When most people focus on the trauma and difficulties partners experience while getting a divorce, many pay a blind eye to the effects it has on the kids.
No one ever dreams of getting a divorce. After all, marriage is until death do you part. However, with the ups and downs that come with settling down with a potential prospect, sometimes cutting ties completely is the best route to take. It is hard enough for the partners, so imagine if kids are involved.
Some children adjust quite easily while some have a rough time coming to terms with not living with both parents in one house.
Here’s how divorce affects kids and what can be done to help them adjust:
Read also: Tips on how to reconcile with family after being estranged
- Stress
It is a by-product of excessive thinking. Divorce interferes with their normal life, making them more susceptible to stress, depression, or physical sickness. Kids can also get serious sleeping disorders because of disorientation at home.
Solution: Channel their thoughts to something else so that they do not feel that void. Assure them that you are still very much available even though you (you &your partner) are not together.
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- Poor academic performance
Divorce equals distraction. When the child is supposed to be learning, he/she is too busy thinking about the reasons why mom and dad are not together anymore. This eventually catapults them to a degenerated performance in school.
Solution: As parents, keep trying to be proactive in the child’s life. Fill the teachers in so that they help the child adjust to avoid lagging in school work.
- Emotionally unstable
Many times, kids of divorced parents close themselves off emotionally. They refrain from any social interaction, start to get angry easily, or even feel guilty because they think they are the cause of divorce.
Solution: Providing counselling for a child helps them understand their role in divorce and contextualize their feelings.
Read also: Fun questions on parenting that help you know your kids better
- Closed off to the concept of love
Out of the many people who would rather stay single, some of them would accrue their decisions to being in families where marriage failed. Studies show that kids who grew up in divorced homes are most likely to divorce their partners in the future.
Solution: Communication and counselling to show that divorce is not their sealed fate will help channel their negative assumptions about love and marriage into positive ones.
