The Different Ways Divorce Affects Your Children

It’s an all-too-common refrain, “We stayed together for the kids.” However, not all couples are able to do so safely or comfortably. Divorce is difficult for both spouses but is particularly challenging for children who feel stuck in the middle. The upheaval of divorce in a family can have many behavioral and psychological effects on kids. We’ll explore some of the different ways divorce affects your children and how you may be able to intervene.

Children May Blame Themselves

Unable to fully understand the entirety of why you and your spouse have chosen to seek divorce, children may believe that they are at fault for the dissolution of your marriage. While this is not the case, they nonetheless feel that they must assign blame somewhere, so they often assign it to themselves. This unfair burden that children place on themselves can lead to depression, withdrawal, and guilt. It’s important to assure children who direct their struggles inward that your divorce is not their fault. They should also know that even though their parents will be living apart, both you and your spouse still love them and will remain involved in their lives. Going forward, to prevent children from blaming themselves for their parents’ divorce, take care not to denigrate your former spouse in your children’s presence. Children may internalize these harsh words as an indictment of one half of themselves, causing them to blame themselves all over again.

Diminished Academic Performance

Tumult at home often manifests itself in the grade book. While students of all ages are prone to struggling in school when parents are in the midst of a separation, the academic rigors of high school often prove the most challenging to children caught in the middle of divorce. Whereas younger students may be more likely to act out and demonstrate behavioral issues, adolescents whose energies are more concentrated into graded schoolwork often display a quantitative marker of their distress. Divorce is a major stressor, and it’s understandable that anxiety and depression regarding the dissolution of their family unit would lead to poorer performance.

However, recent research has shown that children of divorce, in addition to facing difficulties keeping up with coursework and extracurriculars, also demonstrate a higher dropout rate in high school and college. Now more than ever, a long and accomplished education is a necessity in a specialized and fiercely competitive job market. Stay in touch with your children’s teachers regarding your family situation and discuss strategies for keeping your children’s educations from being derailed because of your divorce. Preemptive approaches to these academic challenges could very well preclude costly and damaging consequences to come.

Sleep Disruption

As we do more and more research, we learn that we have dearly understated the importance of healthy sleep in the lives of young children and adolescents. Some psychologists and educational professionals have even suggested that the traditional high school start time of around 7:30 a.m. is perilously early for teenagers who desperately need sleep and that schools should accommodate this need for sleep and heavy homework loads by starting later. Knowing now the primacy of sleep, we see that the stress of a divorce can manifest itself in harmful disruption to sleep patterns. This can affect development as well as physical health.

Developmental Regression in Small Children

While children under the age of six may not necessarily understand all the intricacies of a divorce process, they’re nonetheless bright enough to perceive that something is amiss in their family structure. Their coping strategies may well involve regressing in their development. For instance, toilet-trained children may begin to wet their pants or their bed, or kids who had previously outgrown the habit of thumb-sucking may start to do so once more. In most cases, these reactions are transient coping strategies that pass after a few weeks as kids reacclimate themselves to their new normal. However, if these regression behaviors persist for months and begin to impair everyday functioning, you may need the services of a child psychologist who can help correct these behaviors before they continue.