Is divorce news easier for college-age kid than home-kid?

Parent Cafe
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<p>It seems to me parents sometimes underestimate how their initial separation/divorcing news impacts college kids. Parents focus on adjustment by younger sibs who still reside at home. Of course the young ones must regroup and begin new patterns such as shuttling between locations, consoling parents, or watching them date. It’s up close for them each day, along with initial relief from domestic tension.</p>

<p>Still I wonder if some parents underestimate the trauma to older students who live outside the old “nest”
but come home to it significantly altered. Sure s/he has a dorm room and friends on hand, but sometimes the return home for vacations is so jarring, especially the first year. </p>

<p>Any experiences or suggestions?</p>

2

<p>It is a jarring experience. I can’t provide any advice, but I can tell you a story.</p>

<p>College students tend to think of “home” as a place that doesn’t change. They’re startled when they find out that a neighbor has moved away or a local restaurant has closed. A big change like divorce is even more disturbing.</p>

<p>My husband’s parents divorced when he was a junior in college (we were engaged at the time) and both married other people within the next few years. He found it very disconcerting – a change from everything he had ever known. To me, his reaction seemed very odd; my parents had been divorced since I was nine, and to me having two families was quite normal. To him, it never became normal – probably because he didn’t spend enough time at home anymore to allow him to adjust to the new situation. From his point of view, he could never go “home” again – because the home and family he had always known no longer existed – a situation that was intensified when both of his parents remarried to people whom he never became comfortable with. </p>

<p>As time went on, he actually became more comfortable with my family than his own, even though my parents were also divorced, because my family’s situation was more stable. My parents had been divorced since long before he met me; our family had long since established patterns of life that incorporated the fact of their divorce and were comfortable for everyone (e.g., Christmas was celebrated by my father’s family on the evening of December 24 and by my mother’s family on Christmas Day, so that my sister and I – and later, my future husband, who is Jewish and therefore did not participate in any Christmas activities with his own family – could be part of both celebrations). </p>

<p>Despite all this, I don’t think parents who divorce when their kids are in college should feel guilty. We parents have lives to live, too, and sometimes those lives involve big changes. Also, even if parents don’t divorce, there will be other changes in their lives during the time when their kids are in college or afterwards that will jolt the kids out of their misconception that home never changes. Parents may move to a new home, maybe in a different part of the country. Elderly relatives may need to join the household. Parents may change jobs, take full-time jobs if they didn’t have them when the kids were growing up, or retire. People’s lives may change because of health or financial problems. People will eventually die. We can’t protect our kids from these things; we can just try to be sensitive to the fact that they may find the changes upsetting because somewhere in the back of their minds, they thought that home would always be the way it was when they were growing up.</p>

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<p>The research suggests that in general, the older a child is when the parents divorce the more difficult it is for them to cope with. Which makes sense in that a greater amount of their life and history is affected than say that of a small child. Two of my daughter’s friends’ parents divorced when the kids were sophomores in college and both struggled for at least the next 12-18 months adjusting to the new order of things at “home”. Both became quite depressed for part of that time. College Counseling Centers are a very good resource for students with divorcing parents and often have literature available as well as group and individual counseling.</p>

4

<p>My parents divorced when I was 30. It was a very difficult experience for me and my adult siblings, and I can’t imagine that it is not difficult for any children, no matter how old they may be.</p>

5

<p>Wow…I think it depends.
Certainly, I would think the day to day life of the kid who is at home is affected more. I can say this from personal experience in my family. But yes, I agree that it is also difficult for a college student or adult.
In a family I know who is going through this, the college student has decided NOT to come “home” next summer and will live at his college location. Home is very different these days and I think he’s tired of being in the middle. It’s sad but will probably lead to the kid maturing faster than most.</p>

6

<p>I one time saw Dr. Barry Brazelton talk on what he called the "touchpoints’ in a child’s development and the issues they deal with at the various stages of their development. He suggested that ages five and eighteen deal with many of the same issues, mostly revolving around independence, both from mom and dad and from the home. He suggested that many of the same strategies you would use with five year old should work with an eighteen year old. He also said that in his research he had come to the conclusion that from a child’s point of view these are the two worst times for parent’s to divorce.</p>

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<p>^^What strategies would help a 5 year old through a divorce ? (since Dr. Brazelton equates ages 5 and l8 as the two hardest times)? </p>

<p>Obviously they’d be adapted to l8-year-old language. At least with 5 year olds we know a bit more of the follow-up adjustments as we see them under our noses. Seems like if the divorce hits at l8 the kids get estranged. Marian knows because it’s her husband. </p>

<p>Wow just wow. This is difficult to ponder. Thanks for above thoughtful replies.</p>

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<p>My parents were divorced when I was 5. Then my mom remarried, and divorced again when I was 13. She remarried a third time and divorced again when I was 25.</p>

<p>My husband and I have been married for 38 years, the majority of them very happy ones. I’m sure that the instability of my original family made an impact, but now, after two kids and many years of marriage, what stands out is that my relationship with my mom is very strained and difficult. She has been single now for over 30 years, and she still talks about her ex’s, constantly rehashing the past with herself playing the victim. I feel like I not only lost my three “dads”, but I’ve lost a mother as well. And it has never occurred to her that her divorces could have any impact on me at all. </p>

<p>I think that most kids can overcome divorce at any age. Life throws us a lot of curve balls, and this is just one of them. It’s probably no coincidence that I found a man who is one of the most stable and even-tempered people on the planet, and a wonderful father. Through him, I gained a wonderful family of in-laws whom I’ve adopted as my own family.<br>
Divorce is hard, but there are worse things for kids to go through. Poverty, hunger, abuse, neglect – much harder to overcome.</p>

9

<p>I lived through my parents’ strained marriage all through my childhood, honestly believing that married people regularly got in shouting matches and door-slamming contests, and that it was just a part of life.</p>

<p>I don’t know what was more disruptive to me… The time leading up to my parents’ divorce, my mother’s mental and physical illnesses, the divorce, when the divorce stalled because my mother was too incapacitated to assist in the proceedings or pay her own bills, when I had to take away her car and put her in assisted living and help the state appoint a guardian for her, when my dad didn’t understand my anger at him and my feeling as though he’d abandoned my sick mom and left me with a burden that I didn’t deserve and wasn’t equipped to handle at the age of 24, when I found out that my dad had been seeing another woman and keeping it secret from me, when my dad was living out his bachelor life when I was supposed to be having fun in college, when I had to assume the parent role for my younger brother, or having to pay for the therapy to sort it all out. ;)</p>

<p>Either way, it made me stronger. It was an untenable situation for anybody to be put into, but it made me more empathetic, and I’m a stronger person now, and I have a wonderful husband who’s been fantastic through everything, and my mom is being cared for, and my dad is happily remarried. It’s been awkward, like putting one’s shoes on the wrong feet, and there was a long time that I just didn’t acknowledge my childhood memories because I felt like they’d been obliterated. (That was a mistake… I now feel more fulfilled, looking back over childhood pictures and remembering how things were when I was growing up, but for a while it was painful.) I had a lot of anger at my parents, both of them, for a long time, but now I realize that they just had two realities that diverged. They were both correct in their actions from the vantage points of their own realities, both of which were completely valid. I learned a lot about conflict. I learned a lot about what I wanted in my marriage. I got a lot more faith in my own marriage, too–we’re nothing like my parents in all the ways that matter, and I learned to watch for what healthy relationships look like.</p>

<p>So, it was very difficult, but it ended up being okay. My only regret is that I wasn’t treated as though my parents’ divorce would be a big deal to me, and I think people honestly believed that I was being silly when I was upset at their divorce. I was supposed to be “mature” about it, where “mature” meant “don’t have upset feelings.” There was a while where I was <em>not</em> okay, and I wish that had been accepted by people, and I wish I had been offered emotional resources and support to deal with things.</p>

<p>That’s the only thing I’d change, though. I’m glad my mom is in a place where she can be safe and cared for, and my dad wasn’t capable of providing that sort of care, either physically or emotionally. I do truly want my parents to be happy, and much to my bemused chagrin, I really do like my new stepmother. She’s my Facebook friend and everything. :)</p>

<p>It’s not easy. It’s not trivial, and it shouldn’t be trivialized. It’s as painful for the adult children as it is for the parents. But it’s not the worst thing in the world.</p>