Latest / Children, Divorce & Family Psychology with Dr. Bill MacLaney / How to Predict If Your Divorce Will Hurt Your Kids

Transcript

How to Predict If Your Divorce Will Hurt Your Kids · Children, Divorce & Family Psychology with Dr. Bill MacLaney

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're thinking about divorce or you're just starting to go through one, one of the biggest fears is that what is this going to do to your kids?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the hard part is that you usually can't predict the outcome just by looking how difficult the divorce seems.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen kids come through very difficult divorces and adjust remarkably well.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've also seen children struggle after separations that looked fairly calm from the outside.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to know what raises the risk, there are a few things I would be watching for from the very beginning.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Clinically, what we're really looking for are risk factors and protective factors, things in the child's environment that can make adjustment harder or easier.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Bill McElini.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a clinical and forensic psychologist, and a lot of my work involves children and families going through separation, divorce, high conflict cussy situations, and damaged parent-child relationships.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing I would pay attention to is how much of the adult conflict is starting to become part of your child's world.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: How much of the divorce is your child living inside?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: A child can know that mom and dad are getting divorced.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: They can know that both parents are upset.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: They can know that things are changing.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: That is very different from knowing the details of the fight.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Who wanted divorce?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Who betrayed whom?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Who spent what?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: What the lawyers are saying, why one parent is furious with the other.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Once a child starts getting pulled into the level of information, they are no longer just adjusting to a family change.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: They are being asked to make sense of an adult relationship they are not equipped to manage.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Conflict between parents is one thing.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: A child's exposure to that conflict and becoming increasingly psychologically evolved is something different.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And parents usually do not do this because they want to hurt their kids.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times, they think they are being honest.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: They think the child deserves to know what is really going on, or they're so overwhelmed themselves that the information just starts slipping out.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the more your child feels like they need to understand the conflict, the more likely they are to start taking on a role in it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: That is something I would try very hard to prevent early.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And once a child starts getting that adult information, something else can happen pretty quickly.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: They start paying attention to how each parent is doing emotionally.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Does your child feel like they have to take care of either parent?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing I would watch is whether the child starts becoming responsible for how one parent feels.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: You see this in small ways.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: A child comes back from dad's house and has a great story, but they can see mom is upset.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the next time they tell less.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or a child can tell dad is lonely, so they start feeling guilty about wanting to spend time with mom.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or one parent says, I just don't know what I'm going to do when you're gone this weekend.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: That may not sound like a huge thing, but children pick up on it very quickly.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And now they aren't dealing only with their own reaction to the divorce, they're also trying to make sure the adults are okay.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: That changes the experience quite a bit, and you want your child to know that both parents can handle their own feelings.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: They don't need to comfort you, protect you, or make decisions based on which parent seems more hurt.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: How predictable is life becoming?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Divorce already introduces a lot of change.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there are two homes now, a different school schedule, different weekends, new routines, less time with one parent than before.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some of this is unavoidable.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: What makes it harder is when the child never knows what is happening next.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Pickup times keep changing.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Plans are constantly being renegotiated.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: The child doesn't know where they are going to be for the holiday until the last minute.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: One parent tells them one thing, the other one tells them something else.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: When too much stays uncertain, the child has to spend a lot more energy figuring out the family.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the most useful things parents can do early is making the child's life as predictable as reasonably possible.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Not perfect, just clear enough that the child knows what to expect.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: That can be surprisingly stabilizing.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you're at the beginning of a divorce and trying to think ahead about your child, give this video a like and subscribe.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of problems families end up dealing with later start out as fairly small patterns in the beginning.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can your child still have a relationship with both parents?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is a big one.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I would watch very closely is whether the child still feels free to have their own relationship with each parent.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Can they enjoy time with dad without worrying about mom's reaction?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Can they be close to mom without feeling disloyal to dad?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can they talk about one parent in front of the other without the room getting uncomfortable?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: When a child starts feeling like being close to one parent is going to upset the other one, that's when I start getting concerned.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't require anybody to say you need to choose.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Children can pick it up from facial expressions, tone, sarcasm, or just the way one parent reacts when the other parent comes up.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, the child may start adapting to that.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: They may start telling each parent what they think that the parent wants to hear, leaving out certain experiences and becoming more cautious about what they say in each home.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that adaptation can actually make a child look like they're doing fine.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: They may become very skilled at managing the two households, but underneath that, they're monitoring the emotional environment and adjusting to it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And once that starts happening, you are no longer just dealing with divorce.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're starting to see the child's relationship change around the conflict.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Watch what the adults do with the differences.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: The two homes are going to be different.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: That by itself is usually not the problem.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: What I pay attention to is whether those differences keep turning into criticism, competition, or another reason for the child to feel caught between the parents.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: The more the child feels like the two homes are competing with each other, the harder it is for them to simply settle into both.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: The question isn't, will divorce hurt them?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I actually think that parents sometimes ask the wrong question here.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: They ask, will divorce hurt my kids?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Of course divorce could be painful.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Children could be sad, they could be angry, they can miss the old family structure.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Those reactions don't automatically mean that a child is psychologically harmed.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But pain and long-term harm are not the same thing.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Clinically, I'm much more interested in whether those reactions begin persisting, intensifying, or interfering with the child's functioning at school, socially, emotionally, behaviorally, or within the relationship.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: The better question is, what kind of environment is my child going to be living in after this?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Will life feel reasonably?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Will they be able to love both parents without pressure?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Will the adult conflicts stay with the adults?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the things I would be thinking about from the beginning because they are things you can actually do something about.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there is still one part you cannot fully control.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Children are different.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Two kids in the same family can go through the same divorce and respond in very different ways.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: One may adjust fairly quickly while the other has a much harder time.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: That is why I would never look at divorce alone and assume I know the outcome.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know what is happening around the child, and then I want to keep watching how that particular child is adapting over time.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not really trying to predict a child's future.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're identifying risk early, strengthening things that protect the child and paying attention to how that individual child is actually functioning.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in New Jersey and you're at the beginning of a divorce and want help thinking about how this is likely to affect your kids, that is the kind of work we do at Compass Psych Service.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: We help families look at patterns around the child early.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Before those patterns become much harder to change.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you're already seeing changes in your child and you're wondering whether they're actually handling a divorce well, watch my video on the seven warning signs your child isn't handling your divorce well.