By Linda Freedman, PHD

Let’s take the case of Ellie. (all names, all ages, all identifyers are made up in this post).

She’s 9. Her parents divorced when she was 6 because they argued about everything and occasionally couldn’t control themselves, pushed and shoved too much. Her father grabbed her mother’s mother and bruised her badly in the final event that ended the marriage.

But Ellie thought all along (as I’ve said in other posts on parenting and divorce) that it was her fault that her parents divorced. Many of their arguments, and she heard SO many, centered around her. Drawing conclusions at that age isn’t as hard as you’d think.

Well, Mom and Grandmom moved far away, taking Ellie with them, which is not at all unusual. Dad had to work the legal system hard to get his little girl back in Chicago. He still only had visitation every other weekend. But at least Ellie was here, living with Mom and Grandmom, and oh, yes, and Mom’s significant other was never far away.

If you’re thinking family systems and are not automatically villifying Dad, assuming he’s a violent monster, then you might see that Grandmom played an inordinately large role in that marriage. In this case it was her advice about raising Ellie that conflicted with Dad’s, and Mom could not extricate herself from the conflict, couldn’t side with her boy.

There were other things going on, too. Usually divorce isn’t a consequence of just one variable, especially not the enmeshment variable, which seems so normal to people. Couples will more likely blame their relationship problems on outside relationships. Other significant others are usually a function of relationship/family problems, like . . . enmeshment.

Knowing that Grandmom played a large role in the marriage, you can assume that she also will play a large role in the couple’s post-divorce conflict. Divorce rarely ends the conflict, not without lots of smudging and dirt.

Should you bring Grandmom into the therapy?

She has an overly large presence in the narrative so certainly you want to see if and how Grandmom enmeshed Mom and how Ellie is also discouraged from developing into her own person. You can test that to a degree by finding out how well socialized Ellie is with other children, whether or not she does anything after school except homework and television.

But I’d bring Grandmom in just to confirm my guess and watch her in action, give her power to decide that Ellie needs more running room outside the family and how that should happen. Rather that fight a system, I work with it.

I’d try not to see her too often, though. She wouldn’t be one of my favorite persons and she’s not my patient. I’m not changing her or her world view and wouldn’t begin to try unless she really wants to work with me. I really don’t need her to get results, but she could, ultimately, really help the situation if she were amenable.

The judge ordered therapy in this case because Ella stuttered and was failing in Chicago, even though she did quite well in school prior to her move back into town.

I taught her some assertiveness, encouraged her to speak her feelings to her Mom, Grandmom, and Dad, more often, to make it a general habit.

See, and people wonder, why don’t you do much play therapy, Therapydoc? I feel guilty stealing, is why. Most kids need social skills training, not to play with a grown-up person, unless it’s their Mom or Dad. Truthfully, I will do play therapy when a kid isn’t verbal, but Ellie could talk and wanted to talk.

I coaxed her to ask her teacher for help. When the teacher said, Try it first on your own, she was to answer back and say, I already tried. I just don’t get it. Please help me. That worked, by the way. It made the teacher more aware of Ellie as a person, put her on the map.

How do I know? Systems therapists talk to teachers who are key players in a kid’s ecosystem. I don’t get it that other docs can’t spend ten minutes on the phone with teachers. You know who you are. Sorry if this is becoming a rant. Ignore me.

But don’t ignore this.

I titled this post Divorce or no divorce-your kid because I’m sure Ellie would have stuttered and had problems in school no matter her parents’ marital status.

Just being married is no lock on your kid’s sense of security and well-being. You have to be on top of that as parents. Security doesn’t come with the umbrella of “marriage” or even “committment”.

I bring this up here because one of the things Ellie told me in private was that her father didn’t call her very often. Dad SAID he’d call to help her with school work twice a week, but he forgot. And Mom didn’t have the skills to help her and very much left the job of teaching to the school. She also had a one-year old baby.

So when Ellie would be sitting at her desk and the teacher would pass back the homework and hers would have a big ZERO or a big fat F at the top, she would cry there silently, then force herself to smile and to try to socialize as if there was nothing wrong.

And at the end of the day, her Mom or Grandmom might ask, I really think they did, How was school? How were your grades? But Ellie wouldn’t share that experience with them.

After all, how easy is it to talk about failure at any age?

Then there’s Dad, forgetting to call. Yeah, I could have strangled him. He was the one bringing Ellie to therapy. He was the one with insurance, a house in the burbs, the better communicator.

So here’s the real universal parenting truth, Divorced or not divorced, your kid needs that emotional check up at the end of the day.

Like you, your kids need to hear questions like, Did the world give you a beating today? How are those kids in your class? Any mean ones? Anyone mean to you? How ’bout that teacher. Nice? They’re not all nice. Are you scared to ask for something if you need it, like a pencil?

If you act like you care, they’ll answer you honestly. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to run right over and fix the problem. But you have to take your kid’s emotional temperature. Then you can go from there.

By the way. Start this while they’re young and you won’t seem like an alien to the kid during adolescence, all of a sudden going, Why in the world are you hanging around with THAT kid!

For kids, learning to talk about their lives, their day, is liberating and intimate. That’s why once they get into it, they want a PHONE. Academic (work) intimacy is key and it’s your job as a parent to foster the process, the skill of communicating events and feelings.

We don’t all do it naturally, you know, talk about ourselves.

About the Author:

Linda Freedman, LCSW, LMFT, PhD is in private practice in Chicago.  She blogs to rewire the way people think and is available to speak about almost about anything that affects mental health, relationships, and family life.  Read more at EveryoneNeedsTherapy: TheBlog

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Filed under: Children and Divorce, Post-Divorce Parenting, All Child Divorce Articles