fulfill certain parental responsibilities for the child to thrive, marrying again just to provide a second parent doesn’t solve the problem.

While it is true that a stepparent is not entirely redundant and can provide some extra help—mainly with financial resources, disciplin ing the children, and giving moral support and a shoulder to cry on— remarriage also brings a host of additional problems that can offset these advantages. So make sure you m arry for the right reasons. Don’t rush into remarriage just to get parenting help.

The Stresses of Single Parenting In most circumstances the single-parent home consists of a divorced m other who has to work to provide enough income for herself as well as for the children. Not all divorced women work for purely financial rea sons, however. Many work to maintain their sanity. Work gives them a sense of identity and fulfillment. Housekeeping can be a lonely task that is not always fillfilling, especially when you have been rejected and hurt through divorce.

But even if the job is satisfying and pays enough, it usually places demands on women that, according to a lot of recent research, are far more stressful than on men. This stress takes energy away from the mothering task. Personal friendships suffer because there is no time for them to develop. Often a woman’s freedom, recreation, and free time are limited to the point that she becomes constantly irritable, short- tempered, and hostile to everyone—even her children. This is, quite obviously, not conducive to raising healthy children. Every single mother, therefore, needs to pay careful attention to how her work influences her parenting role to ensure that it doesn’t become toxic to her family.

( 1 7 4 )

C op

yr ig

ht ©

1 99

7. T

ho m

as N

el so

n In

co rp

or at

ed . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Helping_Children_Survive_Divorce pages 103-110
Helping_Children_Survive_Divorce (Pg_111--176)
Helping_Children_Survive_Divorce (Pg_162--174)
helpinch children survive divorce pages 175-200