How Divorce Can Shatter Your Child's Relationships For Life

By Author: David Walker
Total Articles: 4
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As is true with most mammals, a child's survival depends on her attachment to her caregivers - which is usually her parents. This dependency has been hardwired into humans by nature for thousands of years. So it should come as no surprise that children form strong attachments to their mothers and fathers. It would be a surprise, and cause for concern, if they didn't. This attachment, or bond, is a sign that the relationship between the child and her parents is healthy.

As she begins to grow and as she comes into contact with more people, her bonds to her parents become a bit less. Simultaneously, however, she will begin to form attachments with others such as cousins and relatives, neighbors, teachers, and so on. This will typically happen somewhere between the ages of three to five. But if this bond is weakened too quickly or too traumatically, she may become forever distrustful of attachments and have relationship troubles for the rest of her life.

When a couple divorces, the mind of a young child is thrown into turmoil. In her mind, the sacred bond that she has depended on since birth, is about to be shattered. ...
... In her mind, even if unspoken, this divorce or desertion, is a betrayal of trust. If one of her parents, who she's trusted and depended on since birth, is leaving her, how can she ever trust anyone who she may become attached to in the future to stay with her? This is a key reason why divorce is potentially so hard on kids.

And the feeling of being abandoned goes beyond this. One parent has already left her. What confidence can she have that the other parent won't leave her also? To a young child, this unspoken fear of being alone in the world can be terrifying. In many children this anxiousness is so perceptible that they begin to go through major behavior changes. Some kids will become clingy and are afraid to let their remaining parent out of their site for fear that they may leave and never return. Some will act out in bouts of rage or temper tantrums in a desire to be noticed. Other children may become emotionally withdrawn in an effort to save their feelings from further hurt.

To a young child, divorce is a harsh wake up call that the world is not what they thought it was. Their home is no longer a secure refuge from the rest of the world.

To prevent or at least allay some of the children's fears, the way in which concerned parents handle the divorce is critical. Being able to cope with an experience such as divorce is not natural - it's learned. Kids don't have the life experiences that would enable them to cope with it. Heck, many adults don't have the know how to cope with divorce. But the children need reassurance from both parents that they are not abandoning them and that they will stay in their lives. This, more than anything else, will help to reassure a child that the bonds that they formed were not for naught.

How important is it that the parent child attachment stay strong? Many researchers believe that the quality of the initial attachment of a baby to her parents is one of the most significant predictors of how that person will form relationships for the rest of her life.
David Walker is webmaster and owner of http://www.onlinedivorcetips.com . Find additional articles regarding advice for men and women getting divorce, the effect of divorce on children, and other divorcee related topics.