If we don’t allow children to see bad along with good, how will they learn the difference?
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Without fail, whenever I speak with a friend, family member, potential client, or perfect stranger who is contemplating whether or not to file for divorce, the main reason they have for their hesitation is the fear that getting a divorce will cause irrevocable damage to their children. Their own confidantes may have spoken to them harshly, telling them that “walking away” from their family is a selfish act, and pleading with them to “think of the children!”
I had this concern for my own children throughout the course of my marriage. I do not take this fear lightly. The ideal situation for any child would be to grow up in an intact family with two parents who love and cherish each other, modeling a healthy team-based relationship their children will seek out and emulate as adults, and so on for generations.
But we are human, and some marriages just don’t play out that way. The question becomes, what are we teaching are children in a home in which parents sleep in separate bedrooms, affection exists between parents and children but not between husband and wife, and no one goes on a date past age 25?
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I remember two instances between my parents when I was somewhere around 10 years old – one involving a pretty wicked fight, and the other involving what I considered some pretty disgusting PDA. During the first, I melodramatically threw myself into a chair in front of them, wailing about how I hated it when they fought. During the second, I groaned loudly and said something along the lines of “Gross! Get a room!”
The question becomes, what are we teaching are children in a home in which parents sleep in separate bedrooms, affection exists between parents and children but not between husband and wife, and no one goes on a date past age 25?
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My mother’s response to me in both cases was the same: “Deal with it.” My unconscious attempts to manipulate them thwarted, I huffed off as only a pre-teen girl can do.
My mother explained to me that she had made a conscious choice to allow me and my brother to see that marriages come with the good and the bad. There are times when the healthiest of couples fight bitterly, just as there are times when they want to rip each other’s clothes off.
It was a decision to model the type of relationships she hoped my brother and I would have with our future spouses, as well as a decision to reinforce that we the children were not the bosses of the home and would not be until we were adults with our own homes, a key concept for all children’s strong developmental need for safety.
My parents were able to model this within a happy marriage, and the lesson is no less relevant within a marriage that is struggling. Children will play testing games, pushing and pulling boundaries between themselves and their parents no matter the situation.
When 8-year old Jonny, whose parents are divorcing, tantrums and yells at them that they need to remarry because they are destroying his life, he is expressing sadness, and he is also experimenting to see just how much he can get away with, the same way his best friend Bobby, whose parents are still crazy about each other after 15 years, may yell at them that they should divorce so he can have two sets of everything like Jonny, who has one home with his mom and another with his dad.
I would hope that neither boys’ parents plan to divorce or remarry at their child’s whim. No child could handle the fear of their own power that would come with their parents doing so.
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I would hope that neither boys’ parents plan to divorce or remarry at their child’s whim. No child could handle the fear of their own power that would come with their parents doing so. The best response to these tantrums, as to most tantrums, is the ever reliable “Deal with it.”
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We want our children to be healthy. We want our children to be happy. We want our children to be resilient. We want them to be able to DEAL with their lives. We should hear them out. We should model for them the type of household we hope they build for themselves someday. Staying in an unhappy marriage does not prevent anyone from being hurt. It simply prolongs a chronic status of emotional fear and make believe.
Deal with it.
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This article originally appeared on LiveThroughTheHeart.com and is republished on Medium.
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