What Will Divorce Do To My Children?

If you’re considering or are going through a divorce where young children are involved, no doubt the question has crossed your mind. You may be hearing “Kids are resilient – they’ll bounce back” while also hearing “Divorce is brutal on kids – it impacts them for life.”

The truth is, a divorce impacts children differently depending on a variety of factors. Things like your child’s individual temperament and support network (family, friends, community groups) can play a role in how they manage through divorce. Research shows that age, gender, and number of siblings can influence how a child reacts to divorce, too. These variables interact in complicated ways, and most of them are outside of your immediate control.

So, let’s focus on what you can do something about, right now. First, and foremost, the way that you interact with your child is going to have a profound effect on them during divorce. Showing up for them consistently is the single most important thing you can do for your child. Having parents who are emotionally available, supportive, and open to their experience is what children crave, even if they don’t express this outwardly.

Showing up this way can be a challenge given that you are going through one of life’s hardest transitions. Making sure you have the support of friends, family, and trained professionals that you trust means that you have outlets for processing your own stress and distress about divorce away from, and not through, your child.

You’ll also want to carefully consider how you interact with your co-parent and how you talk about them to your child. It is not uncommon for divorcing parents to be angry, sad, resentful, and hurt. Sometimes that comes about through direct comments about a co-parent, and sometimes it sneaks in through rolled eyes, offhand observations, or questions about what happened when the child was spending time with their other parent.

Look – we know that even being on our best parenting behavior doesn’t guarantee the other co-parent will, and it’s really hard not to be defensive or antagonistic when you see the other co-parent acting that way. But clinicians and researchers agree – children who are exposed to parents who are highly conflictual, aggressive, or profoundly distressed by their relational circumstances are negatively impacted – whether those parents are divorced or not.

The research is also clear that it only takes one parent putting the kids first, taking the high road to look out for them, to make a big difference in a child’s adjustment to divorce. If you divorce, being the parent who is committed to avoiding anger, blame, defensiveness, and adult explanations around your child is something you can do to protect them from negative effects of divorce.

You, all on your own, can make that choice. But there is more good news. You radically increase the chances your co-parent will come around to polite, reasoned, and child-centered communication and choices when you keep making those choices yourself. Reciprocity is a powerful pull, and long-term it is hard to sustain antagonistic behavior in the presence of someone who just…won’t engage it. Who goes on putting on their best co-parenting face in public (and who copes in responsible, adult ways in the background with the support they deserve).

Out of all of the factors that influence children’s adjustment, your relationship with their other parent and your relationship to your child are two of the biggest things that will have an impact your children, not the divorce itself. And that fact gives you more control over how your child moves through this divorce, both short-term and long-term, than you probably imagined.