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'How To Support A Child Through Divorce'


Divorce is a very uncomfortable situation between a couple. Not only are there emotions of anger and hurt from both sides, but adults react based on how they know how to defend themselves and their hurt feelings.

How an adult responds to hurt and pain is demonstrated publicly how they have learnt from surrounding adults when they were children. This can be various non spoken emotions from manipulation, criticism, applying guilt to verbally or non verbally reacting. Again, adults are never aware what they do and how they defend themselves. This is because everyone thinks their way is right.

What is important is how the children witness how their parents respond to each other. It becomes a ripple effect where children think certain behaviour is acceptable because their parents do it.

Witnessing:

- screaming, shouting, hitting, smacking

- throwing of items across the room

- taking out frustration on items (hitting a wall)

- taking out frustration on each other

- not listening to one another

- not apologising

- not speaking to one another for a day or weeks

- aggressive behaviour

- passive aggressive behaviour

These few examples are what children will witness their parents use to communicate when they feel they are rejected or hurt. This does not mean that parents are 'bad' people. They just don't feel appreciated or loved at the time of the outburst. Unfortunately they have only learnt a certain way to display how they do not feel loved.

During this time, it is about teaching children how to not take on patterns from their parents that can cause them discomfort, and repeat their parents destructive behaviour. Every human will feel rejected at some stage in their life. It is about teaching children how and where to direct their anger during their outburst. Every human being has a right to feel angry. Knowing what to do with that anger is what most people feel they do not know.

During divorce a child will experience many emotions from:

- Thinking it is their fault

- Feeling rejected

- Feeling they will have to choose which parent to stay with

- Feeling in the middle of the the anger and witnessing the two people they love not love each other anymore

- Not feel heard

- Feel powerless because they do not have a say in the situation

- Experience a loss (grief) from their home, safe space to protection from both parents

Types of Art that can help your child

Any type of art is great, but you need to introduce art that helps children release suppressed feelings. This would be activities that would give them the freedom to break things down.

Examples:

- Breaking items (example - snapping wax crayons and melting them)

- Tearing items (example - tearing up paper into pieces - think of when you are throwing out old post)

- Chopping items (example - cutting fruit and vegetables in the kitchen when you are cooking)

These types of activities need to be done first before children feel they can sit down to be creative. Adults can access the gym when they need to 'get away'. This type of space needs to be created for your child to feel safe, giving them the atmosphere to release their feelings in a constructive way. Children let you know when they have had enough time to release their frustration. They will then want to create to finish the process.

Why is this important?

When children are given the support to release build up frustration - they are subconsciously letting their minds tell them it is OK to be human. When they accept this emotion and themselves, they will naturally want to nurture themselves by creating. An example would be baking a cake - the process of breaking down to build an end result with a happy outcome is how children witness their parents argue and make peace after an argument. With divorce the parents will argue - but this time will not make peace and return to the normal routine a child is used to.


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