Growing Up With Divorce by Neil Kalter

Author:Neil Kalter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC035000
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 1990-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

For early elementary school children, who are especially vulnerable to feelings of loss and are also given to egocentrically derived perceptions of their world, a custodial mother’s normal work and social activities can precipitate a depressive reaction. These youngsters are already wrestling with the pain over having lost their sense of a family unit. Many have also experienced the loss of the preseparation quality in their relationship with their father (as Molly did). Thus sensitized to loss, they become acutely aware of any shifts in their mother’s attention to them and in time spent together. Their tendency toward egocentrism results in their “explaining” even relatively minor and benign changes in the feeling tone and the relationship with their mother as a sign that they are no longer lovable or worthy of their mother’s affections.

A custodial mother can help her child cope with this distress by structuring special time for her and her youngster. Taking this action demonstrates clearly and concretely that the parent still loves the child. In addition, parents can use the indirect methods of displacement communication to acknowledge their child’s worries about being unimportant to her mother and explain that a mother’s investment in her work, friendships, and dating relationships is not an indication of lack of love for her youngster.

IN TERMS OF environmental sources of stress, Laura (see chapter 8) could have been expected to be doing very well. Her parents were on reasonably good terms, each believed that the other was a good parent and was important to her, and they had arranged a flexible, effective shared custody arrangement. In fact Laura was progressing well in many ways; she continued to learn at school, had several good friends with whom she played regularly, and was not a behavior problem. However, her pervasive sadness and frequent stomachaches led her parents to consult a mental health professional when she was six-and-a-half, nearly a year-and-a-half after they had separated.

The mental health worker met twice with each parent separately, twice with both parents together, and twice with Laura. He assessed Laura’s difficulties as being a reaction to feeling unimportant to her mother. He explained to her parents that Laura was not emotionally disturbed but was experiencing her mother’s increased involvement in work and her new romantic relationship as “evidence” that Laura was comparatively unimportant. The mental health professional emphasized the fact that Laura’s mother was doing nothing wrong; her daughter’s reaction was not at all unusual for an early elementary school child in her position. He also underscored the fact that Laura’s parents had handled their divorce in a mature, thoughtful manner. Their daughter’s continued good adjustment in school and with friends was testimony to how well they had managed the divorce and to their good relationship with Laura. He outlined for them the ways young elementary school children feel and think about divorce. A sense of losing the family unit and the tendency toward egocentric thinking was described. Laura’s initial attempts to deny the reality of her parents’ separation were seen as a way of warding off feelings of loss of the family unit.

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