Latest / Children, Divorce & Family Psychology with Dr. Bill MacLaney / The Hard Truth About What Divorce Does to Children

Transcript

The Hard Truth About What Divorce Does to Children · Children, Divorce & Family Psychology with Dr. Bill MacLaney

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're getting divorced and you're worried about what this is going to do to your child, I'm going to say something that probably sounds a little irresponsible coming from a psychologist.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Divorce by itself doesn't do anything to your child.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying children don't get hurt during divorce.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent a good part of my career working with families where children are anxious, angry, refuse to see a parent, they struggle in school well after divorce has happened.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously something happened, but after doing this work for a long time, there's something much more important to focus on besides the divorce itself.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that thing is what largely determines whether your child is going to adopt well or really struggle after the divorce.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Bill McLaney.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a clinical psychologist, and much of my work involves families going through separation, divorce, high conflict, cussy situations, and damaged parent-child relationships.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into what parents tend to get wrong here and what I would want you paying attention to instead.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: The first place parents usually get into trouble is the conversation itself.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: You sit your child down and say, Mom and dad are getting divorced.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And because you're scared out of your mind about what this is going to do to your kids, you start explaining.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I tried everything.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't my decision.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Someday when you're older, you'll understand.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, from your point of view, you're giving context.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to explain why this is happening.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But from your child's point of view, you may have just turned the divorce into a mystery they now have to solve.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Who caused this?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Whose fault is it?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I supposed to be angry at?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And parents do this without meaning to all the time.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: They don't sit there and say, I need you to pick my side.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually much more subtle than that.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But once your child starts trying to make sense of the divorce through the emotions of the adults around them, now they're dealing with something very different.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the part I think parents underestimate.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Children can adapt to divorce.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Two homes can become normal.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: A new schedule can become normal.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas morning in the two places can become normal.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing dads on Wednesdays and every other weekend can become normal.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Children are remarkably resilient.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: What they have a much harder time is adapting to the psychological environment around the divorce.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: The tension, the divided loyalties, the feelings they have to manage the adults around them.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So divorce by itself isn't inherently damaging.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: The question is what kind of environment the child is being asked to adapt to after it.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say your child spends the weekend with dad and comes home Sunday night and says, We went jet skiing.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was so much fun.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Mom says, Oh, that's nice.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's all she says.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe her face changes a little bit.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe she gets quiet.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe she asks, who else was there?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: In a way that the child notices.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Adults miss these little moments all the time.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: But your kids don't.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Your child knows when you're in a bad mood.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: They know when you say, I'm fine, and you're clearly not fine.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: They know which parent to ask when they want something because they know who's more likely to say yes.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when they mention dad and something shifts in mom, they notice that too.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe next weekend they come home and say a little less.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then eventually they stop telling mom much about dad at all.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody told the child you're not allowed to enjoy being with your father.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: The child just learned that talking about enjoying time with dad makes mom uncomfortable.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the kind of thing I want parents paying attention to.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because your child is not only adapting to divorce, they're adapting to the new emotional roles that develop around the divorce.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Can I talk about dad here?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Can I talk about something nice about mom without upsetting dad?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do I need to protect one of my parents?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do I need to hide how I'm feeling so nobody else gets upset?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of weight for a child to carry.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And again, most of it doesn't happen because somebody is deliberately trying to hurt the child.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of time, it's two parents who are hurting themselves, trying to get through one of the worst periods of their lives, and the child is just watching everything.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's why two children can go through what looks like the same divorce and come out of it very differently.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: One child learns this is hard, but I'm okay.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Mom is still mom, dad is still dad.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to choose between them.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: I can be sad about this and still get through it.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Another child learns, I need to watch what I say.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I need to take care of mom.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't talk about dad.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to make anybody more upset.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two very different psychological environments that the child is exposed to.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, children adapt to whichever one they're living in.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: If this is helping you look at your child's experience a little differently, give the video a like and subscribe to the channel.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is a new channel, and I'm going to be doing a lot more of what actually helps children adjust to divorce, what parents accidentally get wrong, and how to catch problems before they become much harder to fix.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is also where parents get confused about what it means to protect a child.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Your job is not to make sure they never feel sad or angry about the divorce.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they probably will.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: They may hate it.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: They may be furious with you.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: They may want the old family back.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's painful to hear.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: But those feelings aren't necessarily evidence that you're damaging them.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Part of resilience is learning I could still feel awful about something and still get through it.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I could bend, but I don't break.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: They could be sad and recover.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: They can be angry and still feel connected to you.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: They can be disappointed without feeling like their entire world is falling apart.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where parents sometimes get into trouble is when they become so afraid of the child's distress that they start organizing everything around making that distress disappear.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do that, you can accidentally send a very different message.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can teach your child, you can't handle this.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what you want.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: You want your child to gradually learn this is hard, but I can handle things.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: You also want them to learn that their relationships are safe, that they don't have to earn your love by agreeing with you, that they don't have to protect you from hearing good things about the other parent, that they can love both parents without feeling disloyal to either one of them.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the things that tell me a child is adapting well.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not whether the divorce was perfect, whether nobody ever cried, or whether your child was happy every day.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: What I want to know is whether the adults around the child are creating an environment where that child can keep developing in a healthy way, even though the family itself has changed.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that requires something that could be very hard during divorce.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have to separate your pain from your child's job.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Your child is not your therapist.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're not your witness.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the person who needs to understand why you were right, and they're not responsible for making you feel better about what happened.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: They also shouldn't have to prove their loyalty to you by rejecting somebody else.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I think parents can make the biggest difference.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can't control the entire divorce.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can't control everything your former spouse says, every court decision, or even whether your child is angry with you.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But you have a tremendous amount of influence over what your child experiences when they're with you.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can they talk openly without worrying about your reaction?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Can they be upset without feeling like they now have to take care of you?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can they enjoy time with the other parent and tell you about it?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Can they just be a kid instead of becoming another adult inside a divorce?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's the environment I would focus on.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if your biggest fear right now is what is this divorce going to do to my child, I want to change that question.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to ask yourself, what is my child having to adapt to because of this divorce?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's where you have far more influence than most parents realize.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And once you start looking at divorce that way, you also start noticing changes in your child that are very easy to miss.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So in the next video, I'm going to show you seven signs that your child may not be handling divorce as well as you think, including a few that parents often dismiss as normal behavior when they're actually telling you something much more important.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you there.