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Five Stages of Grieving Your Child May Experience After Divorce
When you are going through a divorce parenting can sometimes be very challenging especially during the most emotional parts. It has been compared to the same process you may go through when someone dies. Extensive research has been done regarding terminal ill patients and their feelings were studied regarding how they felt through the process of finding out until their death. These studies can be used to understand what children go through when their parents are going through a divorce. Going through the grieving process will help children heal and deal with the loss. There are stages that they will go through and they may vary in order or the child may experience some at the same time. Some stages may come back and then progress into another stage. And although the grieving process is painful and difficult, it will end in healing and this will lead your child to grow as a person.
The initial reaction to any event that is traumatic is shock. This may cause an unwillingness to understand and believe that this is happening to them. After this first reaction, there are five stages that might help them cope with the loss of the other parent.
The first stage is denial. This may include the child thinking that the parents will change their minds and get back together and live happy ever after. They may also think that the divorce will never happen.
The second stage is anger. Some children will take the route of blaming someone for the sadness they fell. They can become irritable and hard to manage. They will even go to the extent of blaming each parent for mistakes they might have made to cause the divorce to happen.
The third stage is bargaining. Children tend to think if they make a deal with their parents they may stay together. In this stage the child may feel they have some kind of control over the situation. In the bargaining stage the child may then focus on the hope after divorce instead of the sadness they feel because of it.
The fourth stage is depression. Depression will set in once the child realizes that they can’t do anything to stop the divorce. This process is very important and the parents need to allow their child to go through this and allow them to express their feelings concerning it. The parent does not need to tell the child to focus on the positive as it will not allow the child to continue to heal and deal with their problems head on.
The fifth stage is finally acceptance. This process may not result in happiness, but it will get them past the feeling of the loss. It may begin that they are a little less depressed and a little more stable and it will progress as times goes on. This process may take months to several years to occur. The divorce process is a major transition and it is important to leave plenty of room for growth in your child. There are no rules and it can be different in each child. Your children adapting and accepting the divorce will also depend on how you handle the divorce. If you heal, your child will soon come to heal right alongside with you.