Divorce is difficult for anyone to endure, but it can have a highly distressing impact on children. It’s important that you understand how your child may process and respond to the changes. Their internal distress drives their externalizing behaviors. Divorce affects the child both initially and over time. This raises questions of how parents can help and when it’s a good idea to seek counseling.

How Divorce Can Affect Children

Emotional Responses

Divorce shakes the child’s world. The personal and private conflict between parents is different from the child’s individual experience with each parent. Children love and are dependent on their parents. Each parent is, in his/her/their own way, the child’s rock. During and after divorce, your child will experience a wide range of emotions. They will be deeply sad, confused, and afraid. They might blame themselves for the divorce and worry that the split between their parents means a loss of love for everyone in the family, including them. children can feel resentment toward their parents, that the people they relied on disrupted everything they knew to be.

Stress & Anxiety

Separation and changes in primary relationships are significant stress factors that children of divorce will experience. External stressors, difficult to adapt to and manage, include moving from home to home, moving away from neighborhood and school, and living primarily with a single parent. Their relationship with each parent will change, as each parent begins to play both the mother and father role, and single parents can quickly become overwhelmed by practical demands, including reduced finances and increased homemaker and parenting tasks.

Mental Health Issues

It’s not uncommon for children to develop mental health problems as a long-term effect of divorce. Children of divorce are at a higher risk of poor academic performance, behavior problems from acting out, opposition to authority, and/or withdrawal and isolation from others. Long term, risk is increased for teen pregnancy, early alcohol and drug use/abuse, and mental health problems. Adjustment disorder symptoms can begin to show up in as little as three months, accompanied by depression and anxiety.

Parents Have the Greatest Influence

The parent/child relationship will always be the most influential factor in a child’s life. Your child will need you more. Positive outcomes rely on the parents’ capacity to increase their attentiveness to their child’s emotional and behavioral distress and respond with understanding, empathy, and support. A few rules for divorcing parents:

• Both parents, together, talk to the children before and often after the divorce.
• Always speak with unconditional positive regard for the other parent.
• Do not burden your child with your adult problems of grief, anger, and worry.
• Arrange custody/visitation for maximum contact with each parent.
• Reduce changes in neighborhood, school, extended community, and extracurricular activities.
• Keep all promises, even seemingly simple or insignificant promises. Trustworthiness is the foundation for repair of the disrupted parent/child relationship.

Need for Counseling

You don’t have for problems to develop. Many school counselors have divorce groups and the peer support helps your child feel less isolated/stigmatized. These groups offer opportunity for your child to form meaningful connections with her/his/their peers, and get ideas for how to cope. The school counselor will observe your child, and if you child shows signs of emotional, behavioral, or psychological issues, the counselor can refer you to a local therapist. Anxiety can quickly erupt from the child’s experience of duress before, during, and after a divorce. Early intervention prevents later and long term problems. An individual therapist can help you understand your child’s inner emotional world as it is affected by the separation, and help you develop strategies to support your child’s adjustment.As soon as you decide to get a divorce, consider scheduling appointments with a child therapist. This will ease the transition for your child, as it will give them a safe space to work out complicated thoughts and feelings.

Keep your child mentally healthy and happy with counseling from Fairbanks Psychiatric & Neurological Clinic APC. For over 30 years, this clinic has provided psychiatry, neurology, and counseling services to clients throughout Fairbanks, AK. Call (907) 452-1739 to book an appointment, and visit them online to learn more about their counseling options. Sally Caldwell, LPC-S, is now accepting Tricare, as well as most private insurances .