If you are wondering if your parents’ divorce or separation is your fault, you are not alone. Most children of divorce at some point believe that their parents’ split up had something to do with them. Maybe you think if you had behaved better they would still be together. Perhaps you wonder if you weren’t involved in so many extra-curricular activities if they wouldn’t fight so much and would still be together. Maybe something happened on the day your parents told you about the split, and you’re convinced that what you did that day caused them to split up. Regardless of why you think you caused your parents’ divorce, there is one thing that you need to know for certain:
Anger is a very common reaction in children whose parents have separated or divorced. When you do not deal with your anger, it can become very destructive, and when you let it out in the wrong way, you can hurt yourself or someone else or find yourself in trouble. In the past, you may have had people tell you that you need to slow down and pause when you get angry. That’s probably good advice, but today we are going to look at a way to deal with anger that involves speeding up. When you get angry remember to win the RACE against anger with this four step plan:
STEP #1: RECONGNIZE YOUR ANGER
The first step in addressing your anger is to recognize when you are angry. Pay attention to what your body feel like when you get angry. Do your shoulders tense up? What does your face look like when you’re angry? How do you feel deep in your stomach when you’re angry? You might want to use the anger page from our My Feelings Workbook to help you understand how your body reacts to anger. Other things you will want to keep track are the things that make you angry and how angry you get. You can use the Anger-ometer to keep track of this for a week to note patterns in your anger. By understanding your anger, you will be in a better position to deal with it.
STEP #2: ADDRESS YOUR ANGER
It is important that you address any anger that you may be feeling. It is easy to just write off your anger or to bury it deep inside. Both of these options will lead to long term problems. Anger which is not dealt with will only fester and grow until it eventually comes out. Anger buried deep inside and not dealt with is like a volcano just waiting to erupt.
Following the divorce or separation of your parents, your relationship with them may feel distant or strained. It may be the case that you have been angry with them and have intentionally avoided them causing your relationship to suffer. They might be busy with adjusting to a new life away from your other parent and not be spending time with you. You may both be avoiding one another because you don’t know what to say, or maybe you’re afraid that you’ll hurt your parents’ feelings if you tell them what you’re really thinking.
Whether you admit it or not, most children instinctively desire to protect their parents. No matter how wrong you might think they were to get divorced in the first place, you may be reluctant to share the emotions and troubles you have for fear of making things worse for them.
On the other hand, if your parents are divorced or separated, you are likely experiencing some emotions you have never felt before or never felt quite this intensely. Many of the articles and resources on this site are designed to help you process those emotions and understand and deal with them better.
That said, you still need someone to talk to about your emotions. Just the process of naming your emotions and talking about your struggles is an important first step in overcoming them. The person you talk to may be a friend or a trusted adult, but sometimes the person you really need to talk to is your parent. It may be scary or uncomfortable, but in the long-term you will both benefit from having the conversation.
Here are some guidelines for how to talk to your parents about emotions or other things that may be bothering you:
If your parents are separated or divorced, you may have a lot of spiritual questions about God and faith and the church. Many times when parents get divorced, kids begin to wonder about why they even exist and sometimes that leads to tough questions about God and faith. Here at I Am A Child of Divorce, we want to help you as you search through and struggle with many of those questions. So, we have created a section for “Questions About Spiritual Stuff” that will address these question.
We recognize that discussions about God can be very polarizing and controversial, but the fact of the matter is that God can help you heal after your parents divorce and provide hope. To ignore that may avoid some controversy, but it would not be fair to you (as someone whose parents divorced) to ignore the issue all together.
Our goal in tackling spiritual issues is to be as honest and as forthright as we know how to be. If you don’t feel like these particular questions or issues apply to you, please just ignore them and continue to utilize the rest of I Am A Child of Divorce to help yourself in whatever way possible. However, if you do have questions about God and Faith, we hope that these answers will help you to sort through those issues.
Even if you do not believe in God, or feel like you don’t need faith, I would encourage you to at least read through these questions and answers. While the principal issues addressed are indeed about God and Faith, they also deal with the broader issues of meaning and existence. Regardless of what you believe, these are issues that we all have to face and divorce sometimes forces us to face them earlier than we would like.
So, stay tuned to this section as we intend to tackle questions like: Continue reading
Grief is a process that people go through when they suffer a loss. It is a journey through understanding and dealing with what has happened. The goal of the grieving process is to reach acceptance of the loss that will allow you to move on with life. When your parents separate or get a divorce, it is natural for you to grieve that loss. Grief is not an easy process, but it is a necessary part of healing.
Experts have identified five distinct stages in grief. You may not experience these stages sequentially (meaning one after the other), but you are likely to experience all five stages in dealing with the loss in your life. You may also experiences these different stages numerous times as you continue to get older and understand more and more about life and the loss you have experienced as the result of your parents’ divorce.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross identified five stages of grief that people experience following the death of someone close. These five stages will also apply to processing the losses you have experienced as a result of the divorce. They include:
1. Denial
During this stage you may deny that anything has changed about your family. You don’t talk about it. You try not to think about it. You convince yourself that everything will get back to normal soon. Rather than deal with the emotions and feelings you are experiencing, you push them deep down inside and pretend nothing is going on. You might be wondering why all this is happening to you in the first place. In order to move into the other stages of grief, you must first be willing to admit that you have lost something.
When your parents were married, they likely worked together to make decisions regarding you, and you probably all lived in the same house. When parents’ get divorced, someone has to decide who will make decisions for the kids and where the kids will live. Sometimes both parents agree on those decisions and other times, when parents can’t agree, a judge will make that decision. That is where custody comes in.
There are two general types of custody: legal custody (which refers to who gets to make major decisions for the kids including decisions related to education, healthcare, religion, etc.) and physical custody (which refers to where the children will spend their time).
I Am A Child of Divorce is a proud part of Hope 4 Hurting Kids and we’ve decided to move this article to that page as we continue to build a repository of resources for children of divorce and children and teens who have experienced a variety of other traumatic events in their lives. We hope that you will check it out there!
Many kids are shocked when they find out that their parents are getting a divorce. Some parents fight a lot, and the kids in those homes may start to suspect that their parents are going to split up. But, if you came from a home where there wasn’t much conflict, you may have been entirely surprised when they broke the news to you. You probably didn’t know that one or both of your parents weren’t happy in their marriage, and you may be left feeling angry and confused as you work through the shock of it.
You are not alone though. Statistics tells us the about 75% (that’s 3 out of every 4) divorces end a marriage that is classified as “low conflict.” That means that the parents didn’t argue or fight very much. So, there are lots of kids out there who had no idea that their parents were headed down the road to divorce until it actually happened.
If you were shocked by the news of your parents’ divorce, there are a few things you need to keep in mind: Continue reading
When your parents get divorced, there are plenty of things that can make you feel anxious or afraid. Here are some of things that children of divorce have told us they were afraid of or anxious about:
Moving to a new house or neighborhood
Changing schools
No longer getting to see one parent
Being left all alone
Losing grandparents, aunts & uncles or other family members
That the remaining parent may also leave
Having enough money
Loss of family rituals and traditions
Not knowing where they will live
That their parents will stop loving them too
Parents dating and getting remarried
Loss of family
Being blamed for the divorce
Having to take sides between parents
Disappointing one or both parents
Losing friends
People talking about them or their family
Being put in the middle between parents
Not getting to be a kid anymore
Losing stuff as they move from one place to another
Having to take on additional responsibilities like taking care of younger siblings
Whether or not their own relationships and marriages are doomed to fail
These are just some things that children of divorce may fear or be anxious about. These fears and anxiety can come and go as time passes. Which items from the list apply to you and your situation?
Anxiety and fear are often caused by a lack of information or a plan. In other words, fear often results from gaps – gaps in information, gaps in understanding and gaps in ability. Closing those gaps can help to alleviate some of those fears. One easy to remember method for dealing with your fears and anxieties is known as the “GAP Method.”
The letters in “Gap” spell out the basic steps in the GAP Method which are:
Gather Information,
Assess the Odds; and
Play to Your Strengths.
By using this method, you can help yourself to get over those fears and anxieties and focus your efforts and emotions on more positive things. Let’s look at each step a little bit closer.
GATHER INFORMATION
The biggest thing that feeds many of our fears is the unknown. When we don’t know what is going on or what is going to happen, we don’t feel like we have any control over the situation, and this leads to increased feelings of fear and anxiety. So, the first step in overcoming fears is to gather information. Do some research about the things that scare you. If your biggest fear is having to move to a new neighborhood or school, find out all the information you can about that neighborhood. Where is it? What it is like? Do you have any friends who live in that neighborhood already? What is the new school like? Does it have the same extracurricular activities that you’re currently in? If your biggest fear has to do with not getting to see one of your parents, gather information on that. What visitation schedule has the judge decided on? What is your parents’ plan for making sure that you can see both of them? What other options are available to stay in contact? Talk to your parents about these question. There is an old saying that, “knowledge is power,” and in this case knowledge holds the power to squash your fears.
When parents get divorced, there are many things that have to be divided between them. Things like family pictures, checking accounts, vehicles and much more is divided. Sometimes parents agree how to split these items up, and other times a judge tells people who are divorcing how their stuff will be divided up.
The same things happens for time spent with you. Before the divorce, you probably spent time with both parents, but after the divorce there will be some sort of visitation schedule that determines who you will spend time with and how much time you will spend with each parent.
One of the other things that gets split up in a divorce is the family’s income (how much money your parents’ earn). The judge, or your parents if they can agree on an amount, will determine who gets what portion of the family’s income. The goal is to make sure both parents, and houses, have enough money to live on, but this doesn’t always happen because now the same income has to support two homes instead of just one.
Sometimes one parent earns more than the other parent – maybe your dad worked prior to the marriage and your mom stayed at home or vice versa. In that case, one parent will earn more money. In order to make things more fair, the judge may decide that one party has to pay support to the other. There are two types of support a judge might order – alimony and child support.
Alimony is money that one party has to pay to the other after the divorce in order to make their income more fair. So, if the goal is to make sure that both parties get one-half of the income, and dad is the only one who works outside the home, he would be ordered to pay an amount equal to one-half of what he earns to your mother.
