November 5, 2001

Divorce recovery for children takes a different track than with adults
___GLORIETA, N.M. (BP)--Because younger children can't use sophisticated words to communicate feelings, helping them recover from the trauma of their parents' divorce takes skill and organization, a counselor said.
___"Divorce recovery with children is a whole different ballgame than it is with adults," advised Dodie Williams, a licensed professional counselor and marriage and family therapist. She spoke to discipleship leaders attending an annual conference at LifeWay Glorieta Conference Center.
___Leaders who facilitate a divorce-recovery program for children must spend extra energy helping them get in touch with their feelings, Williams said.
___As a resource, she introduced "KidShare: What Do I Do Now?" a 13-week divorce-recovery course developed by the children's discipleship area at LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.
___The goal of a divorce recovery program for children, she said, is to provide a safe place for them to talk about their feelings. "Of course, we have to provide the mastery of words, through pictures, drawing or play, to help them figure out how they are feeling," she explained.
___Recovery offers children of divorce a more optimistic future, Williams said. "If we can help them get through their grief, we can promote emotional, spiritual, social and mental health in these children."
___The divorce of their parents can affect children, especially those still in grade school, in specific ways, she recounted:
___ They blame themselves for the divorce. "Children this age believe they cause everything to happen.
___"If you don't help children deal with the fact that they did not cause this tragic event, they begin to think their world is out of control," she said. "When you first get hold of them, children are in the business of trying to fix this mess between their parents."
___ Their self-esteem may be affected. "They don't like to be labeled as children of divorce." Also, their whole world is out of kilter, she said. "Everything familiar and predictable has become unfamiliar and unpredictable, and it can affect the way they see themselves."
___ They probably have less economically. "Most of the time, women are going to get custody of the children, and the day the couple walks out of divorce court, the man is usually better off and the woman heads toward poverty unless she was the primary breadwinner."
___Doing with less, Williams said, can make the children angry. "They believe they wouldn't have to do without if their parents hadn't gotten a divorce."
___ Their peer relationships may suffer. "The child may not have as much in common with their friends whose families are still intact. They get teased a lot, especially if they have to move to another town with the custodial parent."
___ The child may quit trusting God. "After all, children receive their image of what God is like from the way their parents treat them. When one parent suddenly disappears, they begin to associate that with God."

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