Divorce brings a multitude of change and chaos into the lives of children and with them the various emotions of divorce. That change and chaos breeds all sorts of new and strong emotions that children are often ill-equipped to deal with on their own. Many of these emotions will be entirely new to these children, and most have not developed enough to deal with them by themselves. Further compounding the problem is that many parents are also ill-equipped to help their children deal with the emotions they are experiencing because the parents are also drowning in a tidal wave of emotion.
Some of the common emotions that a child might feel related to their parents’ divorce include:
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Chaos
- Confusion
- Denial
- Depression
- Embarrassment
- Fear
- Grief
- Guilt
- Loneliness
- Loss
- Obligation
- Powerlessness
- Rejection
- Sadness
- Shock
- Stress
- Torn
- Vulnerability
- Withdrawal
Adults need to be in a position to help children to recognize and deal with the emotions that their parents’ divorce has caused to well up inside of them. Failure to deal with these emotions head on will only allow them to fester inside of the child only to boil over at some later point.
