The child during separation: we're parents for life!

 

If conflict is not efficiently and effectively managed over a medium / long term, studies have clearly demonstrated that the child's current and future well-being and mental health can be severely jeopardized.

 

Chronic Parental Conflict and the negative impact on the child

What can be destructive for the children's development is for them to experience their parents’ continuing, unresolved, hostile conflicts. Research indicates that children are resilient and highly adaptive in general and can usually cope with and adapt to difficult situations such as separation and divorce. What severely damages children emotionally and stunts their normal child development is bitter, long-lasting, ongoing conflict between parents, whether the parents live together or not.

 

It's important to acknoweldge that children also grieve losses of a separation of their loved ones much more than we can imagine. Emotions flaring due to a conflict between parents during separation can many times blind them from seeing the demise of their own child they love. 

 

- Conflict is an adult affair

 

- Never forget, that a child loves both the mother and the father or both partners!

 

 The child's needs are simple but crucial:

 

• that each parent truly recognizes the other's existence or presence;

• each parent provides the other with the space to express and fully realize the love for his/her child.

 

The best way to reduce the possible emotional damage to the child, due to the separation or divorce, is ensuring that the child maintains a healthy and secure relationship with both parents, unless there is evidence of violence or neglect towards the other spouse or child, or substance abuse. (Source: Canadian Paediatric Society)

 

Resource:.  CODIP: Children of Divorce Intervention Program.

It is an evidence-based prevention program specifically designed to help children cope with challenging family changes.