How To Help Kids Cope with Divorce

Divorce’s impact on your child’s behavior, emotions, and body

Divorce is not a neutral experience for anyone, even when it’s amicable. Kids can experience anger, sorrow, grief, fear, and even end up with trauma from a divorce, depending on their experiences and how they are supported during and after the divorce process.

Have you started to suspect your divorce is impacting your child’s behavior? Here are some examples of how divorce’s impact on kids can show up:

Acting out

Kids acting out, with behavior that may include defiance, destructiveness, or a disregard for their peers and themselves, is very common during and after divorce. Children are often not as able to express their feelings verbally as adults might be; when their home life is full of change and feels uncertain, acting out may be how they express their reaction to that change.

Withdrawing

Instead of acting out, sometimes the impact of divorce on kids shows up as withdrawing from playing, family involvement, or generally no longer expressing their personality in life. Kids who withdraw are often trying to avoid emotions they may not know how to handle.

Separation anxiety

Children may become extra clingy during a divorce. The disruption to their home can make it feel like their connection to you isn’t as reliable as they need it to be, so increased upset at being away from you and trying to be near you as much as possible can be a way for them to try to seek reassurance that the change they’re experiencing isn’t as threatening as it feels.

Irritability or emotional sensitivity

When children are dealing with the grief, fear, and other emotions that can come with household disruption, they may be more sensitive to emotional experiences, or generally angry or irritable. Changes that would have been no problem, like moving a piece of furniture in the house, can become terribly distressing.

More likely to get sick

Kids who are struggling with stress from divorce can have a lowered immune response, and so they can get sick more often. Without adequate support, more frequent illness can also make experiences like irritability, withdrawal, or acting out more likely, creating a cycle of reinforcement of the stress of the situation.

Lower self-esteem

Self-esteem, or the perception of our value and worth, has been shown in research to be lower for kids, even into young adulthood, after their parents divorce. Your child may feel caught in the middle of their parents, or even feel responsible for the divorce.

How to help your kid during and after a divorce

Support both parents in seeing the child as much as possible

You can reduce divorce’s impact on kids by making sure each parent stays as involved in the kids’ lives as possible. When kids don’t have to worry about whether a parent will show up for them to, say, a school concert or a soccer game, divorce tends to be less of a struggle.

While I know this is easier said than done with some co-parenting relationships, if you and your former spouse can work together to respect each other enough to prioritize maximizing time in your kid’s lives, setting aside conflict when your child needs you the most, you’ll likely see a reduction in negative behaviors and feelings for your child with time.

Avoid conflict around your children as much as possible

Even amicable divorces often involve a fair amount of conflict, let alone contentious divorces where each parent still struggles with resentment, anger, and disagreement with the other parent.  If your child knows there’s still anger and conflict going on, or if one or both parents spend time criticizing the other parent in front of the child, children tend to struggle more with divorce.

It’s understandable to still struggle with conflict, but as the adults in this situation, it's your job to figure out how to reduce the impact of that conflict. Try not to frame the divorce as a “win-lose” experience, especially around your child, with a “bad” parent and a “good” parent. Speak to each other separately from your child when there may be conflict, don’t badmouth the other parent around your child, and look for support from friends, family, and a therapist first, instead of expressing your frustrations around your child.

Give your child space to express their feelings and help them regulate them

It’s important that each parent give their child space to express their feelings of grief, anger, and fear. When your kid feels safe enough to talk about what they’re going through with you, where you let them know it’s understandable to feel how they do, you help them process their experiences more quickly.

You can even help your child regulate their emotions through breathing exercises, journaling, or counting to ten before reacting to an experience. Making it a bonding experience to regulate emotions together can be a powerful way to create stability during and after divorce for your child.

Keep life interesting for your kid

Make sure you spend time creating opportunities for fun for your kid during your divorce. Make sure they can participate in activities like sports or clubs, and encourage them to spend time with friends and enjoy hobbies. Your kid doesn’t need to be constantly busy, but having consistent opportunities for fun helps make life feel a little more well-rounded, especially during a divorce.

Work on your self-esteem after divorce

Divorce can shrink parents’ self-esteem in a few ways. First off, the loss of the reassurance of stability that is marriage is tough. Your self-image and self-worth can be shaken, and it can lead to both life and mental health struggles for you.

Second, it can be hard to see and hear how divorce impacts your child. You likely have your own feelings to grapple with, and managing the behavior and emotions of your child over the same experiences can feel overwhelming.

Guilt, shame, fear, and anger can show up for you from multiple angles because of divorce, but it’s crucial to remember that those feelings are yours to manage, and that you do have the power to manage them! Look for support outside of your home in friends, family, and a therapist to help you manage your own feelings, try to set goals and create opportunities to succeed so you rebuild your self-esteem, and find ways to feel like yourself again so you can better show up for your kid when they need you most.

Child therapy in North Texas helps kids process their feelings during parental separation

While you know you want to create a supportive home environment for your child throughout your divorce, as you notice behavior and emotional changes, you may find working with a therapist to be a huge benefit to your child and to your whole family.

A supportive, trusted adult who isn’t directly involved in your divorce can be an invaluable help so your kid can better process their complex feelings surrounding the family separation. Kids don’t express or understand their emotions the way an adult does, so a therapist like those at the North Texas Adult & Child Counseling Center, who has experience helping children through divorce, will know how to create a supportive environment for them to open up and understand themselves. From there, your child’s therapist can help them build skills to cope with their grief, fear, and anger, so they can move forward in life with more resilience in the face of change.

If you’ve noticed your child struggling with behavior or emotional changes during divorce, we welcome you to get in touch with us at the North Texas Adult & Child Counseling Center to get started on ensuring healthy emotional development for your child, even while they weather the tough experience of divorce.