How Divorce Can Shatter Your Child’s Relationships For Life
Unlike many lower forms of life, a human child is not born with a set of instincts that will enable him or her to survive. Like most mammals, a child’s survival depends on her attachment to her caregivers – which is usually her parents. This dependency has been hardwired into humans by nature for thousands of years. So it should come as no surprise that children form strong attachments to their mothers and fathers. It would be a surprise, and cause for concern, if they didn’t. This attachment, or bond, is a sign that the relationship between the child and her parents is healthy.
Good advice for men getting divorce as well as women is to realize that as she begins to grow and as she comes into contact with more people, her bonds to her parents become a bit less. Simultaneously, however, she will begin to form attachments with others such as neighborhood kids and adults, babysitters, cousins and relatives, and so on. Typically, this will happen at some point between the ages of 3 to 5. But if this bond becomes weakened too quickly or too traumatically, she may become forever distrustful of relationships and have relationship troubles for the rest of her life.
When a couple divorces, the mind of a young child is thrown into turmoil. In her mind, the sacred bond that she has depended on since birth, is about to be shattered. In her mind, even if unspoken, this divorce or desertion, is a betrayal of trust. If one of her parents, who she’s trusted and depended on since birth, is leaving her, how can she ever trust anyone who she may become attached to in the future to stay with her? This is a key reason why divorce is potentially so hard on kids.
But the sense of abandonment goes beyond this. One parent has abandoned her. What assurances does she have that the other parent won’t do the same. And this fear of being alone in the world is terrifying to a young child. In some kids this anxiety is so palpable that you’ll notice drastic behavior changes. Some kids will become clingy as if they’re afraid to let you out of their sight, lest you not return. Some will act out in bouts of rage or temper tantrums in a desire to be noticed. Other children may become emotionally withdrawn in an effort to save their feelings from further hurt.
For a child, learning that their parents are divorcing constitutes a harsh wake up call that the world is not what they thought it was. Their home is no longer a secure refuge from the rest of the world.
To prevent or at least allay some of the children’s fears, the way in which concerned parents handle the divorce is critical. Being able to cope with an experience such as divorce is not natural – it’s learned. Kids don’t have the life experiences that would enable them to cope with it. Heck, many adults don’t have the know how to cope with divorce. But the children need reassurance from both parents that they are not abandoning them and that they will stay in their lives. This, more than anything else, will help to reassure a child that the bonds that they formed were not for naught.
For the sake of the child’s future growth, it is extremely important that the parent and child attachment remain strong. Many researchers believe that the quality of the initial attachment of a baby to her parents is one of the most significant predictors of how that person will form relationships for the rest of her life.
