How To Give Your Children A Safety Net In the Midst of Marital Conflict and Divorce
Benjamin D. Garber, Ph.D., author of “Keeping Kids Out of the Middle: Child-Centered Parenting in the Midst of Conflict, Separation, and Divorce” offers advice on how to help children cope with divorce.
Commitment: Why is it so important to keep children out of the middle of adult disputes and marital problems?
Benjamin D. Garber, Ph.D.: Our job as caregivers no matter our role –parent or step-parent, grandparent, guardian, teacher, counselor, clergy or coach- is to give our children the best opportunity to grow and feel safe that we can.
Imagine that we each have a finite amount of emotional energy, just like your coffee cup can only hold so much liquid.
When kids are drawn into adult conflict, when they’re enlisted as spies and couriers between their caregivers, when we fail to make their world predictable and safe, they must invest some part of their finite emotional energy in managing the basics. As a result, they have that much less energy with which to grow and learn and discover themselves.
The child who experiences his or her caregivers as working together to weave a safety net around him or her, who knows that mom and dad support one another and work together to meet his or her needs will be emotionally healthy, even if momentarily not happy.
That idea is key: Healthy co-parents know that by helping a child to feel secure and confident, that child will be able to make his or her own happiness.
Commitment: How can a parent provide emotional safety for their child, if perhaps they are going through a very sad divorce or a difficult marriage, and there are times they have no one to talk to except their child?
Dr. Garber: You’ve posed an important question in a very difficult way. The best answer to the first part of the question recognizes that, like cars, we all need to be refueled. The parent experiencing a major life stressor like divorce is in the process of losing what might once have been his or her primary source of that emotional fuel: a spouse. Its tempting to turn to a child for support in this instance, to say things like, “you’re the dad now” or to talk about how much it hurts. This is doubly tempting because kids often accept our confidences and these new roles eagerly. Why not? It feels like a promotion!
The reality is that the emotional fuel in families must always flow in one direction: From parent to child. The adult who turns to a child for support is engaging in something that mental health professionals refer to as “role reversal.” This can take the form of adultification or parentification, it can turn into alienation of the absent parent or infantilization of the child. In all of these instances, the child is being asked to serve the parent’s selfish needs –to refuel the adult- when our job as healthy parents is to serve our kids’ needs.
But the parent who has no one else? This is not reason to turn to the child. This adult has to find adult support. It is out there, no matter how remote your home, no matter how empty your purse, no matter how lonely and angry and scared you feel.
Start online. Find divorce support groups. Locate local religious-affiliate support groups. Find out where and when Parents Without Partners and the National Association for the mentally Ill and AA and NA meet. Ask your physician, your clergyperson, your mail carrier or your neighbor. Find a therapist. Shy? Embarrassed? Of course. Then don’t do it for you. Do it for your kids. If you let your emotional gas tank get empty, you’ll have nothing left to give to them.
Commitment: What advice do you have for married couples who fight often and yet want to protect their children from being emotionally damaged during these fights?
Dr. Garber: “Fight” means violence to me. There is no place for violence in any home.
Argue? Conflict? Try this:
(1) Remember that its okay to be angry. There’s nothing wrong with letting the kids know that you’re mad at each other.
(2) Discover what ways are okay to express anger in your family and which are not okay, and then practice what you preach. Is swearing okay? Is it okay to punch a pillow? Can you agree to “take 5” to calm down when asked? (Check out my book, “Taming the Beast Within” at www.healthyparent.com).
(3) If the kids see or hear the argument, make sure they see or hear the resolution. Too many couple make up behind closed doors, leaving the kids anxious and unresolved.
(4) Debrief aloud after a conflict. Answer four questions together: What happened? What did I do right? What did I do wrong? What should I do differently next time?
(5) Keep the arguments about adult matters far away from the kids. You are the adult. You have the maturity to bite your tongue and put it on the back burner, and then take it to a counselor, mediator, friend or neighbor later, far away from the kids.
Commitment: How can parents break the news to their child that they are getting a divorce?
Dr. Garber: These are all terrific questions, and all discussed in detail in “Keeping Kids Out Of The Middle.”
The short answer here emphasizes meeting the kids’ needs, not yours. When an important adult relationship changes, the kids will want to know how it will impact them in very concrete and immediate ways. They probably don’t need to hear about court or legalities as much as they need to know that they can still go to summer camp and that both houses will have a Wii.
The emotional message must distinguish two different kinds of love: The love between adults can break, and ours has. The love between a parent and a child cannot break, and ours won’t.
The kids also need a consistent message. “Keeping Kids Out Of The Middle” talks about creating scripts in the interest of consistency. When tow parents offer two different stories, the kids fall into the middle. They become anxious and angry and scared.
The worst ways? I can think of two. In one astonishingly frequent situation, the parents say nothing. The kids are left to figure it out on their own. In another, each parent takes the child aside and blames the other. Neither is healthy. Both are selfish, short-sighted and perhaps even abusive.
Commitment: What are some ways parents sharing custody of a child can ensure the child is not traumatized by the constant change in routines and living arrangements?
Dr. Garber: Two simple answers:
(1) Make the changes predictable. Whatever the schedule, the kids need to know where they’ll sleep at night and who will be caring for them. Do this with a large, color-coded wall calendar in both homes. The corollary of this means that kids should not have discretion to go back and forth at their whim. Parents who invite this are selfishly interested in their kids’ happiness with little thought about their emotional health.
(2) Communicate. Be mature enough to put down your weapons, put aside your rage or fear or depression. At the point of transition, the sending parent should routinely provide an update to the receiving parent about school and health, friends and events and successes. “Successes” is always important because it is far too easy to become focused on the problems.
Can’t talk face to face? Fine. Hand a notebook adult hand directly to adult hand (never make the kids play courier). E-mail. Fax. I like an online tool available at www.ourfamilywizard.com.
Commitment: How can a child being in the middle of parental disputes rob a child of their childhood? Is there a way for a single parent who may be dealing with a difficult ex-spouse to save their child’s sense of innocence and childhood, despite a difficult family situation?
Dr. Garber: I discussed this idea above. Perhaps an analogy would help: I write at my favorite desk with a certain light on and enjoy quiet all around. I find that I am much less efficient, much less creative and just plain distracted when my kids are arguing all around me, when the television is blaring in one room and music in another, when the dogs are chasing each other and barking. That single parent ultimately must acknowledge that he or she can’t change the child’s other caregiver. The best we can do in these most extreme instances when all else is failed is be the best parent we can, confident that one healthy model and one solid anchor can be enough.
Commitment: It is often said that children are resilient and can basically get over anything. Does this include seeing their parent’s divorce, battle and bicker? Is the idea of complete resilience a myth that excuses parents from the responsibility of protecting their children during a divorce or bad marital spat?
Dr. Garber: Fortunately, the species is quite resilient, but each individual’s resilience is built in some combination of DNA and early family experience. Those kids who are born into constant conflict, who never have the opportunity to feel safe and secure will have the least resilience of all.
Please remember that divorce need not harm children (although the process of litigation can compound the problem). What harms children is co-parental conflict with or without marriage, with or without divorce.
Commitment: What are some of the biggest mistakes parents sharing custody of their child make that can have a lasting negative impact on their child?
Dr. Garber: Role reversal in the form of parentification, adultification and infantilization. Abuse in any of its many forms, some more subtle than others, including alienation.
Commitment: If a child happens to be present during a couple's fight, say during a car ride where the child cannot escape the fight, what can parents do and say to protect the child emotionally during this time? What will help a child who is stuck watching a fight between parents?
Dr. Garber: Acknowledge that it happened. Apologize when you’re genuinely sorry. Reassure that you (plural) will try not to let this happen again. Watch for the upset to resonate later on in sibling conflict, in sleep or appetite or toileting problems and/or in school problems. In the worst of these instances and when the child’s world is persistently scarred by these upsets, the child may benefit from therapy as a “port in the storm.”
Commitment: What are some things divorced couples can do to make sure transitions, such as weekend visits, are predictable and safe for the child?
Dr. Garber: Parents living apart (regardless of marital status) have a responsibility to communicate in the interest of establishing consistency between their homes which must always trump their conflict. Making the transition back and forth predictable will help, as well. When kids have trouble separating and returning, ritual can help.
With young children sitting down together upon return and just before departure to “pow-wow” the same way that preschool teachers do to introduce the class to the day ahead can be useful. Make up your own little ditty (“here we are at daddy’s house, daddy’s house, daddy’s house, and here are our three rules…) and institute activities that create a thread of continuity across time like working gradually ona giant jigsaw puzzle.
Commitment: Regardless of the state of one's marriage, what are ten things a parent can do to ensure their children grow up with "an emotional foundation upon which they can build a healthy self and strong relationships"? What can parents provide even if they are in the midst of a difficult marriage or divorce?
Dr. Garber:
1. Communicate clearly and constructively.
2. Trade in blame for responsibility.
3. Know that taking care of yourself benefits your kids
4. Be a model of healthy choices because they will ultimately do as you do, not as you say.
5. Acknowledge the full range of emotional experience and express your feelings in acceptable ways.
6. Listen long and often and hard. Put aside your own agenda and hear theirs.
7. Never let guilt make you into a push-over. They need firm and consistent and clear.
8. Let them know that your love for them can never end.
9. Don’t make promises that you can’t keep.
10. Reassure your kids that their other parent loves them forever and always.
Commitment: You write, "Keeping Kids Out of the Middle is an exercise in maturity." Can you explain this?
Dr. Garber: Yes. Maturity calls for putting one’s own needs second to the needs of others. This is what healthy parenting is about.
Commitment: How can a parent keep their gas tank "full" so they have more to offer their children, especially during a stressful time of divorce or separation?
Dr. Garber: By taking care of yourself: Eat well. Exercise. Make healthy choices (would you approve of your child doing the same thing some day?)
Make and maintain healthy social connections.
Talk about it. Emotions fill people the way that air fills a balloon. If you hold it all inside, it takes very little to make you explode. Keep a journal. Write a blog. Talk to friends.
Find a good therapist. Do not let your child become your listener.
Commitment: You write about weaving a safety net for our children. Can you explain what this safety net is and what can parents do to weave this safety net?
Dr. Garber: The safety net metaphor is reminiscent of the old movie image of a dozen fire fighters holding a net between them so that the damsel in distress can jump from the burning building. If one lets go, the safety net may fail and the woman will be hurt, or worse.
Kids naturally test limits. They put their toes over the lines that we draw for them in the sand. They may be angry but they are reassured and become confident and secure when they find that the rules are clear and the outcomes predictable; that the safety net is held firmly and will catch them when they fall.
Co-parental conflict can rip a child’s safety net to shreds. The result will be a child who exalts, fist held high, because he’s getting away with something for a moment. The long term outcome is anxiety.
From “Keeping Kids Out Of The Middle:”
Our job as healthy parents
is to weave a safety net
beneath our children.
When we allow our children to become
caught in the midst of our adult conflicts,
used as pawns in our selfish games,
the safety net rips apart.
Our children are left insecure;
sad and angry and scared.
Our willingness
to put our conflicts aside,
to communicate constructively,
to provide consistency,
and to put their needs first, before our own,
weaves a tight net
which will catch them
every time they fall.
To Purchase Keeping Kids Out of the Middle click here.
About the Author: I am a New Hampshire licensed psychologist, state certified Guardian ad litem and practicing parenting coordinator. Across these several roles, in my professional writing for legal and mental health professionals, in my mass media publications and the presentations that I do as I travel around the country, my interest is always on better understanding and meeting the needs of our children.
Perhaps more importantly, I am the happily married father of two wonderful girls and two very furry golden retrievers living and working in southern New Hampshire. In the interest of practicing what I preach about “refueling,” I spend as much time as I can exploring the extraordinary woods and streams, mountains and lakes of New England.
Perhaps the most frequent question that I receive is, “Are you divorced?” The answer is “no.” I’ve never been divorced. But neither my primary interest nor “Keeping Kids Out Of The Middle” are about divorce. This is all about adults working together to give our children the emotional foundation necessary to grow into healthy adults.
Visit www.healthyparent.com
www.keepingkidsoutofthemiddle.com
