Most of what you’ll read online about the impact of divorce/splitting up on kids summarizes the child’s behavior and mood, but it doesn’t explain what actually is going on inside the child’s mind. This post takes a deep dive into how young kids experience parental breakup, and—more importantly—how they can form unhealthy, harmful narratives about themselves and others.
We look at the 4 most common effects of divorce/splitting up on kids and the damaging narratives that often form. While this may sound worrisome, just know there’s plenty parents can do to make sure their child weathers the storm without too much hardship.
1. Kids often feel utterly helpless and small
While they haven’t been able to prevent their parents’ splitting up, they hope they can reunite their parents, a common fantasy that all kids have. But here, too, they aren’t successful, driving home the reality that they are powerless and small.
Additionally, they control very little: they don’t get to choose who they stay with and when. Their schedules change, sometimes they change schools, they often now have two homes, etc. None of this is what they want, and they’re helpless to do anything about it.
Possible narratives: Some kids give up, telling themselves, “I will never have control over anything.” They become passive, believing that their wishes aren’t important. They may not only feel impotent and powerless but anxious to make demands and have them rejected. These kids appear passive and without desires.
Other kids take the opposite approach and fight back, telling themselves, “To avoid feeling helpless or small, I must control everything.” With these kids, everything becomes a battle. Parents find themselves arguing with their child about which glass they’ll drink out of or which shirt they’re willing to wear.
(Check out these posts for more on “Feeling Small” and “Why Kids Need to Control So Much.”)
What parents can do: It always starts with speaking to and naming your child’s feelings. For the passive child, you can say, “I know you feel you can’t control that your parents are not together, but you still get to control other things, like what snack you’d like right now. You don’t get to control your parents, but you do get to control a lot of things about yourself.”
For the child demanding control: “I think you’re afraid that if you don’t control everything, you’ll feel like you can’t control anything at all, like your parents not being together. I know you hate feeling helpless and small; some things you get to control—like what book we read at bedtime, and what snack you want. But there are things you don’t get to control—like your parents splitting up—and I know that’s super hard.”
2. They are terrified that their world is falling apart
As parents, we are the anchor for our children—we are that so-called safe port in the storm, that steady and unshakeable person in a world that can be overwhelming, confusing, and chaotic.
We keep our child intact, and when they fall to pieces (i.e. have a tantrum, can’t sleep because they’re too scared, etc.), we help them pull together again. We are their first-line defense and buffers to a world that is too big to handle.
We are also their first and primary source of what a relationship looks like, not just in the relationship we have with our child, but how we relate to and treat the child’s other parent. When that relationship comes apart—including all the turmoil that naturally comes with a breakup: the parents’ possible anger, sadness, anxiety, etc.—kids feel like their “safe port” has suddenly vanished. If their parents’ world is coming unglued, then the world is a truly scary, confusing, and unpredictable place.
Possible narratives: Kids form narratives to protect themselves and to cope. When they’re terrified of everything collapsing around them, they often become hypervigilant. In this case, parents often experience their child as highly and constantly anxious. At the heart of the child’s anxiety is a narrative that they must always be on the alert for trouble so they can prepare themselves.
What parents can do: Speak to their feelings of fear and being overwhelmed. Name how they are afraid of everything falling apart. Only after you’ve helped them sit with their feelings, speak to their intellect: explain that you and their other parent are taking care of things. Yes, this is a stressful time, but they don’t have to worry about what’s happening. Reassure them that these are problems for parents to take care of, not kids. Each time they seem anxious, speak to their fears and remind them parents are managing things so that they don’t have to.
3. Kids may feel they need to pick sides
Most breakups include parental conflict and tension. Despite your best efforts to shield your child, they will likely sense, if not see, the conflict.
Because young kids view the world in unsophisticated, black and white ways, they may wonder which parent is good and which is bad. If the parental conflict is in the open, kids will definitely be grappling with this issue.
Here’s the problem: as their parents are rejecting each other, the child may feel inclined to pick sides and reject one of the parents. If this happens, a child essentially loses a parent.
Possible narratives: “I have a bad parent. I shouldn’t love that parent. If I don’t love that parent, they won’t love me back. I now only have one parent left.”
What parents can do: To start with, don’t bash your co-parent, and definitely don’t fight in front of your child—all the research shows this is the worst thing parents can do.
Don’t put your child in the middle between you and your co-parent. This can take subtle forms, like confiding your feelings about the breakup to your child, asking them to pass on a message to the other parent, or questioning your child about the other parent’s personal life.
Give your child permission to love and appreciate their other parent. Not only should you help them recognize good things about the other parent, you can articulate these positive qualities yourself.
4. Kids blame themselves
Young children don’t understand why their parents are splitting up because they don’t understand relationships in any sophisticated way. When they can’t make sense of something, kids invent reasons based on their best guess, but in doing so, they often come to conclusions—and form narratives—based on their misperceptions.
Developmentally, they need to preserve the good image of their parent. Young children are also naturally very egocentric. Together, these two qualities cause children to reason that if parents aren’t responsible for the breakup, they themselves must be.
Possible narratives: Children often form the narrative that they are a “bad kid.”
they’re a good kid.
What parents can do: Be on the alert for a child who seems to have a lot of shame, who unnecessarily blames themselves for things, or who beats themselves up for minor mistakes. Find multiple occasions to remind them that their parents’ breakup has nothing to do with them. Tell them directly, “It’s not your fault.”
They will need an explanation for the breakup, but don’t go into the details. Keeping it general is all they need: “Me and Mom are having trouble getting along. We’ve grown apart, and we’ll be happier living separately from each other.”
Again, it will help to voice their feelings, in particular how they seem to blame themselves as if they think they’re a bad kid. Remind them not just how much you love and value them, but how and why you think
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