Latest / Children, Divorce & Family Psychology with Dr. Bill MacLaney / Psychologist: 7 Warning Signs Your Child Isn’t Handling Your Divorce Well

Transcript

Psychologist: 7 Warning Signs Your Child Isn’t Handling Your Divorce Well · Children, Divorce & Family Psychology with Dr. Bill MacLaney

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going through a divorce, one of the hardest questions to answer is whether your child is actually handling it well.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Some warning signs are obvious, but some are more subtle.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: They can sit there for months, sometimes years, before anybody realizes the child has been struggling the whole time.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Bill McLeany.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a clinical psychologist, and much of my work involves children and families going through separation, divorce, high conflict custody situations, and damaged parent-child relationships.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to show you seven warning signs I pay attention to, including a few that parents tend to explain away until the problem becomes much harder to ignore.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Number six is one that is constantly misunderstood.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with number one.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're going backwards.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: With younger kids, one of the first things I watch for is regression.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: A child who has been sleeping through the night suddenly starts waking up again.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe bed wedding comes back after it had stopped.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: They become unusually clingy.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: They want to sleep in your room again, or they start having meltdowns over things they pretty much were handling pretty well six months ago.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And parents will sometimes say, well, they're just going through a phase.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe kids do go through phases.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: But if several of those changes began around the same time the family is separated, I'm going to pay attention to that.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because younger children usually aren't going to sit you down and say, hey dad, I'm having a hard time adjusting to everything that's been happening in our family.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's six, they're going to show you bodily.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: As kids get older, that same distress can show up somewhere completely different.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, school suddenly gets harder.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean your kid gets one C on the math test.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about a change.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: A kid who's reasonably organized suddenly can't keep track of assignments.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: A teacher says they're staring off in class.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Homework that used to take 45 minutes now takes two hours.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe their grades begin slipping, or they seem distracted and irritable in school.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: One thing parents forget during a long divorce is how much else is happening developmentally at the same time to their child.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the difference between an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the same kid.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And some divorces could take two or three years to move through, even be more than that.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So while mom and dad are dealing with attorneys, custody schedules, finances, maybe a move, maybe some new relationships, the child's also trying to go through puberty, figuring out who they are, deal with school, friendships, sports, and all the normal things they're already supposed to have been doing at this age.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes school is just the first place you can see all that is starting to become too much for them.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the body tells you before the report card actually does.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, the stomach aches and headaches start to follow a pattern.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Stomach aches are a big one.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: So are the headaches, trouble sleeping, and feeling sick before school, before in exchange, or before going from one house to the other.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, if your child is having physical symptoms, you don't just assume it's psychological.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: You roll out the medical things first.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But after that happens, I want to know when it is happening.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Does a stomach ache show up every Sunday night?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Does the headache start the morning they're supposed to switch homes?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do they sleep pretty well most of the week, but not the night before transition?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The timing could tell you quite a bit.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Children experience stress physically just like adults do, and sometimes that's the place it shows up first.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So don't just ask, does my child have a stomach ache?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ask, when does my child get the stomach ache?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now with teenagers, you can see almost the opposite.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of complaining more, some of them just stop letting you in.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: But first, if this is helping you look at your child's behavior a little differently, give the video a like and subscribe to the channel.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is a new channel, and I'm going to be doing a lot more on helping children and parents navigate divorce and separation before relatively small problems become much bigger ones.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, they start locking you out.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Parents have a tendency to excuse a lot of things by saying, well, teenagers are difficult.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: We know that teenagers has been described as storm and stress, but that's not necessarily true.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, teenagers are teenagers.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to want more privacy.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to spend more time with friends.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your 14-year-old probably isn't going to give you the same pie by play of their day that they gave you when you were eight years old.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's normal.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: But a real shutdown is different.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: If a child who used to talk to you now barely talks at all, starts isolating themselves, won't engage with either parent, or suddenly seems almost unreachable.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't just write that off as adolescence or storm or stress.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the hard part is that parents get anxious when kids go so quiet.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So they start asking more questions.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: What's wrong?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why won't you talk to me?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Did something happen at mom's?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Did dad say something?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now the child shuts down even more.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've sat with teenagers in my office for 45 minutes and barely said a word, sometimes more than once.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: But eventually they start talking.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I finally asked the perfect question, but because they figured out I wasn't going to force them to perform for me.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's something parents need to understand.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the silence isn't asking you to fix it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the child is watching to see whether you can tolerate the fact that they're having a hard time of it.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if that shutdown starts turning to something much more intense, that's when I'm going to pay much closer attention.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, their anger feels bigger than the situation.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to argue with your teenager.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what I'm talking about.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about a kid who seems to become a fundamentally different person around one or both parents.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: The anger becomes intense, feelings become loaded, they go from irritation to I hate you very quickly, or they suddenly have this very black and white view where the other parent is good and the other one is terrible.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: People like to say every teenager slams the door and tells their parents they hate them.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, they don't.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Most teenagers don't.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It does happen for sure.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: But when a relationship becomes consistently hostile, that's information.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the temptation to is to argue with the content.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You don't hate me.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's ridiculous.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: After everything I've done for you, well, now you're in a fight.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want to back up and ask why the relationship has become so emotionally charged in the first place.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because the anger may be what you're seeing, but it may not be the whole problem.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Here's where it gets a little tricky.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not every struggling child becomes angry.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them become incredibly responsible.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that one definitely fools parents all the time.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, they become the easy child.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to this one.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is the child everybody praises.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: They've handled this so well.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're so mature.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're such a help to mom.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe they are doing well.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I get very cautious when a child becomes too good at managing the adults around them.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe mom is devastated by the divorce and the son starts to check on her constantly.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he stops talking about dad because he knows it'll upset her.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your daughter starts saying, Don't worry about me.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fine every time something difficult happens.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't complain.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: She helps with the younger kids.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: She makes things easier for everybody else.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone says, she's really grown up.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe she's learned that there isn't much room for her needs right now.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Children are very good at figuring out what the family needs from them.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And with older children especially, they can start building an identity around that role.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say dad cheated and a 12 or 13-year-old boy watches mom fall apart.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody necessarily tells him, you need to protect your mother, but he can quickly move into that role.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now part of his identity becomes, I am the one who takes care of mom.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to be like dad.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: That can look like maturity while the child is still carrying an emotional job they were never supposed to have.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when a child seems almost suspiciously okay, I want to know whether they've started taking responsibility for everybody else's problems.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a change that usually gets a parent's attention.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: The relationship with one parent starts to feel different.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Number seven, one parent-child relationship starts chiefy.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: This usually doesn't begin with, I never want to see dad again.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: It could be much smaller.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: They don't seem as excited to go.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're dragging their feet before an exchange.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: There always seems to be something else they'd rather do.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's I've got too much schoolwork, or I left something at mom's.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Or they come home from one house and suddenly seem uncomfortable talking about what happened there.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now there are a lot of reasons that can happen.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the parent has contributed to their problem.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there's anxiety.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the conflict between the adults is getting into the relationship.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there are loyalty issues.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the relationship itself eats the work.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't look at one missed dinner and decide you know the whole story.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: But you also shouldn't ignore a pattern because every individual excuse sounds reasonable.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: That gradual shift is what I want you to notice.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because once a child is outright saying, I'm not going, you're dealing with a different problem here.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to talk specifically about that in the next video.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: For now, the important thing is recognizing a change before the relationship has moved much further.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't want you leaving this video panicked because you recognize one of these things.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Your teenager being angry with you does not mean you've ruined them.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: A stomachache before an exchange doesn't tell us by itself what the cause is.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Your child having a rough month doesn't mean they're permanently damaged.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: What these things tell you is to pay attention to the changes and patterns.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself whether this is different from the child you used six months ago and whether it's starting to show up in more than one part of their lives.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of immediately trying to shut the behavior down, get curious about what it may be telling you.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because very often the behavior is the part you can understand.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: The reason underneath it is what you need to understand.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't watched my video on what divorce actually does to children, watch that next.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you understand what your child is really adapting to after a divorce, these warning signs start to make a lot more sense.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll have a much clearer idea of what to focus on.