How Your Child May Feel During Separation
Whatever the circumstances, parental separation is hard on families. Whatever your child’s age, it can be challenging to know what’s going in their head during it or how they’re feeling or what is “normal”.
You can help your child through this period of transition by learning about some common reactions and feelings children experience during separation and by ensuring your communications with them are child-centred.
Common feelings children experience during parental separation
- Loyalty conflict: Children often feel like they need to “choose” one parent over the other and get caught in the middle of parental conflict. It’s important to let your child know that there is no need for them to choose a side and that that it’s okay to love both parents and want to spend time with both parents.
- Needing reassurance about love: Although Mum or Dad might not love each other, it is important to reassure the child that they love him/her, that this hasn’t changed and never will.
- Not wanting to visit: As they get older, children’s interests vary and the importance they place on spending time with friends or peers over their parents increases. They may not want to visit a parent, choosing instead to do something else. Although this can feel difficult or be a source of concern for the parent, it’s all a part of your child growing up. Focus on ensuring the foundation of your relationship is strong and lines of communication remain active between you.
- Feeling responsible: Children may feel they are responsible for their parents separation. It’s important to reassure them that they are not to blame for the separation.
- Fantasies of reconciliation: It’s a Hollywood plotline for a reason! Children may may dream up plans to get their parents to reconcile or express this as wish they would like to happen. As hard as that may be to hear at times, it can be normal part of the process. Allow your child to express this and have space around it.
- Wondering what caused the separation: Children seek explanations for things all the time and it’s common for them to wonder why their parents don’t love each other anymore and even “blame” the parent who they think wanted the separation and make the other parent a “victim” of this. Understanding comes with time and maturity and although this can feel difficult, they want always frame the separation in this way. You can talk to them about how this is a decision that, in the long-term, will allow both parents to be happy and focus on the fact that both parents will always share the love of their child together.
- Threats: If you do not come home, I will never speak to you again; the purpose of a statement like this is to make the parent feel guilty so that they will return home.
- Anger: Particularly children between the ages of 8-16 years can experience intense anger. They can often be most angry with the parent they blame for separation, but they may express anger only towards the parent they view as the ‘safest’, usually the resident parent.
- Worrying about how to tell their peers: Encourage your child to be honest about the situation. Parental separation is hugely common and there is nothing to be ashamed of.
- Worrying about the future: The child may find it hard to envision what the future will look like and this can cause worry. This is more likely to occur where there is parental conflict around contact and maintenance. Parents need to listen to their child’s worries and talk honestly and openly with them about any concerns.
Further Support
We provide limited direct support to both parents and children of one-parent families. This support can be requested directly by parents, for themselves or their child, and by professionals who work with one-parent families. You can find out more about this support here.
Helpline
Our askonefamily helpline is open 10am – 3pm, Monday – Friday. We provide detailed, confidential information on social-welfare entitlements and finances, family law, housing, education, childcare and parenting.We also offer a listening-support service for people who need help parenting alone, sharing parenting or separating.
You can call the askonefamily helpline on 0818 662 212 or 01 662 9212, or email your query to helpline@onefamily.ie.
Press Release
We’ve only had Divorce for 18 years –
is that why we don’t deal with it well?
(Dublin, Friday 27 February 2015) One Family – Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting and separating – reflects today on the 18 years since divorce legislation came into effect in Ireland on 27 February 1997. The passing of the Referendum on Divorce almost twenty years ago was a groundbreaking acknowledgment of the reality that families in Ireland exist in many forms and that marriage cannot always be forever despite best intentions.
Karen Kiernan, One Family CEO, comments: “In 2013, Ireland had the lowest divorce rate in the EU at 0.6 per 1,000 of the population. We have the third lowest rate of divorce in the world despite fears voiced 18 years ago that the legalisation heralded the end of the family, while the rate of marriage and civil partnership is on the rise. The fact is that relationships do end, couples do separate. Sometimes they are parents too. What is important is that they are supported to separate well. Research shows that it is not family form that impacts on a child’s outcomes, but the quality of their relationships at home. Parental conflict has more adverse effects on children than parental separation.”
Karen continues: “With the right supports, parents can separate well, resolve conflict, manage finances, and ensure their children remain at the centre of parenting. No-one sets out to separate or divorce, especially as a parent, and it is often a very difficult time for all members of the family, with feelings of fear, anger or blame as a backdrop. Service providers, the family law courts, and Government policy should be focussed on the provision of vital and affordable, services to support people to separate well, like One Family’s counselling, parent mentoring, and mediation services, which are still lacking in many areas around the country due to a lack of funding.”
“We know from working with parents going through separation and divorce that the process of obtaining a divorce is extremely costly and due to the law, requires an incredibly long time which can be destructive to families. The newly introduced Children and Family Relationships Bill will go some way to reforming family law courts but a lot more is needed,” Karen concludes.
People experiencing separation or divorce can call the askonefamily helpline on lo-call 1890 662 212 for information and support, or to find out more about One Family’s services for parents who are separating. These include parent mentoring, mediated parenting plans, and programmes and workshops such as Impact of Parental Separation and Making Shared Parenting Work, details of which can be found here.
/Ends.
About One Family
One Family was founded in 1972 as Cherish and is Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families offering support, information and services to all members of all one-parent families, to those sharing parenting, to those separating, to those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy, and to professionals working with one-parent families. Children are at the centre of One Family’s work and the organisation helps all the adults in their lives, including mums, dads, grandparents, step-parents, new partners and other siblings, offering a holistic model of specialist family support services. These services include the lo-call askonefamily national helpline on 1890 66 2212, counselling, and provision of training courses for parents and for professionals. One Family also promotes Family Day and presents the Family Day Festival every May, an annual celebration of the diversity of families in Ireland today (www.familyday.ie). For further information, visit www.onefamily.ie.
Available for Interview
Karen Kiernan, CEO | t: 01 662 9212 or 086 850 9191