children of divorced families

Factors affecting adjustment to divorce:

several factors influence how well a family adapts to divorce:

• the amount of conflict among family members
• the availability of both parents to their children
• the nature of relationship changes in the family
• the responsibilities family members take
• the defensibility of the divorce from child's point of view

Common emotional reactions to divorce:

• how children react to divorce depends a great deal of their age, their personality characteristics.
• individual reaction will vary considerably from child to child because each has a different family circumstances, different personality strenghts and weakness and different ways of coping with sress.
• perceptions of loss of the intact family not only vary from child to child but are viewed differently by the same child as he or she grows and develops.
• how a child reacts at a given moment may be far from different from how he or she adjusts over course of many months or years.
• children express certain common reactions is useful in helping children through the immediate crisis of divorce and easing their long term adjustment to it.

Children will feel:

1. grief for the loss of family
2. fear of rejection, abandonment and powerless
3. anger
4. resentment and intense loneliness
5. guilt and self-blame
6. anxiety and betrayal

Children must confront during the last days of their parents marriage, through the separation and divorce, and in the post-divorce years with help them to understanding the divorce and its consequences, disengaging from crisis and resuming normal activities, coping with loss, dealing with anger, resolving guilt and self-blame, and acceptance of the permanence of divorce.