Emotions, Children, and Divorce: When to Stay In Control
There are a lot of very conflicting bits of advice about how you should deal with the emotional aspect of a painful divorce. There’s the ‘Clint Eastwood’ advice of gritting your teeth, showing nothing, and pushing forward until it’s over before you break down. There’s the ‘Dr. Phil’ advice of letting it all hang out and putting yourself first. Is there actually any proof that any of these ideas is more valuable than any others?
No. There isn’t.
But we do have pretty solid proof of some things. A study in 2002 proved that most children of divorced parents had enormous emotional responses to those divorces…for about a year. The remainder had emotional responses that lasted much longer — almost no child suffered for less than a year. But the fact remains that most kids recover from even a nasty divorce in about a year.
Interestingly, the crucial fact that separated the long-recovery children from the short was how nasty the marriage was before the divorce: if a nasty marriage was ended by a nasty divorce, the children recovered normally. The worst-case scenario was a couple who hid their problems from their child while they were divorced, and then let loose with all guns during the divorce. Children who didn’t know there was anything wrong, and then watched everything explode in a huge mess were the ones who were the most dramatically affected.
In other words, the lesson is this: if you’re interested in your child’s welfare during your divorce, maintain the same demeanor you had before the divorce began. If you kept it in before, go Clint Eastwood and keep it in until it’s all over. If you got into regular screaming matches before, you might want to avoid that particular scenario in the courtroom, but you shouldn’t particularly feel the need to hold back, either.
EXCEPT
…when it comes to bashing your spouse in front of your child. Every study of the issue has shown that, even if parents can’t come together and co-parent effectively after a divorce, children who are exposed to ‘other-parent-bashing‘ end up with low self-esteem and motivation. Simply put, no matter what you feel about the situation, your child feels like they are literally “part Mom and part Dad.” When you bash your spouse, they internalize those insults as though you were bashing them.
So feel free to let your emotions fly during a divorce if that’s your normal, and without bashing your spouse. At least as far as your children go, it’s the best that you, as a responsible parent, can do for them.
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