The Learned Trauma of Divorce on Children

When I began writing this article, I was reading as much as I could on the effects of divorce on people, the family and the children. One of the areas that continued to show up is the concept of learning. In order to learn, you have to give yourself permission to learn, and in that, when you do learn, you take in what is being taught to you. Psychology guides us to learning and how we learn. Children are learners. In this they take in what is taught to them and they try to make sense of it all.

When a parent or caregiver gets frustrated with a child, the child will do what they can to learn from the parent. This may not seem like it in the moment, yet the child is putting together a large database of experiences and trying what they can to balance those with the request of the parent. The psychology of this behavior is what we call growing up, maturing, maturation.  The importance of this for a child is the consistency in which this occurs, and in that a child does not have the mental capacity to understand trauma. Instead, a child moves forward in life, understanding what it means to learn.

Parents, most often have the best of intentions when they begin to raise a child. Having shared all of this to begin the article, the direction we are going to move in is that of divorce. Parents quite often choose to divorce, and in so doing don’t realize what that means for the child or children involved through this process and beyond. When we consider the concept of divorce, many a person considers that the divorce is between two people. When we do get divorced, many a person, lawyer, friend shares that the kids will be “fine”. Even so, throughout a divorce, people give guidance, they pick sides and they continue to share that with good parenting, the kids will be ok. The definition of ok ignores that for a child to be ok within the concept of divorce. The child has to remove their learning of a life with two parents and recreate a life with one parent at a time, or even with just one parent in total.

The psychological affect that is caused by a divorce to an adult is quite simply known as a trauma, and in that it is no different for a child. Depending on the age of the child can depend on the trauma a divorce may really have on a child. The mental strain will not be shared openly with a parent or a caregiver, because for the most part, children do not know how to have a voice, and really nor do they know the psychological affect a divorce has on them.

The trauma of divorce sets in for a child differently than it does for an adult. Parents have the ability to choose anger, they can lash out and they have the ability to verbally share what it is they are going through. Children have none of these abilities and most often nor are they allowed to. Society places on children far more pressures to conform than it does on adults. So the child tends to suffer in silence. It Is this silence which is dangerous for the child, because the statistics on children of divorce are not as flattering as it would seem. People say children will be ok, yet the reality is, most will not.

Children are certainly resilient, that is so very true. Yet they need the guidance of both parents to be able to honor their pain and to be allowed to heal into a person once again with a new reality, else they will create their own reality. When a divorce occurs, it is not between just 2 people. The reality is it creates a completely new world for everyone involved. Children are as much a part of the divorce process as are the parents, and in that, children need to be given a path to heal. Most of the time I am told that children will be just fine, the reality is, if they are not helped through a positive path forward,   they will find their own new path. The research shows that most of the time, this path is not a healthy one, instead it is a path they find as a solution to the trauma caused by divorce.  . They need more than just time, they need to be given the chance to grieve, because in reality, they do not know what this means, and for the most part, the innocence of their life has been ripped away from them – to create a new reality that is to be called their own.

What may be a truth for adults in their reason for getting married, starting a family and then working toward continuing it, does not seem to last. The primary reason that people give for getting divorced is a lack of commitment 73%, arguing too much 56% and cheating 55%. None of these scenarios are understood by children, and all of these lead to the same path for a child, a learned trauma. The effects of this trauma on a child lead toward:

Behavioral and emotional problems – these stem from that trauma of divorce without the ability to communicate the emotions they are feeling. This occurs for children who’s parents’ divorce between the age of 5-12 far more so than other ages. This does not mean other ages do not act out and or have emotional irregularities, it just means they may not be as entrenched.

Social Problems – children of divorce tend to have a difficult time making friends. They may have a more involved social response to each action from someone who is their friend, and the child’s reaction may be highly emotional or physical in response. Their ability to regulate emotions tends to be stunted because of the divorce.

Prison – 70% of inmates come from a broken home. At this time, 21% of children from divorce grow up in a single parent household and this may contribute to the prison population – yet in reality – divorce does have a correlation with behavior and social emotional responses.

Academic Performance – Children of divorce show diminished success in their education. At the high school level many children from divorced families drop out and or through their choices have lower paying jobs.

Mental Health – Children of divorce are 300% more likely to have psychological issues. Children of divorce show mental and physical health problems, as well as behavioral issues in school and beyond. Teenagers of divorces parents are more likely to require serious mental health counseling, require medication or both – the sad reality is they still don’t receive either.

Some of the statistics within divorce research shows that children living with their biological parents are 35% healthier than children of divorce. Research also shows that when a divorce occurs, the mental health of a child drops by more than 50% which manifests as serious illness, speech impediments, weight gain, headaches and some other extreme pains that did not exist before. These are all aspects of psychological trauma.

Poverty – Children of divorce find themselves into a system of poverty. As they relearn life they also seem to find this new reality, and so children of divorce also seem to end up being adults of poverty.

Children are capable of trauma and they are capable of healing. What we need to do is create a system in which we offer to the children of divorce the resources they need in order to heal in a healthy way. At times a divorce may be the best solution for the parents, yet most often the children do not know this or understand this. The argument that children will be fine is one that is either arrogant for the sake of divorce or it is naïve as to what is really going to happen to the child. We as a society need to stop assuming children will be ok, just because we want them to be, instead we need to focus on healing the whole system that is now broken.

What does all of this mean. Quite frankly – if parents are wanting to get divorced, then it truly means we as a society need to create a system that allows for children to receive the psychological help they need. Not just during the divorce process; rather they need to receive help to sort through everything for as long as they need until they are able to truly have healed from the trauma that the divorce had on them.  Children need to learn that what was their reality, can be developed into a new reality by learning healthy habits, healthy mindsets and healthy boundaries as they recover from the trauma of divorce.