The first few months after separating will probably set the tone for your children?s attitude to their new life. This is a period when emotions are high for everyone and with high emotion typically comes extreme behaviour. When angry with me, my father used to tell me to ?behave!?, which assumed I knew what I was doing wrong. I?m pretty sure he was right most of the time.
It?s not so obvious what you?re doing wrong when you, your ex and your children are struggling with the emotions that often follow separation like a massive tidal wave. It?s only with the benefit of hindsight, and when the flood of emotions has passed, that most people can look back and see what they got right and wrong.
Dealing with blame children, whatever age they are, will not understand why you divorced, even if everyone else, including next door?s cat,
saw it coming. They?ll therefore try to understand it in the context of their own experiences.
?Clive and I were heading for divorce for years, but we kept putting it off because of our two children,? recalls Genny. ?Clive was a bit of a snob and a bully and made it clear that he thought he was much better than me. It came to a head when we were attending a dinner party and, prior to leaving the house, Clive started to lecture me about my??manners and whether the chocolates I was bringing were too downmarket for our hosts.
?I sat through that dinner party seething while he acted the affable dinner-party guest. When we got home I asked him to leave as soon as possible. He was really weepy and apologetic about his behaviour that night but I?d really had enough. I found out recently, through a mutual friend, that Clive tells people that he was the one that instigated the separation because of our son Tim?s bad behaviour, which he said I failed to control or take ?direction? from him. Tim suffered from attention deficit disorder and was pretty difficult to live with sometimes, but that was never mentioned in the divorce.
?When I spoke to other friends about it many of them told me similar stories. I suppose none of us, even as adults, like being publicly dumped
and find it even more difficult to accept we?re to blame for what happened. However, I thought Clive publicly putting the blame on to a 12-year-old boy was pretty low.?
Young children, in their more simplistic understanding of the world, tend to want to assign blame for things that go wrong. It?s therefore very common for young children to take the blame on themselves for this disaster in their lives. This will happen even if you both stress that it?s not true so often it sounds like your catchphrase. They might also deny that?s what they believe.
Blaming themselves for the divorce is a way
for young children to protect themselves. The logic in a child?s mind is that for things to go wrong someone must have been bad so therefore someone is to blame, if it?s not the child?s fault then the only other people to blame are one or both of the parents; if the parents are ?bad? then they stop being the child?s protectors from the evils of the world and that makes life much more terrifying. A child might therefore feel more powerful and safer if they blame themselves. They will then look for ways to correct the mistakes they?ve made and so make sure the divorce doesn?t happen, or if it does, work towards reconciliation, often for years.
As they get older, children are more likely to want to put the blame on to their parents. They will then think in terms of blaming one of you for all the wrongs that happen in their lives from then on. It?s important that you both work to prevent that happening, however tempting it is if it?s your ex being blamed (and rightly in the circumstances) rather than you. By doing that you?re effectively taking away his or her parental authority, which will make it very difficult for your ex to be the parent the child needs.
You might also be feeling very guilty about what you?ve done, particularly during this period where the lives of the people you love are disrupted and when everything seems a terrible struggle. You may not have instigated the divorce, but you may start going over your marriage to try to find something you could have done differently that would have prevented this horrible situation. It can be a very depressing time. Try not to feel too guilty; with less than 50% of children born in wedlock and around 50% of marriages ending in divorce, the chances of your children having married parents forever are slim.
It?s No Big Deal Really: A Parent?s Guide to Making Divorce Easy for Children is published by Fusion Press (?10.99) www.fusionpress.co.uk