How Divorce Affects Your Child
Along with producing many meditation CD/MP3’s, such as Meditations for Abundance and Love: Volume I Deserving and Volume II: Manifesting (available here at: http://bit.ly/meditat3), I have also written a best-selling book, The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict, available in print or PDF at inlovewithme.com/books, or on Kindle through Amazon at http://amzn.to/TIRGz4. Individual chapters are also for sale on https://inlovewithme.com/books/e-book-chapters.
Here is an excerpt on how divorce affects your child:
Based on my experience working with families, I can tell you that I have seen that conflict before, during and after divorce creates pain for your child and will have a negative impact on them in some way. Your child will find some way to cope, which may result in very unhealthy choices and behaviors.
Studies have shown that boys and girls from divorced homes and conflict show a higher incidence of physical ailments, including asthma, stomachache and other stress relatedsymptoms. Parental conflict in the presence of children is also linked to psychological problems including: aggression, anxiety, depression, poor self-esteem, physical complaints and difficulty in school.
Another child quoted in Long and Forehand’s Making Divorce Easier on Your Child said:
“My parents would fight all the time. It got so bad that I started to get stomachaches and felt like throwing up. My mom thought I had some sort of illness and took me to a bunch of doctors. There was nothing wrong with me; it was just the fighting really got to me.”
Recently, I read about a 10-year-old child whose parents were in the middle of a terrible divorce. The book’s author had interviewed the child due to parental allegations of abuse. The author revisited the child 2 weeks after their initial meeting; this time in the hospital after the child had surgery to remove cancer. The sobbing child said, “I need a rest. Can I stay here?” I’m not saying that her cancer was directly related to her parents’ divorce. What I can tell you is that this child preferred being in a hospital to being in the middle of her conflicting parents’ divorce. She was crying out and clearly the stress was negatively impacting her life. Don’t allow this to be your child. I know you love your child. If you are in conflict with your former partner, make the changes you know are necessary to end the conflict now and improve your child’s environment, before it is too late.
Shannon R Rios MS is a successful Life Coach and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She coaches parents as a life coach through her life coaching business www.inlovewithme.com so that parents can move forward and create healthy lives and relationships with themselves, their children and others. She is also the founder of www.healthychildrenofdivorce.com
If you enjoyed this article, her best-selling book on parenting after divorce and healing after divorce is The 7 Fatal Mistakes Divorced and Separated Parents Make: Strategies for Raising Healthy Children of Divorce and Conflict and can be found here: https://inlovewithme.com/books
Then one day a friend recommended I go to the Green Herb in Wheat Ridge CO (http://www.thegreenherb.com/). They did a blood test and discussed Candida overgrowth with me. It made so much sense. At that point my body was so sensitive I could hardly drink a glass a wine before going into a bad mood and feel completely unbalanced. And I can assure you this reaction to alcohol had changed as I had gotten older. I also knew I was truly addicted to sugar, I loved to eat sugary foods. Candida overgrowth also leads to hormonal imbalance. I had all the symptoms. I also was tested by another Chinese medicine doctor who did a stool and saliva sample. He also confirmed the high level of candida in my body, along with inflamed intestines.
I used the word “stuck” in the past two headings for a reason. Children feel stuck or paralyzed when they are put in the middle of their parents’ divorce. This can have long-term effects. Growing up with parents in conflict, I was always worried I would make the wrong choice. I felt paralyzed as a child. It wasn’t until I traveled solo to Guatemala that I realized there really is no wrong choice. When children grow up in an environment of conflict and anger, they fear the repercussions of making a “wrong” choice. Your child also can feel so out of control, and may seek to control whatever they can in their life. Putting your child in the middle is a lose-lose situation for your child and you. It can lead them to feel helpless in their life.
Why is this true? Because your child loves this other person. They are physically and emotionally related to him or her or has a history with their other parent. They identify with their other parent on a physical and/or emotional level. What this means is that every time you lash out at their other parent, they feel that what you are saying applies to them, too. Your behavior directly effects your child’s self-esteem. If your child hears again and again how horrible their other parent is, this person who they are half of, over time, the child will begin to believe they are also bad. It also makes your child feel very sad inside to hear a person they love talking negatively about another person they love. This hinders their ability to feel they can freely love both of you.
At this point three four things happened that changed the course of my life:
. I had found Yoga Nidra (a meditative yoga) that I could still do. I downloaded all the meditations I could find, and literally did Yoga Nidra and took my ibuprofen to survive that 20 hour trip.