Relationship breakdown: What about the kids? 12 things to consider
Twelve powerful and thought provoking reflections from when mum and dad tell the kids their relationship is over.
“Mummy and Daddy are splitting up”, cue tears, confusion and tummy turns as the child is flooded with the stress hormone cortisol.
Whether it was yesterday, weeks ago, a lifetime ago or just about to happen this question should resonate. I get asked it quite frequently:
“If we break up, what about the kids, will they be okay?”
Here’s how I would fully answer that question, along with a 12 point summary at the end.
It will hurt the kids.
Children almost inevitably do get hurt when their parents break up, although there can be an upside.
If a child has witnessed hostility, mental, emotional or physical abuse of one parent by the other, then the child may well feel a huge sense of relief, for both parents.
More commonly the relationship has degraded to breaking point over time, or more commonly still, a third party is involved.
Whatever the circumstance, the emotional impact on the child can be painfully significant, and long-standing, they’ll feel pain.
Do they already know.?
One question I ask parents during difficult times is how the kids have reacted to things starting to break down.
All too often I hear “oh, don’t worry, we have kept things completely normal in front of the kids, we don’t want them upset”.
I’ll then enquire about the parent's welfare, any upset, crying, arguments, anger, withdrawal, distancing, mood changes, or any other subtle or significant changes in each other's behaviour.
This provokes a catalogue of impacts, “I cry at night when they’ve gone to bed”, or “he/she has moved into the spare bedroom”, or “we now eat at different times” or “we watch TV in different rooms” or “I don’t do his/her washing anymore”
These are subtle but significant changes and the kids do notice them, so things are not “completely normal” by any means.
I awaken the parents by reminding them that our kids have the eyes of a hawk, ears of an elephant and senses of a meerkat. They see, hear and sense everything.
They notice subtle mood changes, they notice mum and dad not showing affection anymore, they notice the change in household tone and language, the quietness, the unease, the arguments, sadness, conflict, disengagement, disagreement, they notice changes to sleeping, eating, socialising patterns too, however young they are and however subtle the changes are.
Kids may not have the desire, confidence, vocabulary or will to articulate, what they are seeing, hearing or sensing, but they are alert to and notice behaviour in their parents and caregivers.
Their internal response will include activation of their adrenaline and the stress hormone cortisol, along with anticipatory anxiety which provokes “what’s going on”
The fateful day.
Children will be able to describe in fine detail, many years later, the exact moment they were told that mum and dad were splitting up.
They’ll know where they were, how they were sat, in which room, time of day, who was present, what exactly was said and, with sensitive handling, how they felt at that precise moment in time.
They initially experience a wide variety of feelings including surprise, anger, relief, sadness, confusion, and disappointment.
They are often and very frequently a feeling of shame and/or guilt, from a sense of responsibility.
It must be my fault.
Children (and many adults) have a very narrow and self-centred view of the world. They believe they have a powerful influence or even control over all that surrounds them.
Kids work on the stimulus-response model, if I do this (stimulus) then you do that (response), the reverse can be true too. How you act or react, is because of me or something I’ve done.
They deploy this behaviour from a very early age, crying gets them food, taking a book to grandma gets them a story.
When mum calls them to the kitchen table for a chat with daddy the child instinctively thinks “what have I done”,
The child is king, queen, prince or princess of their kingdom. I am responsible for all that happens here, and all that happens here is for, and because of me.
If there is any truth in this hypothesis, then the child will probably feel a sense of responsibility for the split. “If I had done this or that, would this have happened” or “this is because I’m a naughty boy/girl”
This is why the child often feels a sense of guilt when things go wrong within the relationship, they ponder is it my fault, what did I do wrong and how can I fix this. The guilt can last a very long time.
Nothing changes. You sure?
So, back to the break-up moment, the moment mum and dad take it upon themselves to tell the kids of the planned break up, today is the day we will tell them either Mummy or Daddy is leaving their home and is either taking the kids with them or leaving them behind.
The family assembled around the kitchen table, with a statement along the lines of, “mummy and daddy have something very important to tell you, we’ve decided that we can’t live together anymore, so mum/dad is leaving”
After a short moment of profound shock (explained later), the realisation slowly dawns.
When? When is this happening? the child wonders or may even ask. When is the split?
The response varies from eventually, sometime, soon, next weekend, next week, this weekend, this week, tomorrow, today, right now, or perhaps one parent informs the children because the other has already gone. More shock, more cortisol.
I hear so many cases where the child is told, and the departure of a parent is imminent or even immediate. That’s indescribably difficult for the child to process.
Inevitably there are tears and lots of cuddles of reassurance by all parties. There are promises made about seeing them and “nothing changing except mummy or daddy living in a different house”.
Nothings changing? Really. On the contrary, everything is changing. At this moment, everything is changing.
The next question, why? The child wonders or asks, or the parents just blurt out, “well, it's because mummy and daddy don’t love each other anymore”
BOOM! The nuclear option has been chosen.
Love, it’s more than all we need
Therein lays many a fatal wound. Up until now, Love has been sacrosanct. Love is that word used so often it’s the warmest and safest word in the whole wide world. It’s the everything word. Nobody told them, until this precise moment, that Love can go away or doesn’t last forever.
Every fairy tale, every hug, every reassurance is predicated with Love.
I’ve also heard it said by children that up until this moment in this conversation, they had deemed mum and dad as a single entity, they loved mum ‘n dad as one thing, and now that’s gone. Shattered.
That’s a huge and whole new concept for a child to grapple with.
And it gets worse. As they reflect and ponder that mummy and daddy can stop loving each other guess what - you got it, “they can stop loving me. OMG. I could end up un-loved too”.
DOUBLE BOOM, that’s punch number 2 landed.
These are huge, unexpected and frightening revelations. This is so much worse than discovering farther Christmas is fake, even if that day is still to come.
Grief and loss.
The kitchen table moment is the start of the grieving process, the first phase of which is profound shock, at the moment you tell them.
That initially feels like numbness as the brain diverts resources from the thinking part of the brain to the mobility parts and shifts blood from the digestive system in the tummy to the limbs.
It is part of the freeze, fight-flight response. So, for about two-and-a-half-minutes the children will enter profound shock, which might provoke an eerie silence. I’d suggest not giving them any critical information for a couple of minutes, they won't be able to hear, let alone process it.
They will then most likely enter the grieving process, they grieve the loss of normality
The phases of grieving can be briefly summarised:
Profound shock (the moment of impact, 150 seconds of confusion and tummy turns)
Shock (the unimaginable has just happened),
Denial (what they described is not going to happen),
Betrayal (one or both parents or someone else are to blame),
Sadness (a deep dark feeling of inner emptiness or carrying a very heavy weight),
Anger (at a whole manner of people and things),
Identity crisis (new home, school, friends, maybe even a new second name),
Solution searching (adapting to the new reality),
Acceptance (the transition is complete, and life goes on), then eventually perhaps
Forgiveness & understanding (much, much later probably in adulthood)
Grieving is a lengthy process, and it’s cloaked with two primary emotions of fear and pain. Grieving doesn’t happen overnight, or over a matter of weeks, and isn’t by any means complete when the physical “split” happens. The child will not travel serially through this process, they may oscillate between phases.
They’ll feel and experience loss, with a capital L, it can take a long while and doesn’t always end with acceptance and forgiveness.
The parents and key family members travel the grief process too. That’s a whole load of emotion within a very confined space.
Abandonment
Two things invariably occur when I talk to a child during or after a breakup, or to an adult who is carrying emotional difficulties from a childhood breakup.
Firstly, there are lots of deeply held tears, a direct sign of deeply held pain.
Secondly, they will invariably say “he/she left us” or “he/she left me”.
Rarely, if ever, do they say he/she left my mum or dad.
The child believes that the parent has left them, not just left the other parent. A small but very significant and life lasting impression.
I was left, I feel abandoned. A third blow landed.
How does that abandonment wound manifest itself in their future? Are they able to maintain relationships themselves in adulthood, do they fear abandonment reoccurrence? does that make them fearful of attachment to another person of significance?
The short answer, yes, it can lead to a fear-based attachment style which comes in one of two flavours, an anxious attachment (jealousy, lack of trust, clinginess, fear of being left) or an avoidant attachment style (inability to express feelings or emotionally connect with another person, close is danger, distance is safe)
Both of these insecure attachment styles can develop within the child who experiences “being left”, and they will often develop a fear-based, insecure attachment style.
Victim, Rescuer & Side Taking
Another deeply upsetting outcome of separation that I witness repeatedly in both the parents who are splitting up and their children is the game-of-blame and side-taking.
Parents will either actively or completely inadvertently blame the other party, with the intent of making them feel the pain of guilt, and this is most often the case when a third party is involved. It’s all your fault.
One of the adults feels wrong, like the victim of great injustice, and it’s the fault of the persecutor (the other parent).
The wronged party might seek solace in friends, family, and the children, seeking support, compassion and understanding.
They’re looking for someone to side with them and see things from their perspective, to help soothe and rescue them from their pain and sadness. Someone to help them feel better. (see my post on the Karpman Triangle for a clearer description of the victim, rescuer, persecutor relationship)
When the child is gifted or adopts this rescuer role or the side-taking role, they can be deeply impacted in both the short term and the long term. Short term they may soak up the negative emotions of the wounded parent. Long term they may serially adopt the role of rescuer.
They may also develop a compromised view of the other parent, judging them to be bad, uncaring, insensitive, wrong, unfair and so on.
Emotional Validation
During the separation and the time leading up towards it, emotions within the family are widely variable and can run very high.
Both mum and dad are feeling a whole manner of emotion and in many cases, these get fully expressed in front of, or within sight or earshot of the meerkat children.
Each family has a finite emotional capacity, think of it as a sphere or bubble if you like, which acts as the emotional cauldron. Inevitably at times of breakdown mum and dad occupy much of this finite capacity.
This, therefore, reduces the amount of emotional space available for the child for he/she to express, and have their feelings validated.
There’s just no room for the child to openly express, let alone talk about their feelings because the emotional space is taken up by the parents.
Besides, the child doesn’t want to be burdensome emotionally. He/she can see the discomfort of mum and dad, he/she doesn’t wish to add to that. I’ll keep my feelings to myself.
The result is that the child buries their feelings, hides, suppress or denies them, which itself is unhealthy (see my Trauma blog for the longer-term consequences of the stress hormone cortisol) and this can lead to another of the experiences I work with, adolescent self-harm.
Expressing feelings
When I meet young people, who disclose that they are cutters, they explain most painfully how the harming process is their only way to express, feel or let out their feelings, particularly of pain.
It was said to me “cutting helps get the emotions, thoughts and feelings out of my head”
These emotions well-up inside of them, get heavier and heavier and eventually, they need to come out. They can tolerate their thoughts and emotions all day, providing they can release it tonight or releasing it in the morning free’s up capacity for the day ahead
In environments where there is no emotional capacity available for them to healthily express their feelings cutting can provide that vital release.
It’s not necessarily the sight of blood, and, from my professional experience, it isn’t a life-ending attempt, and definitely not a plea for help. It seems it’s often just the opening of the skin layer that provides this profound and absolutely necessary pain relief, allowing them to feel, express or at least release their emotions.
It provides a powerful short-term release, but not only is it physically damaging and scaring but it also brings feelings of shame, guilt, fear, hopelessness and helplessness.
These are acceptable outcomes when the cutting process itself helps to get those other more dreadful emotions out, albeit temporarily until they well-up again.
Another self-administered treatment for deeply held inner pain that some adolescents (and adults) access is alcohol, drugs or other synthetics, if I can’t express the pain, I will self-medicate to numb it and therefore avoid feeling it.
I am not in any way suggesting that children of separation will self-harm or turn to drugs and alcohol, or that relationship breakdown causes these unhealthy behaviours.
(Although I do see many cases where the child finds a link between their self-harm behaviour and their mum and dads’ relationships difficulties)
What I am suggesting is that when a child cannot express (let out) and have their deep and powerful feelings of pain validated, one of the go-to behaviours can be self-harm as a way to relieve that pain or drugs and alcohol to soothe it, and at times of separation the risk of non-validation is inevitably higher, I would further clarify that I often find the lack of emotional validation was a behaviour which started before the separation and became heightened during separation.
What is emotional validation? It’s encouraging a child to express their emotions. Letting and encouraging them to cry, to be sad, to show disappointment, anger, intransigence, etc. Saying “don’t cry” or “try to be happy” or “just smile and it’ll go away” or “you’ll feel better tomorrow” are all examples of invalidating a child’s feelings. All very well-meant, but unhelpful. Children need to express their feelings, adults do too.
Telling a child not to cry when they’re in pain is like telling a drowning man not to drink the water.
I will be exploring self-harm in much more detail in a future blog.
What to do then?
The question was
“If we break up, what about the kids, will they be okay?”
Yes, they’ll be okay, whatever that term means. They are shaped by many significant life events. This is just one, albeit a painful one.
Will their mental and emotional welfare will be bruised, how badly and for how long, will largely depend on how you approach and manage the separation and ongoing relations.
Here is a summary of the 12 salient considerations I’ve discussed above:
1. The kids know what’s going on. They pick up the sights sounds and feelings long before the end game. Sharing early might soften the shock and reduce anxiety in the children snd gives them time to start adapting. Telling them on the day of departure maximises the emotional and mental impact.
2. The kids may in some-way feel responsible. They are the sun, the centre of their solar system called family. Everything is for, and because of them. As a result, they may self-blame, often by finding the most seemingly incredible reason. One child said to me he believed his Dad had left because he’d stopped playing football with him.
3. They never forget the moment you tell them, and they can often recite all the of the minute graphic detail tens of years later. It’s a lifetime memory. Be vigilant and present for them during the profound shock when you tell them and give them time to access and express their feelings. Don’t say “don’t cry”, that’s an instruction to hold in their emotion.
4. Nothing changes, really, except everything. Telling them nothing is changing is unhelpful and completely untrue. Everything changes, so tell them about the changes, especially living locations, sustenance planning, schooling, name change and truthfully whether it’s irreversible. Continue to keep them up to date, but not about the parental conflicts.
5. We don’t love each other anymore. Although this may be the case, and it probably isn’t, maybe don’t say these words in this way to the kids. Love is sacrosanct and needs to remain that way, kids want to feel mum, and dad loves each other, even when they don’t like each other.
6. My parents may stop loving me. If you do tell them love is over in the relationship you immediately risk the child developing a belief “It might be me next” I might become not loved, which provokes an unnameable dread.
7. Grief is the lengthy process of coming to terms with the loss of normality and the family structure. Give yourselves and the children time to travel this journey and support them throughout, however painful it is for the parent you must let your child grieve. Deepfast (deeply and fast) is my recommended approach.
8. Abandonment and attachment. The children will experience a feeling of abandonment which can shape their future relationships. Mummy or daddy is not leaving “us” he/she is leaving the other parent, it may help in reducing the likelihood of a future insecure attachment.
9. Blame-game & side-taking is the process of trying to make another party guilty for the pain they have inflicted upon you. Using the children to see “our side” is blame sharing. It is unnecessarily hurtful to the children. This is not their war, don’t make them your foot soldiers.
10. Rescuing is a role in the Karpman drama triangle, it requires a persecutor and victim to prosper. Don’t make your kids rescuers by you being the victim, it can become a lifetime of work for them if you do. And rescuing you is impossible for them.
11. Emotional validation & Expression is crucial throughout the whole of our lives, reassuringly telling the child “not to cry” or to “think positive” is unwittingly taking away their right to express their feelings. Let them express their emotions healthily, or they may find an unhealthy way to reach and express or numb them.
12. It’s never, ever too late. No matter how long ago you left, or how long ago you got-left-with the kids, and no matter how old they are it’s never too late to help them heal. Talk to them, I had to. Revisit their thoughts and feelings and memories from around the kitchen table, illicit their truth, what they saw and heard, and maybe express your own full truth too. Pinpoint and help release their emotion, maybe by validating your own feelings too, but don’t take up all the emotional capacity. Through dialogue, you just might be able to reach deeper, bi-directional understanding, acceptance and forgiveness. That’ll make you and the child feel significantly better.
The relate web page offers some more practical tips for understanding and supporting children through break up.
My aim is not to shame, frighten, intimidate or belittle anyone considering, going through or living after separation. Neither is it a veiled attempt to keep broken relationships together, for that will just heap a whole pile of different difficulties on the child, including an acceptance that dysfunctional relationships are normal.
My aim is to illuminate for you some of what I’ve learned in the counselling chair regarding the potential impact on the kids and to increase parental mindfulness at what is such a challenging time.
The more aware you are of your own thoughts and feelings, by paying attention to your own behaviour, the more mindful you will be toward the kids.
I do hope these insights help someone, somewhere, in some way.
Finally, I apologise for any inadvertent stereotyping or bias of mums and dads being victims or persecutors and for inference of gender in relationships or parental roles. Any offence regretted and certainly not intended.
Thank you for reading. More of my opinions can be found at the knowledge centre on my website.
To read more about our behaviour, neurology, psychology check my blog here.
Paul Roebuck
Behavioural Psychotherapist
PGCEE, FETC (A.Dip).
paulsroebuck@gmail.com
+44 7838 371155