What a divorced parent needs to know...

When I became a high school counsellor seven years ago, the most common question I got asked was: what if they don’t talk to you? Do you have to sit in a room for a whole hour in complete silence?! Any therapist will tell you that silence in the therapy room is often extremely valuable but the single most rewarding part of my job now is listening to how much teenagers actually have to say. Almost the exact opposite of the classic stereotype, they often don’t stop. I’d love to say this is because I’m fabulous at my job, that I’m an incredible therapist who knows all the answers to unlocking the teenage mind but, sadly, while I can agree I’m more experienced than some, I don’t think that’s it. Teenagers feel safe to open up to me because I present myself without an agenda. In that therapy room, I am not an anxious mother or a fix-it father (excuse the gender stereotyping), I’m not a social worker or a safeguarding lead, and I am certainly not a teacher. I am just me, ready to receive whatever they have to say. And what they tell me feels important enough to share with you.

The children I work with come with a variety of things they’re trying to process — from low mood to self-harm — but the single most common thing I hear from children who have experienced family separation or divorce is this: “I don’t want to tell my Mum/Dad, I don’t want to bother them” or “I don’t want to say anything — they’ll be upset with me.” These are the sentences that strike cold through my heart, because as a parent myself, I know that the vast majority of us would much rather know the truth. Parents can be guilty of many things, but in my experience, most care deeply about what their children are going through — especially when we’re navigating a divorce ourselves.

So what’s going wrong?

Divorce is undoubtedly one of the most difficult periods in anyone’s life. It’s listed as the second most stressful life event, sitting just below the death of a spouse or close loved one, and above moving house — and with divorce, many people end up doing both. This period can bring massive emotional change that touches everything: not just the big things like where we live or how much money we have, but our social circles, the way we work, and even the time we have for ourselves. If divorce isn’t impacting you, something probably isn’t quite right. Of course it’s appropriate to give ourselves time to adjust. It’s reasonable to expect those around us to allow us a period to find our feet again. But when I’m seeing a child two or three years post-divorce and they’re telling me they can’t reach out to their parents about how they feel, something has gone wrong. An emotional barrier has formed somewhere along the way. We hear it said often that children are resilient — children bounce back — but in my experience, this kind of resilience needs to be grown. Much like learning to swim, children can’t simply be thrown in the deep end and left to manage while we stand on the sidelines hoping for the best. They need to be taught, supported, and given the right conditions; they need to understand how they feel in the water before they can glide through it. In other words, they need our help to make sense of what’s happening. During the divorce process, it is vitally important that young people feel safe enough to share their feelings. And this is what I most commonly see going wrong. Children are finding that emotional safety doesn’t exist and from that, they are learning that your feelings about the divorce must come first.

Does that sound harsh? I don’t mean it to. But it’s hard to soften what I regularly see in my therapy room: children who have learned that their feelings need to be hidden in order to protect the adults around them. Left like this for long enough, children begin training themselves to manage their own emotions in isolation or, worse, they start pretending they don’t have any feelings at all, and redirect their energy towards managing the emotional safety of everyone else. I often say to clients that a small worry, left ignored, doesn’t disappear, it grows stronger and gains more power. Like nurturing a tiny bully inside yourself; one that, given enough time, grows big enough to start bossing your brain around. My clients tend to respond well to this image. We practise talking back to the pretend bully. We find new ways to sit with thoughts and feelings — noticing them, naming them, validating them — rather than pushing them aside.

Listening to our own thoughts and honouring our own needs is something we could all benefit from. Which brings me back to my original point: if you’re going through a divorce and you’re a parent, my words to you are this — pay attention to how you’re feeling, so that when you’ve had the space to recover, you can pay attention to your child. You can help them feel safe enough to open up. Stepping outside of the divorce narrative can look like many things: going to therapy, joining a support group, working with a divorce coach to help you get back on track, or listening to a podcast about co-parenting. Whatever it is that helps you feel more in control, pursue it. The adjustment period is likely to be hard, with its inevitable ups and downs. But here’s the thing: if divorce is handled well, it can actually help to build resilience in your child. Although none of us set out to get divorced, it’s a strange irony that, in some ways, navigating a divorce well can help a child learn to navigate life. They can discover that it’s possible to cope in tough situations. That relationships can be difficult, but challenges can be overcome. That sometimes it’s important to stand up for yourself, and to want more. They can learn boundaries. And that, it turns out, is one of the most important lessons of all.

If you enjoyed this article or you know someone going through a divorce; why don’t you share this with them? It could be just the thing they need to hear today x