Changes include:
- Now in a single-parent/step family home and/or in two different homes
- Rules are now different
- Less time with parents (child is living apart from one parent, in the home where the parent now busier because (s)he has responsibilities/tasks of both parents, or parent may be interested in a new adult relationship)
- The child may not share feelings connected with the divorce/death because the child thinks it would add to the negative burden already being carried by the parents
- Being required to take on new roles/responsibilities
Loss of:
- Stability
- Life as the children knew it
- Trust (in parents, self, community and the world in general)
- Happiness
- Control in their own life (now are “victims” of others’ behaviors)
- Status of being from a two-parent/intact family
- Dreams of how it could have been
- Confidence in assessing the world (due to doubting the present or the meaning of interactions in the past)
- Reality – now in denial
- Roles and responsibilities
Feeling:
- Responsible for parents’ unhappiness/divorce
- Of little value (“If they loved me, they wouldn’t have done that.”)
- Depressed (affected are: sleep, eating, mood, concentration, less fun in life, lower energy, nervous energy, irritability, increased feelings of worthlessness or guilt, gloomy/dark thoughts, etc.)
- Angry and don’t know what to do about it
- Confused – hearing conflicting stories and don’t know who to believe
- Fearful (of abandonment, instability, more pain, moving, losing friends, change schools, not be accepted by others, afraid of being alone or in the dark, etc.)
- Weird because they cannot understand all of what is happening to them
- Hurt, but not willing to let anyone see them cry. (“I have to be tough.”)
- Hopeless of ever feeling happy again
Children may be:
- Used as messengers
- Caught in between parents
- Used as pawns for the parents to get back at each other
- Asked to take sides
- Used as a sounding board for the single parent
- Stuck in the faulty belief that parents will eventually get back together
- Impatient or grumpy
- Unkind to others/animals/things
- Withdrawn and not as willing to engage
- In more trouble at school or in the neighborhood
- Declining grades in school
- Having nightmares/not wanting to be in the dark
- Not wanting to be alone
- Quarreling more with peers
- Less talkative with the parent
- Run away from home or responsibilities
- More defiant or difficult to work with
- Become a couch potato, lacking motivation
- More restless and fidgety
- Speaking unkindly of self or others
- Testing your love or limits
- Reverting to previously outgrown behaviors
- Given up on being part of this unhealthy or painful relationship
- Clinging to the parent or friends
