To understand more about how children grieve as they experience divorce, it helps to first understand the development of thoughts and feelings. The interplay of the ideas and emotions of children determines how they respond to the parental separation.
Basically, infants and very young children perceive or feel the environment, but they are not yet capable of verbal thought or understanding. As children grow, they gradually become able to use words and more complex ideas to explain or interpret their feelings.
A two-year-old may react to divorce or one parent’s absence by crying or clinging to the other parent. A child at this age primarily feels the change in routine and reacts negatively to it. The child also has limited memory and may seem to forget a parent who is not seen on a daily basis.
A ten-year-old, however, may react to divorce with outright anger, seem sad or become depressed because he understands the concept of separation. He may label one parent “right” and the other one “wrong” because he wants to understand the reasons for his feelings. This youngster also has a better memory and will want to have things be as they used to be, resisting the family change in one way or another.
These developmental concepts relate directly to the stages of the grieving process. Infants and toddlers may grieve the loss of the intact family by showing no outward reaction at all (DENIAL), but this does not mean there is no effect. Later on, it may be seen that these children have lost trust in adults, because of having felt abandoned and neglected.
Slightly older children may experience the grief of divorce by feeling responsible and blaming themselves (DEPRESSION). Pre-schoolers and school-age children may try to be especially “good” when separation occurs in hopes that their parents will reunite (BARGAINING). It is normal, in fact, for children to hang on to this hope for a very long time.
Older school-age children may become aggressive and unruly as they grieve the loss of the family (ANGER). Boys, in general, have more problems than girls, possibly because in so many cases they see their same-sex parent, the father, less often after divorce.
In spite of the many concerning reactions children may have after divorce, it is important to point out that youngsters need not be harmed for life by the experience. With proper guidance and understanding children of all ages can work through the stages of grief (ACCEPTANCE).
