Helping children who have experienced divorce. How do children cope with their parents' divorce? How to start a new family

Eternal in sickness and in health, in sorrow and joy, the love found in fairy tales, romantic films and women's novels is not so rosy in real life. People treat each other outside of marriage and in marriage differently: straightforward women see marriage in a different way than romantically minded, psychologically vulnerable women.

There are many reasons for divorce, and they are not the topic of this article. Let us accept divorce as a given and the impossibility of two people continuing to live with each other: in this world it has become an everyday occurrence and not as tragic as in former times. Society changes, a person’s place in it changes, a person’s attitude towards the institution of marriage changes - people converge, diverge and often do not see any problems in this. The latest hit is the happy selfie of newly divorced couples: joyful couples who have gained freedom do not look lost and suffering at all.

But this is not the case for everyone and not always - in terms of severity, divorce comes in second place on the list of human grief after the death of a loved one. And if there is a child (children) in the family, then the parents’ divorce leaves wounds in both adults and children’s hearts. The tender and vulnerable soul of a child does not understand how it happened that equally beloved loved ones will not be there all the time. How to make it easier for a little person to correctly understand a difficult parental decision and smooth out family drama?

Divorce of parents through the eyes of a child

Often a husband or wife is faced with a terrible and inherently tragic choice. Should I remain living with an unloved person and create the illusion of a happy married couple in the eyes of those around me and my own children, or should I find considerable strength within myself to put everything in its place and give everyone the opportunity to continue life in a new way? The situation is sometimes complicated by the fact that one or both spouses have permanent relationships, but people who are forced to stay with each other “for the sake of the child” simply lie to him.

Children are like a litmus test, immediately reacting to an unhealthy atmosphere that cannot be hidden. They are so sensitive that in such artificially supported families, childhood neuroses arise: hyperactivity, inattention, aggression or isolation. Needless to say, it would be more honest with everyone to discuss the prospects and the need to continue the marriage relationship and, if further life together is impossible, to separate. A correct explanation to the child of the current situation will preserve his psychological health and trust in both parents, who did not hypocritically hide such a bitter truth.

The degree of distress that the parents’ separation will cause depends on the child’s character and temperament. Even if a child does not outwardly show his grief and sadness, this does not mean that he accepted the divorce painlessly, and at this time children’s emotions and feelings become aggravated:

fear of never seeing one of the parents;
fear of being no longer loved by parents, caused by the understanding that they have lost love for each other;
child aggression, directed at both or alternately, associated with an internal feeling of parental “betrayal”;
a feeling of guilt that is characteristic of closed, shy and vulnerable children: “Parents are quarreling because I am doing something wrong.”

If the spouses are smart and strive for a civilized separation, divorce will be a test for all family members, but not a hopeless tragedy. Caring parents will be puzzled not by a stormy showdown with each other, but by explaining to their child a frequently encountered life situation that does not turn the child’s world into ruins, but only changes it.

How to help a child?

In the heat of family squabbles and grievances, adults sometimes completely forget about children, believing that their own passions are more important, and the child will still not understand anything. Yes, the real reasons for the parents’ divorce are indeed not always clear to the child, but he senses hostility and lies intuitively. And if relatives who dislike each other are actively involved in the process of family disintegration, then the likelihood of an amicable divorce worthy of civilized people threatens to develop into a battlefield with the epicenter in the heart of the child and serious psychological losses on each side.

Is it possible to protect the child and make the behavior of adults during a divorce as safe as possible for the sensitive child’s psyche? Indeed, there is a simple algorithm for adults to communicate with each other and with the child during this difficult period for everyone.

Explanation of reasons

This is where we need to start. You should not try to clearly explain to a three-year-old child the father he is leaving for, or his partner’s addiction to alcohol. But to an older child, you can try to explain the true reasons, delicately avoiding “adult” details and not giving way to your own negative assessment of the situation.

The first conversation will be very difficult, and psychologists offer the only option for constructing it: both parents must be present when informing the child about the divorce. Only this will allow the situation to be presented objectively, and if necessary, the child will be able to ask questions to each of the adults. In a conversation, you should not break down into mutual accusations, let alone insults, evade children’s questions and make vain, obviously impossible promises.

If the situation allows it, the reasons expressed to the child should be as truthful as possible, but without details that are traumatic to the child’s psyche. It will be worse if the child currently receives “smoothed-out” excuses for divorce, but hears the ugly truth from other people - this will lower the parents in the child’s eyes and undermine the child’s trust in the people closest to him.

The correct ending to a sad divorce message for a child would be the phrase: “We both love you and will not stop loving you, no matter what happens.”

The child must have both parents

This is an unconditional axiom. No matter how disgusting the ex-husband may seem now, the couple once had romance, a wedding and a touching expectation of a baby. Does everything about your partner irritate you and infuriate you? A child does not see his father or mother in this light; he has his own perception of each person - and believe me, it is far from your mutual adult claims against each other.

It is worth expressing them directly to the person with whom they are associated. Tugging at the child and telling the “true truth” about the father or mother who is to blame for all the troubles is low and deadly for the child’s fragile world. By splitting the existing world with a sharp wedge and turning it inside out, you cannot achieve something positive and righteous: by “lowering” your spouse in the eyes of your own child, you yourself are losing your position in his heart before your very eyes - by denigrating another, you cannot remain dazzlingly pure. The child will lose faith in true relationships and is unlikely to build a strong family later.

If a husband and wife remain living in the same city after a divorce, no matter how difficult it may be for the adults, the child should be provided with communication with the second spouse. Festive events at school or kindergarten, weekends, birthdays and just meetings for no reason - these are things that will not replace a child with a full-fledged family, but will help compensate for the lack of communication.

If the parents are separated, you can also come up with something: regular communication on Skype, exchange of photos and video postcards, joint trips during the holidays, etc. – the child must know and understand that he has two parents, and only for their adult reasons they do not live together.

The child is not involved in the divorce

The meaning of this paragraph is that resentment against a spouse cannot be transferred to a child. Divorce is an adult matter that affects a child and, depending on his age, affects the child’s soul in different ways. If a younger child often does not consider it necessary to even explain the situation, simply confronting him one day with the fact that dad (this often happens) will no longer live with them, then teenagers are already actively getting it.

Aggressively broadcasting one’s own grievances, bile and causticism to an older child undermines all his foundations. More often than not, women are guilty of this: biased comparison of a child with a former spouse, both externally and emotionally negatively, is a terrible scenario. The words “you are exactly the same as him” said in the heat of the moment can cause misunderstanding and a feeling of guilt for the fact that he is so similar to his father, who somehow displeased his mother.

Negative relatives should be reasoned with

Divorce sometimes affects more than just immediate family members—the parents and the child/children. Overly active grandparents, who often dislike the chosen one or chosen one of their own daughter or son, get such a wonderful reason to vent their accumulated displeasure. Sometimes the older generation does not show itself to be a wise peacemaker in the process of family breakdown, but also adds fuel to the fire by standing up to defend the interests of one of the parties.

From the point of view of such a strategy, the more people there are in your ranks, the harder you can hit the enemy, win the fight and live out the rest of your life with your head held high. And here the significant numerical unit turns out to be the innocent child, to whom overzealous relatives whisper all sorts of nasty things about this or that parent in one ear or the other. Learning the “truth” from grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc. the child suffers doubly: he cannot help but trust such close people, and therefore his psyche is literally subjected to shock therapy.

Who will the child stay with?

On Russian territory, such a question often does not arise, and the court in divorce proceedings usually leaves the child with the mother. There is a reason for this if the mother fulfills her responsibilities for raising the child to the fullest extent, but there are also opposite situations when raising by the father is objectively preferable: in the case of a woman’s alcohol or drug addiction, her lack of means of subsistence, permanent work, etc. .

In other countries, parents try to come to an agreement among themselves in a civilized way, and the parent who can provide it best takes care of the child. If such a decision becomes necessary, then a young child should not be faced with a terrible choice: he is not able to objectively assess the situation and give preference to one parent. Parents must decide this issue on their own, based on their own financial capabilities, free time and other factors.

It would be correct to divide the time spent with the child into two: one of the parents can be assigned the responsibility of taking/picking up the child from a music school or from a sports section, and the other can do homework. The best option would be to attend parent-teacher meetings and events together at school: this will allow the other parent to stay informed about the life of their son or daughter.

Gifts and time

A common mistake that parents make during a divorce: trying to somehow even out the situation and feeling guilty before the child, they literally shower the child with gifts and attention. During this difficult period, the best remedy will not be material wealth, but a heart-to-heart conversation, patience and wisdom. And time will later put the terms in their places - the baby will not immediately get used to the fact that one of the parents is not always nearby.

There is no universal cure for a child during a parental divorce, but two adults must act in the interests of the child and communicate with each other correctly, without turning a child dear to everyone’s heart into a victim of divorce.

Divorce. Tragedy or a new happy life? Tears of grief or joy? One way or another, you made this decision. And now your main task is to help not only yourself, but also your child, because now he needs your support more than ever!

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HOW TO HELP A CHILD SURVIVE DIVORCE

We must accept the fact that parental divorce causes pain to children. Very often you can hear such words from parents about their baby: “He’s only a year old, he still doesn’t understand anything!” Dear moms and dads, your one-year-old toddler is a Human being just like you, and he also knows how to see, hear, and feel. Moreover, he is just new to this world and therefore greedily absorbs all new information, impressions, colors of life; he looks at you with trust and there is no one else for him. So, the first rule.

Rule #1: Do not deny your child, no matter what age, the right to be a member of your family, show him attention.

Very often children do not want to take divorce seriously. They protect themselves from pain with all their might, telling themselves that everything is fine. This is reflected in their behavior accordingly. For example, if parents decide to announce to their child their intentions to separate, the child will listen carefully and ask, “Is that all you wanted to say? Then I can go on playing, right?” And the parents calm down - thank God, everything is fine, the child is not worried (or, the already given option - “He just doesn’t understand anything yet”). And here lies the danger. It seems to you that everything is fine, but in fact, the traumatic reality is being repressed, the pain is carefully masked. The problem will arise after some time. The child’s psyche will not withstand such stress and a breakdown will occur, which will manifest itself in one form or another. Hence the second rule:

Rule #2: Openly expressing pain is the only way to overcome it. Help your child with this: constantly talk to him, daily, hourly, ask him questions yourself; explain what is happening, even if he doesn’t ask; talk through the situation again and again so that he understands that the world has not collapsed, that you can still stand firmly on your feet.

Divorce causes a whole range of fears, feelings and thoughts in children, the most important of which we will now name.

Fear of losing the love of one of the parents.
One of the most difficult moments. Parents who are themselves under stress, and who may find it difficult to see each other, find it very difficult to cope with the issue of seeing their child after a divorce.
Often mothers, under the pretext of the father’s irresponsibility and dishonesty, do not give their children the opportunity to see him. In fact, they are simply afraid that their father will take away the love of their children. The same thing happens with dads - they are afraid that due to rare meetings they will lose the love of their children. The child is, perhaps, in the most difficult situation - when he leaves for the weekend to visit his dad, he is afraid to leave his mother (“Will she be there when I return?!”); returning home to his mother, he thinks, “What will happen to dad in 7 days if I leave him now and go to mom again?!” And some parents even worsen the situation by trying to create a coalition with their child. Most often, mothers do this, specifically telling or “accidentally” mentioning “what a scoundrel your father is.” And this same scoundrel, from such additional pressure, thinks that it’s better not to show up. All this is just a manifestation of the parents’ fears. We come to the third rule.

Rule #3: The child loves his parents equally. For him they are one world. It is extremely cruel to force him to make a choice, because this inevitably entails a feeling of guilt before the one whom he “betrayed.” A smart child can make a choice that both parents will regret - following a well-known joke, he will love not his mom and dad, but a sugar straw.

Fear of losing dad.
Because Most often, with rare exceptions, after a divorce the child remains with his mother, but his time of communication with his father is greatly reduced. And he is afraid that one day dad will disappear forever. Hence the constant questions: “Where is dad?”, “When will we go to dad?” etc. To relieve the tension associated with this, you need to maintain the image of the father. This can be done, for example, using “Dad’s Calendar”. On the calendar, you need to mark the days of the Pope when the child meets him (for very young children, a period of time of 7 days does not mean anything, he will not be able to understand when it is?). When asked, show your baby how many days have already passed (they can be marked in a special way) and how many remain. You can also put a photo of dad on the bedside table. And it’s good if mom mentions dad on occasion, tells something about him, shows that “uncle has a hat like dad’s,” as if including him in the child’s daily life. And so on. As for the meeting schedule, for young children it is better to resort to a strict option, i.e., for example, every Saturday, and not “as it happens.” For teenagers, due to their age, it is better to leave the right to choose, otherwise they will regard such clarity as pressure and an encroachment on their freedom. But naturally, there is room for a certain flexibility everywhere.

Rule #4: Dad is always there!

The child's faith in the eternity of love is undermined.
Since the parents stopped loving each other, they might also stop loving him. Could anything be more terrible? During this time, patiently and lovingly, reassure your children over and over again that they are still loved and will always be loved, that Mom and Dad will always be there.

Rule #5: We love you! And hug your child more often, hugs warm the soul.

Loss of self-identification.
Those. a child may say, “I don’t even know who I am,” because he perceives his parents as part of himself. For him, his mother’s hand is his hand. G. Figdor wrote about it this way: “Each of us has experienced separation, and don’t we know that at this moment it’s as if part of our heart is being torn out, part of our body, as if we had lost a part of ourselves.”

Manifestation of aggressiveness.
Aggression manifests itself from the fact that the child feels abandoned, betrayed, he feels that his desires are not respected. Or aggression can counteract fear. For the most part, children direct their rage against the parent they believe is responsible for the divorce. Sometimes she turns against both of them, or alternately against the father and then against the mother.

Guilt.
Many children feel guilty for their parents' divorce (especially at a younger age). This may be due to the fact that the child is trying to reconcile his parents, but he is not succeeding. Or parents often quarrel over the child, and he clearly sees his guilt.

The most common manifestations in a child’s behavior during a divorce are increased dependence, the need to control the mother, a tendency to tears and whims, fits of rage, etc.

We have come to the last, general rule.

Rule #6: Show an unusual amount of attention and patience towards children. Talk, hug, tell them how much you love them. Explain that they are in no way to blame for the divorce.

Support your children, help them cope with the pain, and I assure you, in return you will receive even more love that will help you.

Maria Zorya

The work uses materials from G. Figdor’s book “The Troubles of Divorce and Ways to Overcome Them.”

Divorce of parents through the eyes of a child.

Children sometimes experience the divorce of their parents extremely hard; often this mental trauma can have an impact on the formation of various complexes and on the entire future life of a person. Divorce, according to psychologists, is a stressful situation that threatens the emotional balance of children.

The situation of divorce, according to American researchers, causes great harm to the mental health of the child. 5-7 year old children, especially boys, react especially painfully to divorce; Girls, on the other hand, experience separation from their father especially acutely between the ages of 2 and 5 years.

The consequences of divorce can negatively affect the entire subsequent life of the child. The “battle” of parents in the pre-divorce and post-divorce periods leads to the fact that 37.7% of children’s academic performance decreases, 19.6% suffer from discipline at home, 17.4% require special attention, 8.7% run away from home , 6.5% - experience conflicts with friends. Psychologist Tseluiko writes about this in his book “You and Your Children. Family Psychology.”

Every fifth child with neurosis experienced separation from his father in childhood. Among women whose parents separated in early childhood, the tendency to have children out of wedlock is especially pronounced. In addition, individuals who grew up in families broken up by divorce are more likely to experience instability in their own marriages.

At the same time, some psychologists believe that sometimes divorce can be regarded as a good thing if it changes for the better the conditions for the formation of a child’s personality and puts an end to the negative impact of marital conflicts and discord on his psyche. But in most cases, parental separation has a traumatic effect on the child. Moreover, the greatest psychological trauma is caused not so much by the divorce itself, but by the situation in the family that precedes the divorce.

Research by foreign psychologists has shown that for a preschool child, divorce is a breakdown of a stable family structure, habitual relationships with parents, and a conflict between attachment to father and mother. Thus, children 2.5-3.5 years old reacted to the breakdown of the family by crying, sleep disturbances, increased fearfulness, decreased cognitive processes, regression in neatness, and addiction to their own things and toys. The most vulnerable children still had depressive reactions and developmental delays after a year, reports"Newsru.com" .

Children aged 3.5-4.5 years showed increased anger, aggressiveness, feelings of loss, and anxiety. Extroverts became withdrawn and silent. Some children experienced regression of play forms. The most vulnerable children were characterized by a sharp decline in self-esteem and depression.

In children aged 5-6 years, just like in the middle group, there was an increase in aggression and anxiety, irritability, restlessness, and anger. Children in this age group have a fairly clear idea of ​​the changes divorce causes in their lives.

According to scientists, girls of senior preschool age experienced the breakdown of the family more than boys: they missed their father, dreamed of their mother’s marriage to him, and became extremely excited in his presence.

The only child is the most vulnerable when a family breaks up. Those who have brothers and sisters experience divorce much easier: children in such situations take out aggression or anxiety on each other, which significantly reduces emotional stress and less often leads to nervous breakdowns.

How to survive your parents' divorce?

A book written by a 10-year-old schoolgirl has been published in the UK. In the book, a little resident of the town of Ringwood in Hampshire gives advice to other children on how to survive their parents' divorce.

After Libby Reese's parents divorced three and a half years ago, she made a list of things that helped her make sense of what had happened. This is how a 60-page book called “Help, Hope and Happiness” appeared, which was published by Aultbea Publishing.

According to Libby's mother, Catherine Loughnen, at first her daughter told her that every time she threw a stick while playing with the dog, she was throwing something away that annoyed her. After this, the girl began to compile a list of activities that helped her overcome the stress associated with the divorce of the people closest to her - her parents.

Libby asked her mother for permission to use the computer to type out the text of the book. She also sent several emails to publishers. The very next day the schoolgirl received a call from the Aultbea publishing house.

The girl's mother said that part of the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the children's charity Save the Children.

The head of Aultbea Publishing, Charles Faulkner, said that Libby became the youngest author with whom the publishing house had ever signed a contract. It also became known that the publishing house has already ordered two more books for the schoolgirl. The Guardian writes about this.

In world practice, there are examples of publishing works by an even younger author. Thus, according to a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records, the youngest writer was a four-year-old girl from Washington, whose book entitled “How the World Began” was published in 1964. The youngest male author was a six-year-old Brazilian whose book How the World Began was published in 2003.

10 tips from Libby Reese on how to survive your parents' divorce

1. Try to rest. Find time to be alone. Watch your favorite movie or read a book. This will take your mind off your worries and help you relax.
2. Remember funny phrases. Think about what usually makes you laugh. Remember this in difficult times, and it will cheer you up.
3. Think positively. When you wake up in the morning, the first thing you do is look in the mirror and say out loud five times: “Every day I feel better and better!”
4. Achieve your goal. Find something you're afraid of and try to overcome it. These achievements will encourage you to achieve new successes.
5. Have a “special evening” for yourself. On one of the luckiest days of the week for you, arrange a “special evening” for yourself, during which you thank God for all the good things that He has brought you. This “special evening” will help you get through week to week.
6. Evaluate the past week. Think back on the past week and decide what good things you did, as well as what problems it brought you. Think about how you can change the situation for the better.
7. Give free rein to your feelings. Find a place where you can be alone and give free rein to your feelings: scream, shout, stomp your feet.
8. Join some club with similar interests to forget about your problems.
9. Start some new project. For example, related to the subjects you study at school.
10. A healthy mind in a healthy body. If you exercise, your body gets more endorphins, which help your brain cope with all the difficulties.

Children and divorce

Divorce is a traumatic situation for everyone involved, but especially for the child.

The severity of a child’s experiences depends on his age

If the child is under six months old, he practically does not notice the changes and forgets the absent parent in a few days, subject to attention from other relatives.

At the age of six months to two and a half years, his mood may often and sharply change due to the absence of one of his parents.

A child of two and a half to six years old experiences severe emotional shock. He does not understand the reasons for the divorce, may consider himself guilty of what happened, and promises to improve if his parents reconcile.

For a child six to nine years old, the loss of one of the parents can cause long-term depression. He is confused, feels defenseless, experiences constant anxiety, and behaves nervously. Problems with academic performance and discipline appear at school. He may begin to be rude, deceive, turn parents against each other, and demand gifts from them. He often feels hatred toward a parent who has left the family and becomes aggressive and rebellious. Usually becomes strongly attached to the parent with whom he lives, but sometimes the aggression can spread to this parent.

Nine-ten year old girls stop trusting adults and look for support in their friends. Boys of this age lose their usual self-confidence and strive for closeness with their father. Often the child’s attitude towards the “Sunday parent” becomes selfish.

At the age of 11-16, boys in most cases experience negative feelings towards their father and become strongly attached to their mother. But if she has a partner, her jealous son will not forgive her. Critical notes appear in the girls’ attitude towards their mother: “She’s gotten fat, she doesn’t take care of herself, it’s understandable why her father left for a young and beautiful woman.” Sometimes they even tend to admire his new girlfriend.

And yet it is obvious that parental divorce is a serious stressful situation for any child. Even if it is very small. Or if this is a teenager who is outwardly critical or indifferent towards his parents.

Help your son or daughter survive this situation with minimal losses

It is clear that the child is hurt not only by the fact of divorce, but also by how it happens. Don't hurt him further.

If the parents' decision is final, each of them needs to talk with the child. Explain the reasons for the gap, taking into account his age. Assure him of your love, tell him how the relationship will be maintained in the future.

Don't be afraid to openly discuss with your child his feelings for the departed parent. Whatever they may be - negative or positive.

Discuss the situation with your loved ones and with the relatives of your ex-spouse. Convince them that their support and continuation of the relationship are very important to the child.

If possible, do not suddenly change your place of residence or school. For most children, old emotional connections are especially important now.

Agree with your child that it is better for him to answer if someone around him asks a question about the divorce that occurred. Explain that this happens in many people's lives and he has nothing to be ashamed of.

To some extent, you will share your experiences with your child. But do not shift the burden of your worries, grievances and sorrows onto your son or daughter, expecting sympathy and support from them. Often a child already develops a feeling of acute guilt - is it not he who is to blame for the separation of his parents? Don't make this feeling worse.

It is clear that at the time of divorce and for some time after it, the parents themselves are in a difficult moral state. Still, try not to constantly nurse your grief in front of your child. He should not feel unwanted, forgotten, or lonely at this time. But don’t start overprotecting him in everything, creating a painful dependence between you.

Parents can give their child a worthy example of how to overcome a crisis situation

If possible, establish normal interactions with your ex-spouse's new partner. This will give the child an example of a constructive solution to life's problems.

Make it a rule to never slander his father or mother in front of a child. After all, he perceives himself as a part of both of you. This means that if you speak badly about your ex-spouse, it also hits him.

Fill your life and the life of your child with new activities, communication, trips... Some time after the parents’ divorce, the child’s emotional state gradually returns to normal.

If you don't live with a child...

Divorced fathers often find themselves in this situation.

Feelings of guilt should not color all your interactions with your child. This is not at all a mandatory property of a divorced father.

Try to make your meetings with your child as organized as possible (come for him and take him back at the same time, do not miss the appointed days). The predictability of your meetings is very important for a child.

If a child visits your home, he needs to adhere to the rules and procedures established in your new family. He may also have certain responsibilities around the house if he stays for a more or less long time. This will give your relationship a sense of stability and strength, which is so necessary for a child in such a situation.

Try not to turn into a “good genie”, fulfilling the whims of your son or daughter on demand. You cannot let your child abuse your natural desire to please him. The habit of manipulating other people will do a disservice to your relationship with him and will affect the child’s future life. The situation may simply get out of control. Agree with your child how you will handle money matters, such as pocket money, and stick to that agreement.

Pay attention to the style of your relationship with your new spouse: you must be correct in the presence of the child. He may respond to some remark of your new wife: “You’re not my mother, don’t tell me!” In this case, both you and her should emphasize in the conversation: “It’s customary for us...” “In our family, we...”.

Don't forget: your educational tasks have not changed too significantly, although you no longer live with your child. Direct your efforts not only to make up for your child's attention deficit. You have the power to give him confidence and raise self-esteem. Let him know that he can always count on your advice and support.

It happens that relationships with one of the parents (usually the father) are severed forever - due to departure, a new family, or drunkenness. But this option is still less painful for the child than when visits simply become less and less frequent. In such cases, some experts advise immediately protecting the baby from further meetings.

When both parents continue to participate in parenting, they will have to agree with the child on the frequency and location of meetings. Too frequent visits from one of the parents can give the child the illusion that the family will be restored, and additional worries, since this will not happen. If meetings are rare and cold, as if out of a sense of duty, this causes the child to feel guilty and rejected.

Have you decided to arrange your personal life?

Assess the child’s psychological state at this point. Try not to create unnecessary tension if you are just starting to develop a relationship with a new partner. Do not rush to introduce him and the children to each other, wait until your relationship becomes stable.
Yet a son or daughter should not have the right to veto the father or mother's relationship with a new partner.

If you have entered into a new marriage...

Your child's behavior may again show alarming symptoms. Even if it seemed to you that by this moment the severity of the experience had already smoothed out. Try to understand the child's feelings. After all, now the hope that mom and dad will still be together is completely gone. Not only will he inevitably lose some of your attention, but along with your new partner, uninvited “brothers” or “sisters” may appear. All these drastic changes cause him natural feelings of indignation and jealousy.

Let your child know that he does not have to pretend to love his stepmother or stepfather. At first, it will be enough to respect and observe the rules of politeness - the same as in relationships with other adults. Also, try not to let your child feel disappointed or shocked if the new parent doesn't show him affection.

Maintain an atmosphere of stability and a familiar routine in the family. Everyone in the family should have their own responsibilities.

Create a favorable environment for the child to meet with his parent - your ex-spouse.

The new partner of a divorced parent should adhere to a certain line of behavior

Don’t force things, don’t expect your child to immediately show warm love in response to your kind feelings. Gradually get closer to him in common affairs and activities. Understand the depth of the child’s experiences; after all, for him to accept a new parent means to betray the one with whom he broke up, even if it was a long time ago. At the same time, remember that he may want to test the strength of your relationship with your new spouse.

Do not set yourself the task of becoming your own father or mother. But you are quite capable of becoming a mentor, an unobtrusive educator, a parent in the psychological and not the biological sense of the word for your stepson or stepdaughter.

You should be careful when it comes to maintaining discipline. Of course, we are not talking about permissiveness on your part. But don't take this matter completely into your own hands. Demanding discipline from a child is the responsibility of his natural parent. It may turn out that the situation begins to get out of control. For example, if your spouse considers himself guilty of his child because of his new marriage and spoils him in every possible way. And he considers your demands too harsh. Try to convince him to consult a family consultant or special literature.

Try to develop a set of certain rules and laws of behavior in your family. Resolve controversial issues in family councils. If necessary, write these rules down and place them in a visible place. When you need to demand something from a child or bring it to his attention, say first: “Your dad (mom) and I have decided that...”. Setting rules for interaction in the family is the responsibility of both parents.

Children who once experienced a divorce from their parents may also experience problems establishing their own family life. Think about how you will behave towards the opposite sex and what you will tell your child about his father or mother after a divorce. It is important that the girl does not develop a negative attitude towards all men. She needs communication with her father, among other things, to develop confidence in her attractiveness in the eyes of the opposite sex.

Divorce of parents in a child's life

Divorce is an extremely complex topic. No divorce is like another. And yet, if you ask people who have experienced divorce about how it affected their lives, you will see that many will echo each other: “That’s right, it was exactly the same with me; I experienced (experienced) the same".

It is known that divorce is becoming increasingly common in our society. And, although it has somewhat lost its former shock reputation, it is still usually associated with a whole bunch of various kinds of sorrows and misfortunes that an evil fairy or some other evil spirit could proudly count among the “most worthy” fruits of their efforts.

Divorce is incredibly stressful for everyone affected by it. People react to it with an abundance of different emotions, such as feelings of anger, rage, guilt, sin, sadness, fear, relief, inescapable melancholy, etc. And while divorce is deeply traumatic for most children, research suggests it doesn't necessarily leave them with long-term emotional distress or damage in the long run. In most cases, the very background against which the divorce occurs influences how the child recovers from this painful and extremely difficult event.

In the following sections of the article I will focus on the factors and points that make up this background.

How children react to divorce

During the first year or more after a parent's divorce or separation, most children show various signs of stress. Anger, sadness and confusion are the main emotions they usually experience during this period.

Children may be angry at both parents for not keeping the family together. They may be angry with themselves because their disobedience led to a rift between mom and dad or because they didn't do anything to prevent their parents from separating. It may be difficult for a child to overcome or express this anger. He may fear that if he expresses this anger towards the parent who left the family, he may be permanently rejected and prevented from visiting that parent. He may also think that if he tries too hard to express his anger towards the parent with whom he is staying, he may also be rejected by that parent. He may be afraid of the intensity, the intensity of his anger, afraid that if even a particle of this anger spills out, this feeling may become uncontrollable.

The anger felt towards one parent can be transferred to the other, with whom it is less dangerous to be angry. This is common for all of us. Remember the times when we poured out anger on old friends or relatives, being sure that they would not leave us. Of course, we would most likely hold back our anger and anger towards new friends or less accommodating relatives, fearing that if we make some wrong or rash step, they will “wave their hand” at us.

Sometimes children's anger can spill out on school friends and teachers or manifest itself in destructive, defiant behavior. This is the so-called “kick the cat” phenomenon, expressed in the behavior of a business woman who returned home from work after a scolding received from her boss. She cannot kick her boss, since she will be fired immediately, and therefore she takes her anger out on the nearest, animate creature - the unfortunate cat.

Sadness and depression are an almost constant companion to divorce. This state is natural in the face of such misfortune, and children, just like adults, have to go through this painful stage associated with a family split.

Sadness can be combined with feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. A child may think that he is a worthless, nasty creature and is not capable of doing anything worthwhile.

Sometimes a child's sadness or depression can take the form of passive self-isolation. The child may become depressed and lose all interest in school, friends, or what previously brought him joy and pleasure. Sometimes these moods take the form of frantic hyperactivity, as if he is in a hurry to escape from sad thoughts.

The child may become whiny, crying about things that previously did not upset him at all. He may re-experience fears and phobias, such as the fear of the dark, which he has already overcome, or acquire new fears. He may begin to suffer from enuresis again. He may require additional attention to himself and perceive daily forced separations associated with attending school, etc., as almost intolerable. You may experience various physical symptoms, such as abdominal pain, or have trouble staying alert and concentrating in class.

Often he experiences mixed, contradictory feelings. He may hope that the departure of a parent from home will end the family turmoil, and at the same time desperately want that parent to stay. It is difficult for him to look into the future and understand and accept the irreversibility of divorce. It's hard for young children to imagine what will happen next week, let alone next month or year. The child may be confused and not understand what caused the divorce and what his new relationship with his parents will be like. He may feel as if torn in two by his parents, sometimes angry and impudent, sometimes begging and pleading, not knowing for sure who is to blame, if there are any to blame at all.

He may be tormented by the question: how to tell his friends, teachers and other close people about everything and whether to tell anyone about it at all. By and large, he will most likely feel terribly helpless. This is perhaps the most painful and overwhelming event of his life, and there is absolutely nothing he can do about it.

Children's fears and fantasies

Being abandoned and not needed by anyone is perhaps the greatest fear experienced by a child experiencing a divorce from his parents. Looking back on our childhoods, most of us will remember the horror we felt when we suddenly lost sight of our mother, say, in a large department store. We stood there, frozen in horror, feeling so tiny, helpless and alone. This fear of abandonment is typical even for children from normal, intact families. This is the result of the child's initial helplessness and his dependence on his parents. Many fairy tales of the world, such as "Hans and Gretel", are devoted to this theme of childhood abandonment. In the event of a divorce, all children's ideas about abandonment may seem to come true. You need to reassure the child and assure him that he will not be abandoned. This assurance should be repeated repeatedly. Everyday ordinary situations, such as leaving a child in the care of a babysitter, can provoke fears that the parent will never return. Sometimes you can calm your child down by telling him where you are going and leaving a phone number he can call.

Children sometimes feel like the divorce was their fault. The child may think that his disobedience forced his dad to leave home, or that mom and dad separated because they argued so much about his bad behavior. The belief that all this caused the sad event reflects a child's sense of self-importance. When we are still small, we believe that we are the navel of the earth, and everything that happens in the world happens with our participation. As we grow up, most of us are forced to give up this “self-centered” view and be content with the place we actually occupy in real life.

In some families, the fear of a child who considers himself the cause of the divorce is significantly aggravated if one of the parents, in one form or another, shifts all the blame for this divorce onto this child or their children in general. Telling your child that he is to blame for your divorce means placing an unbearable burden on him. This cannot be done. Never!

Among young children there is also a phenomenon that psychologists call “magical thinking.” It is based on the belief that thoughts and feelings can be realized. For example, a child who is offended by a parent for bullying may believe that his angry thoughts were the reason that the offending parent tripped on the stairs, got sick, or left the family.

"What nonsense!" - you may exclaim, wise by the experience of an adult. But at the same time, you wouldn't walk under a ladder or knock on wood for good luck. For most people, “magical” thinking is not something completely alien and distant.

The "child's" feeling or belief that his actions or behavior in general led to a rift between his parents often coexists with the equally common idea that he can still do something to get the parents back together. Many children resort to various practical tricks to reunite their families. A child may think, for example, that if she is a very good girl, her dad will come home, or, conversely, if she proves to be a bad child, her parents will have to meet to discuss her behavior. The child may think that if he gets sick, dad will have to come home again.

Almost always, children stubbornly cling to the fantastic hope that their mom and dad will eventually get back together after the divorce is final.

Children are concerned not only for their own well-being, but also for the well-being of their parents. They may worry about their “poor daddy,” who now lives alone in his apartment and who now has to look after himself. They may also worry about mommy, who now looks so sad and tired. They may also be worried about financial problems. Such anxiety and such anxiety are often fueled by conversations like: “She robbed me of every penny” or: “Is it possible to live on the pennies that he brings us?!”

Children often fantasize about their departed parent. They may conjure up an idealized image of a parent they rarely see, which in reality inevitably results in crushing disappointment for them.

Sometimes it happens that the weaker and more defenseless the parent is, the more the child idealizes him. This is explained by the fact that it would be unbearably difficult to admit how pitiful and far from perfect, for example, the father really was; instead, a fantastic image of him is created in the imagination. On the other hand, it is quite easy to admit the shortcomings of a “strong” parent, since the child knows that even with some of his shortcomings he is worthy of love and respect and that he can be relied on.

These types of fears and fantasies are common in many children, but it is a good idea to ask your child about his fears and worries about divorce. If he cannot express them freely in words, then perhaps he can depict them graphically.

How to tell children “about this”...

If possible, make your child aware of the impending divorce before you actually separate from your spouse. This will give him a chance to process the sad news, get over some of the initial shock, and talk to each of you about what it means for him. It is necessary to provide children with more than one opportunity to clarify the situation with both parents: ask them questions and talk about their feelings. They need to be given time to “digest” the current situation and adapt to it. Don't think that one heart-to-heart talk will be enough to resolve all problems.

It is sometimes difficult for a child to express his thoughts and feelings in words. In such cases, it is recommended to encourage him to do this through crafts, playing puppet theater or telling stories. Such activities provide parents with a unique opportunity to gain insight into the innermost thoughts and feelings of their children.

When explaining the reasons for divorce to your child, make sure that your language is clear and intelligible. Research shows that for many children the reasons for divorce were not explained at all, or the explanation was given in a language inaccessible to their understanding.

Emotionally, children who have received an explanation of the impending divorce in a language they understand, experience the situation much easier. Children who are in the dark about divorce are often forced to make desperate attempts to find clues to the current situation.

It is also extremely important that the explanations you give to children are age appropriate. For example, you should not overload an eight-year-old girl with details about her daddy's adventures.

Remember that children will need different levels of information as they get older. For example, by the age of 12, the former ten-year-old girl will know more about the nature of relationships between adults and will want to know and be able to understand more about the ups and downs of your divorce. It is important to remember that divorce is a process in the life of a family, and not a separate episode.

When talking with your child about divorce, be sure to emphasize that marriage partners can separate, but parents cannot separate from their children. Make it clear to your children that you will always remain their parent and take care of them. If you leave the family but retain the right to visit your child, you should try to convince the child that although you will not live together, you still love him, that you remain his mother (father), and that he will always be part of your life. However, do not make such assurances and promises if you do not intend to fulfill them fully. Breaking such a promise can break a child's heart.

If a parent has abandoned his child altogether or does not want to meet and maintain a relationship with him, he must explain to the child that the reason for this decision does not lie in the child. Try to strengthen your child's self-esteem and convince him that you need him and value him.

And, in general, when informing your child about the upcoming breakup or divorce, explain to him that he had absolutely nothing to do with it. That he did nothing to make it happen, could not do anything to prevent the divorce, and cannot reunite divorcing parents. Divorce is a decision made by adults, not children. Also emphasize the finality and irrevocability of the divorce. Children often cherish the hope that after a long break, their parents will eventually reunite. It is better not to fuel this kind of fantasies.

When talking to your child about divorce, tell him that this process is very painful and difficult, but that you can overcome it. Too often, parents tell their children, “It will be better after the divorce,” when in fact it takes quite a long time for this expected improvement to finally occur. In this case, seeing that things actually get worse after the divorce, the children become confused and distrustful.

Finally, make sure your child understands what you are explaining. Your child repeating your words that “mom and dad are getting a divorce” does not mean that he understands the essence and meaning of divorce. From time to time, children feel the need to return to this topic. They may ask different questions or ask the same thing countless times. They don't want to be annoying, they're just floundering helplessly as they try to cope with the dramatic upheaval in their lives, and they need time to think things through. Children need to receive the required information and repeated assurances of help in order to get out of this situation.

Problems and pitfalls

One of the most severe negative consequences of divorce for a child is that parents, absorbed in their own painful and painful experiences, often have little emotional energy left for them. The child may feel that he is abandoned by both parents, and not just by the one who leaves the family. In addition, the parent left with the child is sometimes forced to find additional work for financial reasons, as a result of which he has even less time and energy left for the child.

Quite often, divorcing parents fall into the seductive and at the same time destructive trap of competing for the love and affection of their child. They can enter into a competition, each of them will try to convince the child to make a choice in their favor. Such a competition or rivalry may be played out as a result of a desire to strengthen feelings of self-worth, to take revenge on a former spouse, to prove that he (she) is no better than her (him), or to make sure that the need for divorce is confirmed by the child's self-rejection from his (her). ) ex-partner. The reasons for the competition between spouses in this arena may be different, but its inevitable result is the same - the child will be seriously agitated, alarmed and morally traumatized by this painful duel.

Sometimes, seeking favor from the abandoned child, the parent who left the family literally showers him with gifts and tries to make every minute of meeting with him an exciting and interesting event and fun. Behind this avalanche of generosity, fun and games lies the fear or fear that without all this, the parent may be rejected. Sometimes this indicates that the parent feels that they cannot communicate easily with the child, and therefore is desperately trying to do something special instead of just being themselves. There is no doubt - children love gifts and shows, but in the end they would rather just spend more time with you, so that, for example, while washing dishes together, they can tell you about what happened at school.

Often, during a quarrel, divorce and in the post-divorce period, children are forced to perform two cruel missions beyond their strength - a spy and a liaison. In such cases, after visiting the estranged parent, they may be subject to intensive questioning; they may be asked to keep one parent's secrets from the other, or to pass on letters that would be wiser for the ex-spouses themselves to pass on to each other. These missions are real torture for children. At first, the intriguing feeling of being involved in someone else's secret or the powers of a courier may seem tempting to a child, but, ultimately, the constant change of preferences and commitment to one side or another can lead to unbearably painful results and consequences. Such a burden is too much for a healthy adult to bear, not to mention the easily vulnerable soul of a child.

During this period, children may experience certain difficulties in expressing and showing some of their emotions. Sometimes, as I said, their anger at one parent can spill out on the other or on a person who has absolutely nothing to do with the matter. Meetings with a parent who has left the family often cause conflicting emotions, and the transition of a child from one parent to another is usually a particularly delicate moment for him.

He can wait for days for this meeting with ever-increasing impatience, and sometimes with painful excitement, but when the day of the desired meeting comes, he may suddenly be afraid to leave the parent with whom he lives alone for some time. What if mom suddenly won’t be home when he returns from dad? Or: what if, in his absence, mom gets sick or sad and feels lonely..? What if he himself gets scared or embarrassed and feels uncomfortable in the unfamiliar interior of his father’s new apartment. Parents may also have mixed feelings. The mother in whose care the child is left may be glad to have received a respite from the constant care and troubles of the child, but at the same time, she may be sad and anxious about the child’s visit to the father. A parent who left the family may be embarrassed and even offended by the fact that his child visiting him seems “squeezed”, that he is constantly somehow on guard or avoids a frank conversation.

It happens that after a divorce, children themselves turn into little parents. A girl can become her mother's main confidante, a source from which her mother draws emotional support. This is a completely inappropriate role for a child; she brings him nothing but harm. A child sometimes takes on an unbearable burden of housekeeping or the responsibilities of a parent in relation to his younger brothers or sisters. And although in the family of a single parent there will certainly be much more work and troubles that could be divided between its members, it is still very important to give children time to be children.

One aspect of divorce has a particularly negative impact on boys. During this period, all children experience a special need to feel dependent and cared for: they may need more affection and reassurance, and may be whiny and “clingy.” Researchers say that girls satisfy their need to be dependent and cared for more easily than boys. Parents are usually more stingy in affection towards their sons and are not as tolerant of such manifestations of their dependence as clinginess or tearfulness. You cannot spoil your children by taking special care of them or satisfying their need for extra attention during this period. Simply by doing this, you will help them feel more confident and, therefore, easier to get through this difficult time.

How to make things easier

During a divorce, it is especially important to give the child the opportunity to remain in close contact with both parents. Do not force him to choose one of you and do not try to convince him that if he treats your ex-spouse well, it will be a betrayal towards you. Most children want a stable, close relationship with both parents and love both parents despite their shortcomings and mistakes. The best thing you can do for your child is to recognize his right to have special feelings for your ex-marriage partner, feelings that do not necessarily have to match your own.

During this period, fathers who have left the family often feel as if left behind. They may feel, for example, that their weekly visits to their child are not so important compared to the hours he spends with his mother. However, experts claim that these visits, i.e. relatively long-term communication with the father is of great value for children and plays a very important role in their emotional rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, after several years, the frequency and regularity of these visits usually decline. As a rule, children react to this very painfully. This state is often hidden behind ostentatious indifference or anger.

As I said, transitions from parent to parent and the intervals between such visits often involve additional stress for the child. You can help the child by saying that he has the right and freedom to have a good time with his dad and that this will not offend or upset you at all. Don't ask him to spy on Dad or keep things secret from him. Don't start the Spanish Inquisition every time he comes home from his father. Reassure him by telling him that during his absence you will feel great and will be at home waiting for his return. Plan a calm routine for the first day he returns home from his father - the child may need some time to calm down and recover from such a transition and change of environment.

During this period, ordinary daily partings - leaving for school, visiting friends - can become emotionally quite difficult for the child, which is expressed in his increased uncertainty and fear of abandonment, which usually result from this kind of crisis. In this case, you don’t need to skimp on assurances that you will never leave him under any circumstances, that you will definitely return to take him home, etc. Sometimes it is recommended to assign him to look after something while you are away. This will stretch a connecting thread between you and serve as a concrete guarantee of your return.

During a divorce, children may show signs of stress. They may find it difficult to pay attention to the teacher's explanation in class; they may become awkward and clumsy on the playing field and lose their place on the team; they may become grumpy and picky towards their comrades, begin to experience fear and suffer from phobias. If this happens, it can be helpful to talk to your child about how stress is affecting their ability to focus and making it difficult to feel energized and confident. Reassure him that his weakening ability to concentrate does not mean that he is stupid, that his clumsiness does not mean that he is weak, and that his fears do not mean that he is a small child.

Explain to him that many children experience the same thing during times of stress. Most of us can remember times of stress when our behavior became so unpredictable and inexplicable that we felt like we were going crazy. What a relief it was to learn that we were only showing signs of stress and not of insanity or some specific degenerative disease.

It is also very useful to teach your child to relax if he is constantly in an excited and tense state. For example, special breathing exercises can help you with this.

Let your child's teachers know about your divorce so they can understand if his behavior suddenly changes. During this period, they can provide the child with additional support.

During a divorce and immediately after it, the mother of a child abandoned by her husband often finds herself drawn into the whirlpool of additional burdens she has taken on. Often she needs to look for a new or additional job in order to improve her shaky financial situation. The additional burden is compounded by anxiety, tension and general emotional discomfort or even breakdown. This means that while the child needs the mother more than before, he actually receives less attention from her. It may seem that every time you sit down to catch your breath, your child is right there with his endless questions and requests. With such a load, it can be difficult for a mother to contain her outbursts of irritation.

One way to alleviate this situation is to set aside some time (say, every evening for half an hour) specifically for yourself and your child to just sit with him, read him fairy tales or interesting stories, play, talk about the events of the past day, and most importantly - in order to strengthen his sense of confidence and self-esteem. Hug, cuddle and kiss him, tell him about his special talents and abilities, how proud you are of him, etc. Let this be a time when your child truly feels loved and appreciated.

This point is very important. In fact, imagine how you would feel if someone did this for you every day!? Warmed by your attention and participation, children will feel more welcome and gain confidence.

During this period of family cataclysms, it is necessary to provide children with a calm, measured and predictable home routine. Try to change as little as possible in their usual life. If possible, keep them in the same school, same neighborhood, same house, etc. Let them know several days in advance when they will meet their father and how long the meeting will last. A reasonably structured, well-known routine will add confidence to them during a difficult period. If you are moving to another place, take familiar things with you to your new home. And if this is not possible, help your child choose something for a new apartment or house - for example, some furniture, decoration or curtains for his bedroom.

This advice also applies to the estranged parent. The new home will seem very foreign to your child at first. And if you let him help you decorate or arrange his room or corner, it will help him feel more comfortable and free.

After a divorce, your child may become unruly. There are many reasons why divorce usually entails a breakdown in discipline. Sometimes this happens because before the divorce, the father was the person responsible for discipline in the family. In his absence, the mother has a hard time playing an unfamiliar role. Sometimes a father living separately from his former family stops disciplining the child, fearing being rejected by him, or because he wants to win him over. Often both parents are so absorbed in their own personal problems that they do not pay attention to the child's behavior. Things become permissible that in an ordinary, normal situation a child would not get away with. Parents view such connivance as a kind of compensation for the troubles associated with the divorce.

It seems that children resist discipline as much as they can, violating generally accepted rules of behavior, becoming impudent, disobedient, and defiant. In this way they sometimes vent anger caused by divorce. Often this is also a way of testing the limits of what is permissible - to see how much you can allow yourself with impunity before being pulled back. You need to reassure your child, reassure him that even if he is sometimes disobedient, you will still love him and take care of him. Many children are secretly convinced that one more skirmish, one more conflict - and you will abandon them, and may not resist the temptation to experience this in practice, bringing the conflict situation to the limit. Although such motivation is quite common, children may not always be able to explain it to you clearly or fully understand it.

While assuring your children that they are dear to you and that you will not abandon them, it is absolutely necessary to make it clear that you will not allow them to become unruly and neglect the rules of behavior. Consistent, rational, and caring discipline is a wonderful gift for a child, giving him a sense of confidence and the opportunity to acquire certain skills and character traits, such as self-control, that will be useful to him as he grows up. It has been found that the extremes of discipline - a hard, authoritarian style and an overly soft or inconsistent liberalism - are not as effective as the middle approach, combining authoritarianism with gentleness, adhering to consistent and reasonable rules.

There is no need to worry too much if the nature of the discipline in your home is different from the discipline in the home of your spouse or your parents. Children adapt to the routines of any home, although it is understandable that the home in which they spend most of their time will have a greater influence on them.

Sometimes in the children's "alignment" of parents - a mother on weekdays and a "weekend" father - their roles seem to crystallize into "kind" and "nagging". Mom falls into the category of all-forbidding, sawing bores, and dad falls into the category of a parent for holiday fun. If you spend the entire week grumbling, nagging, yelling and saying nothing but “no,” you might want to reconsider your position. Find time among your daily routine for affection, jokes and fun. Analyze your method of maintaining discipline, and if it turns out to be ineffective, seek help. There are many excellent books available, and if this is not enough for you, seek advice from a specialist. Talk to your children about what is happening. Tell them how you feel about it all and get their opinion on it. Think about whether you can do something together to live more harmoniously, supporting each other. Remember to praise children when they do the right thing. Too often we focus on the negative aspects of children's behavior and ignore the positive ones. Monitor your emotional state and the emotional state of your children - for example, whether any of you are showing signs of depression or despondency. If so, seek professional help - you don't have to go through this all on your own.

Finally, don't forget that it takes time to recover from a divorce. It is foolish to believe that each of the divorcing parties will be able to adapt to the new situation, the new environment from the first day. Each family member will certainly experience ups and downs on the way to the final resolution of the problem, overcoming moral trauma, mental pain and confusion.

This is very painful. It's scary and offensive. Divorce has never brought satisfaction to anyone. Even if spouses separate by mutual desire (which does not happen very often), even if they did everything in a “civilized” manner, both experience disappointment, pain, and loss. In Russia today, according to Rosstat statistics, about 50% of families break up. Moreover, the majority of divorces occur in those families where the husband and wife have been married for 5 to 9 years. This is a long time. And, as a rule, there are already children in such social units.

Situations, of course, are different, and sometimes divorce really becomes the only reasonable option, but only adults always make the decision to separate. And children always, in all cases without exception, become hostages of parental divorce.

Every child, regardless of age and temperament, upbringing, religion, citizenship and place on the social ladder, loves his mother and father equally strongly. For him, losing contact with any of them is not even a trauma, but a real disaster.

To get at least an approximate idea of ​​how your child feels, take your experiences as a basis and multiply them by two. And that's not all.

Impact on the child’s psyche

Strangely enough, parental divorce has the greatest impact on unborn children. If it so happens that the family breaks up during a woman’s pregnancy, the baby in her womb experiences a spectrum of her mother’s negative emotions and is attacked by incredible doses of stress hormones. A baby may be born with serious disturbances in the functioning of the nervous system and psyche. In 90% of cases, such children are very anxious, capricious, and often get sick.

Both infants and older children feel discord in the family. What are they experiencing?

Outwardly, your offspring may not show anything, especially if the conflict on the home front has been developing for a long time, and everyone is already pretty tired of screaming, showdowns and slamming doors. In this case, the child will most likely view divorce as the logical conclusion of a difficult period. But fires will blaze inside him and volcanoes will erupt, because internal stress (by the way, the most dangerous to human life and health) will not go away on its own. It accumulates and grows.

Often a complex of his own guilt for what happened comes to his “aid.” This happens in children aged 2 to 7 years. The fact is that a child, due to his age, cannot understand all the real reasons for his parents’ divorce. And therefore he “appoints” the culprit – himself. “Dad left because I was bad.” “Mom left because she didn’t listen to her.” This terrible condition tears the child’s soul into two parts. One stays with her mother. The other is with her father. Plus self-dislike. The result is fears (even the development of phobias), hysterics, aggression, or the other extreme - isolation and tearfulness.

If such children are not helped in time, the consequences will be disastrous - mental disorders, the inability to build their own families in the future.

Children aged 9-12 years old go to the other extreme - they begin to experience strong anger at the departed parent (usually dad), resentment, and they begin to feel a sense of their own uselessness. Especially if the remaining parent rushes to arrange his personal life - to look for a new “dad” or “mom”. The child is left alone with his troubles.

Teenagers usually greet the news of divorce with pronounced protest, especially if the family was prosperous or seemed so. Boys are more “boisterous”; they categorically blame their mothers for the fact that dad left, or, conversely, they trample on their father’s authority and take their mother’s side. Thus, they suppress the masculinity in themselves and launch a program of “self-destruction”. Teenage girls experience their parents' divorce more restrainedly, but no less strongly.

Many teenagers admit that they began to feel burning shame for having an incomplete family in front of their peers. And almost all children from families where there has recently been a divorce have decreased intellectual abilities. Children begin to study worse, become distracted and disorganized.

The stress of parental divorce at any age can be so intense that the child becomes physically ill. Some older guys start peeing at night. In teenage girls, the menstrual cycle is disrupted. It is not so rare for children to develop allergies and skin diseases. Chronic illnesses are getting worse.

The most difficult period is the first time after a divorce. For about 6 - 8 weeks you will feel unbearably sad, lonely, hurt and scared. And then the stage of adaptation to the new life will last for another six months. It is important that it is during this period that we, adults, make an effort on ourselves, curb our negative emotions and properly organize the child’s life. Because it’s doubly hard for him. Remember this.

You can find out how a child feels when their parents divorce by watching the following video.

How to tell your child about divorce

If the decision has already been made, and it is final and irrevocable, clearly plan the conversation with your children. If the fact of separation is not yet obvious, do not rush to “get on your child’s nerves.” You need to talk only when there are no false hopes for family reunification.

Who should tell about the upcoming divorce? It's up to you to decide. More often than not, the mission of the messenger with bad news goes to the mother. But it could be dad or both spouses together. If you don't find the strength to keep your emotions under control, entrust an important conversation to the child's grandparents, aunt or uncle. The main thing is that the baby trusts the person who has undertaken to explain to him the immediate prospects of the family. And be sure to try to be present at this conversation.

You need to carefully prepare for an important conversation. Organize everything in your adult head so that you are prepared for any questions your child may have.

You need to choose the right time to talk. It is best if it is a day off, when the offspring does not have to go to school, kindergarten or classes. At the same time, he should not have any important business or responsible event planned. It is unknown how the baby will perceive the unpleasant news. He may become hysterical and may need privacy. Let the conversation take place at home, in a familiar environment.

Who should I tell?

All children deserve the truth. But not all of them, due to their age, will be able to accept your truth, much less understand it. Therefore, it is better not to discuss the upcoming divorce with a child who is not yet 3 years old. Wait until the little one starts asking questions himself. And he will soon wonder where dad is, why he only comes on weekends, where he lives. Prepare your answers. There's still time.

Children aged 3 and older must be informed in an upcoming divorce. The main principle is this: the younger the child, the less details he should be told.

How to build a conversation?

Honestly. Directly. Open.

• Express yourself in simple words that a child of his age can understand. The use of unfamiliar clever expressions and terms, the meaning of which the child will not understand, will cause anxiety and even panic.
• The older the child, the more frank your conversation should be. Use the pronoun "we". “We decided”, “We consulted and want to tell you.” Talk about divorce as an unpleasant but temporary phenomenon. Ask your teen for help to get through a difficult time. “I can’t cope without you,” “I really need your support.” Children love it and are happy to take on additional responsibility.
• You need to speak honestly. Focus on your feelings, but don’t go too far. “Yes, it’s very painful and unpleasant for me, but I’m grateful to dad that we have such a wonderful and beloved you.” Emphasize that divorce is, by and large, a normal process. Life is not over, everything continues. The main thought when talking with a child should be that dad and mom will continue to love, care for, and educate their son or daughter. They won't just live together anymore.
• You should not lie to your child or explain the absence of your father or mother as “urgent matters in another city.” Children have well-developed intuition, and even if they do not know the true causes of the disaster occurring in the house, they will perfectly sense your lies. And this misunderstanding will terrify them. Plus, they may stop trusting you.

When telling your child about the upcoming divorce, you need to avoid a negative assessment of your recently beloved significant other. Your baby doesn’t need your dirty details - who cheated on whom, who stopped loving whom, etc. For him, both parents must remain good and loved. When he grows up, he will figure everything out on his own. But if the separation occurs due to the pathological addiction of one of the family members - alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling, there is no point in hiding it. However, you need to talk about this topic correctly and carefully.

What not to do?

Divorcing parents tend to make the same mistakes. The main one is an obsession with one’s own experiences, the inability to put oneself in the child’s place. Demanding complete adequacy from people who are under extreme stress is stupid, so just remember what you should not do during a divorce in the presence of a child:

• To sort things out, use offensive and humiliating expressions, exaggerate the details of the upcoming divorce or division of property. You will have to find out who owes whom and how much in the courtroom or when the child is not at home. An overheard conversation of such content can give a growing person reason to think about the topic: “How can they talk about an apartment and a car now, when our family is collapsing?” This will form incorrect attitudes for the future - the material will be more important than the spiritual.
• Cry, throw tantrums. Your negative release hits the child painfully in the most vulnerable place. Do you want to cry? Go to a friend, to your mother, to a psychotherapist. There you can cry and complain about the “ungrateful brute” without any problems.
• Drastically change the order of life and family structure. Let everything flow at its usual pace for the child after a divorce. It couldn’t be more difficult for him even without traveling.
• Manipulate a child in a relationship with his former significant other, limit communication with his father.
• Emphasize to the child his similarity with his ex-spouse if he did something bad. You cannot shout at your son who broke an expensive vase that he is “just like his father.” The child will associate the image of the father exclusively with bad deeds. Yes, and such behavior does not suit you.

• There is no need to be embarrassed to seek help from a specialist. Divorce is too much stress and a severe test for the psyche of adults. For a child, it is comparable to a nuclear disaster. Often, neither you nor your child can cope with this without the help of an experienced psychologist.
• Children in a family that is falling apart or has already fallen apart have a doubly need for attention. Give them time, make sure that the stress does not get out of control and does not turn into severe depression or mental illness in the child.
• Try to spend the weekend as before, with the whole family. Of course, if the relationship with your spouse remains friendly. This will require a woman to have enormous endurance and self-control, but it will be worth it. In such an environment, it will be easier for the child to get used to the new life.
• Don't take your anger out on your child. Do not listen to advisers who insist that a boy left without a father’s upbringing needs to be raised tougher and more severely. Such mothers grab the belt with or without reason, tighten the system of punishments and gradually become real dictators.

To learn how to raise a child without a father, watch the video of clinical psychologist Veronica Stepanova.

You can watch how to help yourself and your child survive a divorce in the following video.

After divorce

Divorce is, of course, a serious trauma for a child, but sometimes it is better than continuing to live in a family where there has long been no mutual understanding, respect, where parents compete to see who shouts louder or slams the door. The consequences of divorce for a child in the future are often less serious than the consequences of living in an inadequately aggressive environment.

It is good if the child can continue to communicate with the father and his relatives after the divorce. If this is not possible, you can ask your friends - men, other relatives - representatives of the stronger sex, for help, because a child (especially a boy) needs to communicate with his own kind in gender terms.

Why it is worth finding a father-mentor for your son, watch in the following video, where psychologist Irina Mlodik explains many nuances.

In Russia, children usually stay with their mother. But there are exceptions. Minors can go to live with their father by court decision if the mother leads an antisocial lifestyle, suffers from alcoholism, or uses drugs.

How children and parents will communicate after a divorce depends on how the ex-spouses are able to come to an agreement. It would be a good idea to establish a procedure for communicating with a child after a divorce: who takes him to the pool and when, who picks him up, when dad can take his child to the cinema, and when mom goes on an excursion with him.

To prevent the child from feeling chaos, mom and dad need to strictly adhere to the communication schedule. Both parents must be able to keep their word - they promised to come for the child on Saturday, please keep it. Parents must also determine the time of communication on their own.

It is desirable if the former spouses can find at least one day a month for joint leisure. The child not only needs visits from dad or mom, he needs to be with both of them at least occasionally.

Don’t turn a child into a spy, don’t ask your son who has returned from a pizzeria after a meeting with his father, how is dad, where does he live, does he have anyone, what does he look like? Happy?

Avoid discussing topics about the divorce at meetings with your child. What has happened has passed.

If the ex-husband and wife are unable to build a constructive dialogue and independently agree on the procedure for communicating with the child after a divorce, this can cause additional stress for the child. Will a toddler whose mother tries to limit communication with his father be happy? Both parents legally have the same rights to their son or daughter. If one party tries to infringe on this legal right of the other, going to court with an appropriate statement of claim will help. Then the servants of Themis will set a schedule and time for communication with the child.

I am a supporter of dialogue rather than litigation, and therefore I am confident that two adults can always reach an agreement, provided that they have such a desire. In the end, the child is not to blame for anything. Divorce is only your decision. Don't let him ruin your baby's life. After all, this is a separate person, unique, loving and waiting for reciprocal love. From both of you.

In the next video, psychologist Olga Kuleshova will talk about some of the nuances of divorce and how they can affect the child’s psyche and his future life.

To find out who the children stay with after a divorce, watch the following video.

To learn how best to tell your child about their parents’ divorce, watch the following video.

More than half of marriages end in divorce. Most often, spouses who have lived together for 5 years or more separate. And it is precisely during this period of marriage that there are very often small children in the family. Many divorces happen after 20 years of married life: husband and wife try with all their might to tolerate each other until the children grow up. But are they doing the right thing?

Anastasia Kuznetsova, an expert at the Association of Organizations for the Development of Humanistic Psychology in Education, and educational psychologist, argues:

Divorce is one of the three most stressful events in our lives. Children become hostages of all the troubles that accompany the separation of parents. How to help your child survive this situation? Tell the truth, dodge, avoid answering? Or, contrary to your own beliefs, continue to live with your unloved spouse for the sake of the peace of mind of your own child? There are probably no clear recipes that can protect a child from psychological discomfort. Except for some “beacons”.

At what age is it easiest for a child to cope with their parents' divorce?

There is no logical answer here. At every age, starting from the prenatal period, a child needs both a mother and a father. Does this mean that every effort should be made to preserve the family? Yes, but with one amendment. If all actions have been taken, arguments have been used, steps have been taken, but divorce is still inevitable, then the first thing parents should do is stop tormented by feelings of guilt. Simply because it is not constructive and will not help the child cope with the loss. Adults will needlessly torture both themselves and the child.

Should you pay more attention to your child?

Feeling guilty in front of their child, parents begin to please their child in every possible way: allow more, demand less, pamper in a race. The child begins to take advantage of this, as a result of which he develops not the best character traits. The other extreme is complete dedication to the “orphan”. For this voluntary sacrifice, parents will expect retribution in the future (the same refusal of their grown-up child from his personal life). This deforms the child’s psyche much more than the fact of the parents’ separation itself. Therefore, divorce should not be viewed as the end of the world, but as the starting point of a new life. Building it will require strength and emotions, so you shouldn’t waste them in vain.

Should I tell my child the truth?

Children are extremely conservative. It is important for them that today is similar to yesterday, and tomorrow is similar to today. Life in the family is the child’s world, his coordinate system. The usual way of life is understandable to the child, which means it is safe. Divorce is a drastic change in the usual way of life, a breakdown of the system. Not understanding what is happening around him and what will happen tomorrow, the child loses a sense of security and experiences anxiety, which negatively affects behavior and development. A child's long stay in ignorance can lead him to neurosis.

What to do if the parents have finally decided that they will no longer be together under any circumstances?

- Tell only the truth, without hiding what is happening from the child. Preferably before change hits him.

- Talk to him in an understandable language: it’s difficult for us to live together, so we quarrel and offend each other; if we separate, it will be easier for us to communicate.

— The child should receive an unambiguous, specific and as monosyllabic answer to all his questions. The baby is trying to come to terms with a new life situation. The parents' task is to define its visible boundaries.

- Don’t be afraid of the child’s reactions, be sure to say them out loud, giving the baby the opportunity to realize and experience his condition: you are upset, you miss dad, you want everything to be the same as before, etc.

- Do not change educational principles and requirements for the child. You need to brush your teeth, do homework, and go to bed on time, regardless of whether your parents live together or are separated.

Which parent will be better for the child?

Most often, after a divorce, a child up to 10-12 years old remains with his mother. This is explained by the dominant role of the mother in the formation of personality at this age. Some experts believe that a child is better off with a parent who is less aggressive towards his former other half. Then he retains the possibility of normal communication with both parents, not burdened by prohibitions and feelings of guilt.

In any case, you cannot force a child to choose who he loves more - mom or dad. This choice is incompatible with his worldview. Adults need to try to agree on a mode of communication with the people dear to him that is understandable to the child. A child will experience the separation of his parents more calmly if he is not afraid that he will be deprived of his mother, father or grandmother.

How to explain to a child the absence of mom or dad?

If one of the spouses stops communicating with the child after a divorce, the “sea captain” version is more preferable than “your unlucky dad (mom) doesn’t need you anymore.” A child only hears that he is not needed, which means he is bad.

It may be unpleasant for you to discuss the merits of your ex-other half, but at first you will have to do it. The child should not feel guilty that he loves the “wrong” person and betrays you. “Yes, dad and I can’t live together, but he is wonderful, strong, smart, etc., that’s why we had you...”

How to start a new family?

There is one rule here that may surprise many ordinary people. Under no circumstances should you ask your child for permission for your new spouse to live with you. It is unacceptable to shift responsibility for the fateful decision you have made onto your child. A new marriage is your choice.

In order to build a relationship between a child and a new spouse, you need to make it clear to your child that his place in your life remains the same: you also read books to him before bed, go to the movies together on weekends, etc. Just don’t shift responsibility for raising a child (punishment, control, school work, etc.) for a stranger (perhaps at first) to him. And most importantly, do not impose a “new” dad or mom and do not pit your new spouse against your ex out loud in front of the child.

Family life is about concessions and compromises, about the ability to forgive, endure, and remain silent. This is happiness and joy when both spouses strive for this, these are common children, worries and financial issues. Every person needs a family, even the youngest and the oldest, but sometimes there are situations when spouses decide to divorce. Some lose their nerves, some find new happiness in another person, and other people simply do not get along in character. Anything can happen in life. But how do children cope with their parents' divorce?

A new life is always a little scary, changing something, even for the better. Previously, divorces were not welcomed in society, but now people have become more free to make decisions. There is no need to fear that because of a divorce you will be fired from your job or evicted from your apartment, unless it is your own spouse. The neighbors may gossip, secretly pointing fingers, but the divorce will have no other effect on social life. Women will receive the social status of "single" and change their surname to their maiden name if they wish, and men will become single again.

And they will all go looking for a new life partner. But what about the children? They cannot quickly get used to the new life and have a very difficult time with the divorce of their mother and father. Some kids talk about this, but teenagers can do rash things, they have more time when no one controls them. Children take a long time to get used to new people and are wary of their parents’ chosen ones, often not letting them in or accepting them. At different ages, children experience divorce differently.

Conventionally, children can be divided into three age groups

1. Tender age. This group includes children from 0 to 3 years old; it is easier for them to cope with the breakdown of their family; they just need to surround them with attention and care, to make it clear that they are still loved and appreciated by both parents.
2. An unnecessary weed. This group includes children aged 4 to 9 years. How do children cope with divorce? They blame themselves for everything, try to save their parents’ marriage and firmly believe in the possibility of family reunification.
3. A child who does not like men is a man-hater. This group includes children aged 10 to 13 years. Children blame their fathers for their parents' divorce, even when the child lives with the father. He believes that if dad loved mom very much and paid more attention to her, then the divorce would not have happened. And if the father has already left the family, then the child, especially the boy, does not love all the men on the planet. He will protect his mother from new relationships, believing that the relationship will again bring her pain and sadness.
4. Cactus. This group includes teenagers aged 14 to 18 years. They blame themselves for the breakdown of mom and dad's marriage. Moreover, children blame their parents not only for the divorce, but also for all their failures.

Children from 0 to 3 years old

Children at this age are just learning about the world; it opens up to them with new colors. What colors they will be depends entirely on the parents. If it is not possible to save the family even for the sake of the child, divorce is the only way out of the burdensome family situation, then first you need to tell your child about your decision. Parents should not make trouble and sort things out in front of a small family member, so that he does not get the impression that the quarrel is his fault.

Agreeing in advance on the reasons for divorce is the most appropriate idea at this moment. You shouldn’t tell your baby nasty things about how bad his dad is or how bad his mother is, he won’t understand it, the child loves his mom and dad equally, they are the best for him. If the child is very small, he is under one year old, then you should never quarrel in the presence of the baby, he will grow up nervous and timid. He will often have nightmares in which adults argue; in kindergarten and at school it will be difficult for such a child to find a common language with educators, teachers and peers.

If the child is between the ages of one and three years, then the parents must tell him together that they will no longer live together. Most often, the father leaves the family, so you need to patiently explain to the baby that dad will come to visit, they just won’t live under the same roof with mom anymore. But his parents love him just as much.

In any case, divorce will be a psychological trauma for the child. If the divorce is caused by the alcoholism of one of the parents, and he does not intend to take part in the further upbringing of the child, then there is no need to force the child to call the new person mom or dad. The child himself will accept a new person into his environment, especially at such a tender age. The child will still love his parent who left the family.

Problems will not arise until six months, if the child is surrounded by the attention and care of loved ones, in a week, maximum two, he will forget that there were two parents in his life, problems can begin in the process of growing up. But if the baby is from six months to three years old, then within a day his mood for no apparent reason may change for the worse, he will be bored and look for a parent who no longer lives with him under the same roof, but has gone to another family and no longer accepts him. participation in the upbringing of your child.

Most often, the father leaves the family, and the baby remains to live with his mother. You need to think in advance about how to communicate with your child, answer his questions honestly, but not discuss the reasons for the divorce with him. The baby may begin to blame himself for everything; he needs to be shown that he is not to blame, this is how the circumstances developed.

If the father does not take part in upbringing and is completely absent from the life of a small person in society, and the mother has a new man, then the child should be told very honestly that a new person will live with them, but not force them to call him dad. At a young age, children, as a rule, themselves begin to call the man who replaced their own father as dad.

Children from 4 to 9 years old

When a family breaks up, and after a divorce there is a child between the ages of 4 and 9 years old, he experiences the divorce very hard, although the parents pay little attention to it. What are some red flags that you should pay attention to?

At this age, children love to draw, they draw the world around them, and try to depict their feelings with paints. Red, orange, and yellow colors dominate in the drawings of happy children—the colors of joy, happiness, and love. If there is a lot of green in the picture, this means that the child is calm and does not suffer from mental disorders or anxiety.

In the drawings of children whose parents have divorced or are on the verge of divorce, gray, black and mixed dirty colors dominate. The baby is anxious, he is afraid for his future, worries about his family, perhaps he is trying to tell his dad or mom about his experiences, but adults are busy with their own problems and do not pay attention to children's fears. But in vain.

Then other problems begin. The child cannot find a common language with his peers, and his performance at school drops. Such children become almost uncontrollable because they try to attract attention to themselves in the best way they can. And the fastest way for them to do this is through bad behavior. The child will think that if he behaves badly, he has serious problems, then this will unite the parents.

In addition to poor academic performance and bad behavior, the child tries to unite his parents by the fact that he can run away from home, believes that if something threatens his life or health, the family will unite. Kids feel lonely; there is no need to leave the child in such a difficult situation for him.

Most parents, after a divorce, shift the problems of raising children onto the shoulders of another generation - grandparents, but they cannot properly replace parents. Nobody can. And if a new family has appeared, where there is another man or another woman, and a joint child is born there, then the older baby cannot be deprived of attention and sent to his grandparents, he feels unnecessary, like a weed in a garden of cultivated vegetables.

Children from 10 to 13 years old

At the age of twelve, a teenager begins to experience a transitional age period; he reacts differently to relationships with the opposite sex, although first love is still far away, but at this age stage a rethinking of relationships between boys and girls occurs. When a family breaks down, rethinking occurs differently. The children are busy with family problems and trying to get over the divorce.

Girls who grew up in single-parent families very often repeat the fate of their mothers; they believe that in the future they will be able to raise and raise a child themselves. They don't need a man in their life. This setting is set precisely from the ages of 10 to 13 years.

The boys become man-haters, they condemn the father who abandoned the family, and do not allow new men near their mother. They try to take the place of the eldest man in the house and begin to protect their mother. Boys, although they protect their mother, subconsciously copy the behavior model of their own father. The boy gets the impression that he is not obligated to start a family, and he will not be responsible for his children in the future. Although there is still a long way to go before one’s own wedding and the birth of one’s children, the attitude is set precisely at this age stage.

How to help children survive divorce at this age and not copy the model of a broken family? It is best for one of the parents to go on a trip with the child immediately after a divorce, preferably for the one who left their home. The child should be transported to a place where it is sunny so that he is distracted from problems and does not move away from his father or mother, who will no longer be under the same roof with him.

If a new family appears, then the parents are obliged to try to maintain friendly relations, at least for the sake of the child, so as not to cause him psychological trauma. It is necessary to explain to children that if parents are divorced, this does not mean that all men and women are bad. At this age, adults cannot always help the child, because he is entering his own transitional age.

This person is not yet an adult, but he is no longer a child. It is best that after a divorce, a psychologist works with a child between the ages of 10 and 13 to set the right life guidelines and help cope with the breakdown of the family.

Children from 14 to 18 years old – girls

Children aged 14 to 18 are practically adults. Parents do not pay attention to their children’s experiences, they are busy with their own problems, and the children do not show that they feel very bad.

What do children do during a divorce? They are left to their own devices and become uncontrollable.

Girls seek attention from the opposite sex and early start relationships with boys that lead to sex. A girl’s partner is chosen to be older than herself so that he can protect her from worries and problems, but the girl does not understand what early sexual relations can lead to.

In addition to sexually transmitted diseases, teenage pregnancy can occur. And these are serious problems that, of course, concern both parents, but can ruin the child’s life. She herself is still a child at that age; an abortion can result in infertility, and the child can result in a broken life.

What can be done to prevent this from happening? It is best to keep young daughters busy with studies and some kind of hobby, so that relationships with the opposite sex, even if they appear, do not come first. Sex will not become an all-consuming idea, and the young man will not become an urgent need.

Moreover, both parents should be interested in their daughter’s achievements. If it is a sport, then the parents should attend the competition together, even with their new life partners and children from new marriages. Friendly relationships are the salvation of a child’s life; he will not become unhappy and will not blame adults for his failures.

Children from 14 to 18 years old - boys

Boys also begin to blame their parents for the divorce and their own failures, but in order to survive the breakup of the family, the boys begin to do stupid things. Very often they abandon their studies and find older friends from whom they learn life lessons. After all, parents do not have enough time for their own son. Boys start smoking, thinking that it is modern, this act makes them older and helps them cope with time, but this is not so.

The boys try alcohol, first weak, like beer and energy drinks, then move on to strong alcohol. They don’t think about the harmful effects of alcohol on a young body; alcohol weakens the nervous system, has a bad effect on the psyche, and can even lead to infertility. And then behavior may begin that can lead the young man down a crooked path and subject to criminal punishment. Theft, drugs and other crimes do not seem something terrible to the boy, because his parents did not explain this to him at the time. How to help a child?

The father should devote more time to his son, visit the stadium or gym with him, and maintain friendly communication. Even if a child has a wonderful mother, he still needs a father. If the father is an alcoholic, and the mother has a new husband, then the stepfather should try to make friends with the boy, not replace the place of his own father, but become a friend to the boy, give him advice. Sports are better than alcohol. If you instill in a boy a love of sports, he will not start drinking alcohol in large quantities and doing things that he will later have to be ashamed of.

Of course, a man and woman who have experienced a divorce must build their personal lives, because children grow up, and on the threshold of old age no one wants to be left alone. You need to try to become a friend and adviser to children - these are the responsibilities of parents.