The child's grief in the face of marital breakdown

Now as before, we are carriers of the relationship with our parents and that of all those who determine our developing world.

MY PARENTS SEPARATE

What happens in a child before the separation from his parents? Do you have the ability to prepare the corresponding duel? How should your parents act to help in the process? If so, under what conditions is this possible? How does it affect your emotional development and your adult love life? How will it determine your way of being mother, father?

I will try in this column to answer these questions, and I will limit myself to the detriments that the prolonged and indelible absence of a parent has on the emotional development of the child, but not due to death, and that, therefore, it may or may not be affordable the child (ren) at set intervals.

WORLD STATISTICS

We know that, of the separated marriages, between 80 to 90% it is the father who is homeless, reason why, my considerations will refer, first of all, to the effect of his absence on the development of the child; At least 50% of the world's children will not have, today, a good night kiss from the father; Much less, this same percentage, you can enjoy, the next morning, a family breakfast as a result of the destroyed home.

IN WASTE HOUSEHOLDS:

It is the father who is mostly absent; Consequently, it is the mother who is responsible for the care of the children; There are men who, unfortunately, not only separate from their wife, they also separate from their family, seriously damaging their decendents.

Therefore, regardless of the sex of the children, some fundamental problems in emotional development that are affected by the absence of the parent are:

THE CHILD'S "SELF-CONCEPT":

Given how traumatic it is for the child, the separation from its parents, development will be arrested and damaged in its normal evolution, since the absence of the father will cause very negative effects on the mechanisms that will erect its own internal feeling. of:

Determination; Probity; Estimation.

In addition to affecting your safety as an individual, this is:

His self-esteem, Self-image, His "masculinity", His "femininity".

Likewise, it will interfere in the development of:

Your Super-me:

The Super-I is structured through the image that the father produces in the child.

Seen from the psychoanalytic perspective, the father appears as:

The rival in love and; In the possession of the mother; The generator of "limits"

For this reason, the father will remain in the child's consciousness as:

The second most important figure of love in his life; Of authority and power; Who to love and overcome; Therefore, the image of the father will be introjected then, as an element of authority.

For the same reason, the Oedipal Conflict:

It cannot "be overcome" without the presence of the father, or at least, with the presence of another masculine being, who:

Identification process:

Separate the child from the mother and, at the same time, be an object of identification for the child;

This highlights what Freud and the psychoanalytic line after him have already been able to demonstrate, that the essential and definitive structure of man is carried out by virtue of the Oedipal Conflict and the positive overcoming of the process.

In essence, it is about rescuing the child from the mother's dependency, which, up to a certain age, is extremely necessary.

Presenting the father as a valid object for rescue and identification, that is, the male figure and everything that it entails as and in:

The masculine, the sexual, the affective, the social, the moral… You must not; in short, the father is the Law.

THE CHILD'S “CONCEPT OF HUMAN BEINGS”:

From the established interactions, as I have already pointed out in other columns, the child, among other important themes, bases his linguistic construct, in relation to who the "others" are and, this will involve his entire external world, since;

The exterior is the place where other human beings live and coexist; Towards which they must recreate a defined affective orientation and,

To which you must respond emotionally:

First as a child; Later as an adult, in a plausible, mature, and valid form. How can he believe in the "other", if his most important beings have abandoned him or implicitly send him the message "you are not important to me"?

THE SIGNIFICANTS

To better understand what I want to reveal, we must ask ourselves:

What is the mother for the child? What is the father for the child? What are the values associated with the father figure? How do you see them through "his eyes" and his childhood feelings?

MOTHER

The child's first relationship with the world, psychoanalysis tells us is:

With the maternal womb, here begins the oral stage, - first eighteen months - relationship that is not only physical with the world through the mother, it is also intimate emotional union with her;

Affectivity

There is no doubt that the child's whole life revolves around the mother and all her affectivity is centered on her;

From birth until the age of three, the child lives in an emotional state of uptake, a state that:

It shows his total dependence; He does not have a real assessment of himself or others, and; His reality passes and manifests itself within what we could specify as narcissism or egocentrism.

THE FATHER

The influence of the father in these early years of the child is indirect, and is done through the mother.

The mother, we said, is the primary character of the child, especially in the first five years.

AFFECTIVITY

The father achieves, through love and the loving interaction that he provides to the mother of his son, especially in the first three years, to have a direct action on the development of the child, therefore, I can affirm that a beloved woman and happy, he has every opportunity to develop a healthy, serene, balanced and without excess attachment in the loving relationship with his son, that is, the father makes his wife happy and, as a consequence, the mother makes her son happy.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE FATHER

The father fulfills multiple and complex roles and, his analysis, will make us understand the effect of the deviations, with respect to those roles, that take place, when the father leaves the home.

The separation of the father in these first three years, or an insufficient presence, will seriously affect the child;

Everything will depend on the psychological state of the mother in the interactions with the child.

Interactions that can be transmitted from this to your child:

Insecurity; Fear; Anguish; Depression; A super-protection; And / or, finally, a lack of relationships that impede a normal evolution, preventing the evolution of affective ambivalence. (Love Hate)

We must not forget that the mother will be living, her own grief for the loss as significant, as it is:

His life project His family project An “abandoned” mother will make her grief felt and transmitted to her son.

PARENTS IN THE AFFECTIVE LIFE OF A CHILD

For a child of any age, and denoted in the first five years, the parents are:

The principle of life itself in the form of:

Love, food and clothing;

In addition, that, the child bases, - along with biologically inherited factors as a species - all his certainty of life, on facts such as:

The presence of parents who will take care of your needs of all kinds; Which will protect you from any threat, mainly external.

To this basic feeling of body security and the concept associated with it in the child's mind, other elements are added in the general assessment that the child makes of his parents:

They are the bearers of love in and for itself, or symbolized in gifts; they are the information sages, who explain their world to him and protect him in it and from him, in an almighty way.

In his "magical" wisdom and omnipotence, too:

They participate in your life, direct your behavior and determine ideals of conduct in individual and social life.

So, the parents could say, they are:

The epitomes of the parent's fundamental image, as it exists in the young child's mind.

TIME AS A SIGNIFICANT

As it evolves, it grows, there are many modifications that this concept of strict dependence and need of its parents “suffers”, because:

The child progresses towards the necessary concept of himself as an individual or "self" that behaves "independently";

At which point your behavior will mean instilled or incorporated mental images of those parents who:

For better or for worse, they must constitute the most powerful models that he will have for life within himself. You will gradually pass and evolve from Endogamy to Exogamy, that is, satisfying your emotional and erotic needs with members outside the family.

These parenting concepts largely prescribe what the child's expectations will be about:

Human beings in general in their present and future world. Who will you approach, or; From which he will depart;

Therefore, your expectation of rewarding and satisfying experiences will be determined to a considerable degree by:

The way in which these will be introjected; To such an extent that, from his early affective interrelation with his mother, during the first eighteen months, - oral stage - will determine his optimism or pessimism.

MODELING THE AFFECTS

These are the models of human love objects in their environment.

The intrinsic value of oneself as a person that reaches development, is externalized by:

The expression of love; The care; Attention; The protection; Gifts; The image of himself that his parents construct, from the language, through which they express who he is and his true value.

The intimacy with him of his parents, through his:

Presence; Action; Interaction

Fully lived by the child, since:

The concept of own value is inevitably a product of the expressed need or desire of another. It is, inevitably, the image that, as a mirror, its parents return to it in terms of its intrinsic value It is the great drama that unwanted children live, since they never find an echo to their primary and essential needs And / or those who grow up with a permanent feeling of devaluation or abandonment after separation from their parents. They are not reflected in the desire of the other to build him.

Therefore, we can say that all the expressions have generated the linguistic construct that has occurred in it, starting from;

Healthy or definitely harmful and / or pathological interactions with their parents and / or people in their care . Therefore, the interaction and inter-relationship of the child with the first love figures of her life will be vital for the future psychological, intellectual well-being and in her condition of being social. Here we also consider important caregivers

LESSON LEARNED

The great cost to society of the absence of love figures, mainly parents, in the early years, is what has led many countries to offer them a salary for staying at home looking after their children.

They have understood, understood and learned that:

There is a direct relationship with the drug problem; Alcoholism

Teenage pregnancies

Marriage failures

In addition to this, there is the freezing during that period of time of his job; In addition to the increase in fees for kindergartens, to ensure that children are raised by their parents or, at least, one of them. Unfortunately, we will not see this in Chile, until about ten more years, since communicationally we are in line with everyone in the world today, but, regarding social changes, we are at least ten years past due..

PARENTS AND THE SELF CONCEPT IN THE CHILD

If these hypotheses, about the importance that relations with parents have for the child:

In the formation of his concept of the self, and; In the formation of the concept of human beings

They are so effective, as demonstrated in the study of human behavior:

It is possible to record and outline the effect that each and every one of the parents' absences have on the child with respect to the most efficient model that we can aspire to.

For the consideration of the trauma that the separation generates, I chose for its analysis:

The dire effect of prolonged or permanent absence of a parent on such concepts. These various effects come to our attention through countless clinical observations and research around the world.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Therefore, I maintain that the separation or divorce, for many children, is a generating event of PTE, –Post Traumatic Disorder by Stress, a fact that should concern us as a society, since the permanent deleterious effect of a parent on such concepts, we finally leads to maintain that:

Those that parents make to their children, these will later do to society, to other human beings and to all living beings.

SEPARATION BEFORE THREE YEARS

The danger of inference

We have already said that the absence of the father in these first three years, or a deficient presence, can seriously affect the child.

Let us begin the analysis, where the separation occurred before three years of age.

In saying, the boy hardly knew the father or does not remember seeing him.

Some of the possible reactions, questions and questions from the age of four or five that the child manifests, because it is natural for children, at this age, to observe the difference existing in their homes and that of their friends is:

"Where's my father?" "Who's my father?"

Many mothers try to avoid the subject, and / or implicitly, “ignore” the questions, for logical reasons to deduce, since:

The mother is in a very difficult position;

She is clearly aware that she is involved in a conflict, and that whatever her response is, she will definitely pass the problem on to the child:

If you answer that the father walked away because he did not love them, for the first time the child experiences a feeling of devaluation. He infers and / or feels that he has very little value, because otherwise his father would not have left.

MORE INFERENCES:

I am not lovable; My father does not love me;

These may be the most dangerous inferences for your self-esteem and future security as a love object.

Serious negative inferences that will provoke feelings of:

Inferiority; Jealousy; Shyness

A reasonable doubt arises in his mind regarding the value of the mother, since he believes or concludes that she, too, was abandoned.

MOTHER'S SPEECH

If the mother claims that she abandoned the father because "they didn't get along":

The child may feel that the father was not evil, that he was perhaps better than the mother; that she distances him from the father; that his father would like to live with them if the mother left him. In such a situation, the child has or develops from the mother the concept that, in a sense, it is frustrating - because it deprives him of the love and company of his father.

Let's suppose that the mother takes the problem to the economic topic and says to the child, for example:

That his father left his side "because he could not support us", with which, what he really transmits to the child is, "he did not want to support us".

Immediately the possible inference that the child makes of:

His father, Of parents in general, and / or Of men in general;

It is that they are unable to care for mothers or children and that:

Under such circumstances, men can abandon their children and / or that women can abandon the parents of their children.

We go further in this childish reflection:

The child may come to further reasoning, namely:

If her mother can so easily abandon her husband, who is a man, perhaps she can, if she is provoked enough; Abandon him with equal ease, since he is also a man. boy.

YOUR FATHER IS DEAD

This trick is used more frequently than might be assumed:

With this, the mother manages to avoid the problem temporarily, in addition to expressing her own feelings; But, everything changes when the child finds out that the absent parent is not really dead; It causes profound, drastic and painful modifications; That they are so traumatic that they can lead to severe disorders, since they imply a profound change in the confidence that all human beings inspire in them, and especially their mother, since yes; Her mother can lie about something so important to her; It seems clear to her that she can no longer believe all the explanations she has received or expects to receive from it in the future.

THE CHILD BEFORE THE "PIADOSA" LIE

When the child begins to doubt this explanation, or when he discovers, by direct or indirect evidence, the false explanation that the absent parent is dead, he suffers from anguish, since he feels tortured by the possibility of:

Being an illegitimate child; That his father left before he was born for reasons that he cannot understand, but that torture him mentally; They are very logical conjectures, especially when the mother tries to correct the original falsehood explaining that the father disappeared shortly before or shortly after the child was born.

FEELINGS OF GUILT

There is also the possibility that the child will conclude, in the case of separations that take place in the first years of his life, that his parents got along reasonably well, until he was born. In such a situation, it is easy for the child to infer that If he had not been born, his parents would continue to live together, that he was the cause of the separation. That is to say, that he brought misfortune and unhappiness to his family; He concludes, he inferred, that his parents loved each other, but they did not want him; It is not difficult to calculate what the child's own valuation as an individual human being will be in the face of such logical reflections They are reflections and logical inferences that the child can make in light of the information he receives.

THE MOTHER AND HER "FAILURE" BEFORE THE CHILD

As we have already stated, the position of the mother, in the case of a separation in the early life of the son, is difficult when she must explain to the child the absence of the father.

In my opinion, there is no explanation that:

Do not exert an adverse effect on the self-concept; Do not stop affecting, the concept of human being that develops in the child at that time. Such effects can and should be diminished, but it is probably not feasible to eliminate them entirely..

SEPARATION AFTER THREE YEARS

Let us now analyze the effects that a separation from the parents has on the child at a later stage of development.

It is logical to deduce that the child lives a prolonged period of conflict and discord between his parents, before the separation becomes a fact:

The traumatic thing for the child is that, at this age, he already has a conscious relationship with both parents; Both have met their needs; The child has forged in his mind, with respect to each of them, a defined concept of his own was worth, which, logically, enters a process of uncertainty; As well as a notion of the value that father and mother have for him; The positive aspects of both concepts suffer a severe attack, during the painful moments that precede the separation.

THE PREVIOUS VICISITUDES

THE CHILD AND HIS CONFLICT

It is common that, and for an indefinite time, aggressions and disqualifications are the emotional and verbal climate in which interactions between parents take place:

Therefore, children are stranded in this hostile climate; if the child is inclined to side with his mother, in his constant and marked contempt for the father, he does so with a strong feeling of guilt; the same, when he listens the father's complaints against the mother and vice versa.

Parents do not understand that, for the child, the best source of security that he can count on in this world is that he preserve his love for both parents, since:

He has a feeling and a presentiment that his basic and fundamental security may greatly crumble if one of his parents abandons him permanently.

Everything gets even worse, if the mother does not assume that despite her repeated attempts to convince herself and convince her that she has all the power to satisfy all her needs, she will not succeed:

Parents are irreplaceable.

THE OTHERS

For the child, the behavior and value of the parents are the models he uses to assess the behavior and value of all men and women.

They constitute the only closely and intimately available model of love that:

One human being expects another; From a man for a woman; From a woman for a man

Starting from that critical moment in his life:

The expected and desired stability in the affective relationships of and with all people, including those directed by and towards him, must undergo drastic metamorphoses in that period;

Love relationships with human beings no longer appear to be stable.

Since they can be haphazard and eventually carry:

To hatred; To lovelessness; To abandonment.

From that moment, the child will be forced to consider them, at least, as extremely conditional and capricious:

His reluctance to participate in such relationships and his attitudes towards them will already be established from the time the parents separate and thus produce considerable future suffering, both for him and for the people with whom he is emotionally related..

DUEL

I believe that the child goes through, for all the aforementioned reasons, mental states comparable to the adult's grief and that it is these early griefs, which are revived later in life, when something painful is experienced.

It is for this reason that it is more frequent to find children of separated parents falling into depressive states before and in front of the affective losses; and / or their little capacity to tolerate frustrations that emanate from the affectivity.

The most important method for the child to overcome these states of grief is, from my point of view, reality judgment.

The abandonment requires of the child the elaboration of the corresponding mourning, which we cannot always be sure that it will be able to achieve.

The non-solution will entail damages that will inevitably dress your adult walk in mourning. In this mourning process, the child will try to recover the emotional charge that until then had deposited in the now absent parent, and; He will strive to place it in other people, objects or interests in his environment; His normal ambivalence towards the parent who abandons him is enhanced and his guilt increases; In order to acquire some type of security and peace, he must get rid of his Positive and negative feelings about him, and this process, like grief, is long and painful; In many cases, he must also free himself from ambivalent feelings against the mother, since he unconsciously blames her for the father's absence; The permanent separation of the parents is followed by other problems that, in essence, are more or less directly related to the new attitudes of his parents towards him and; with the difficulties involved in his attempts to maintain a convenient relationship with both. parents,with the one who still intervenes in your daily life and with the absent one who is still possible to see at fixed intervals.

Suppose the child stays with the mother.

All kinds of changes can occur in the child's attitude towards the child:

For example, the child may become a burden on the mother, and the situation may be perceived by the child. It may be considered as an economic burden that forces the mother to work inside and outside the home.

Or the fact of her existence and her presence can hinder the maternal desire to:

Social relations with adults of both sexes; Of remarrying; Of pursuing a career that I always want, but that their marriage made impossible.

The child's presence can continually remind the mother of her own shortcomings, particularly her failure to maintain a home, satisfy a husband, be a fully adequate wife and mother:

Doubts regarding his ability in this regard may have existed before marriage, the failure of which serves to confirm them; The child, meanwhile, with his presence, is constantly reminded and reactivates those old fears and doubts; In association with these attitudes maternal changes towards the child, the propensity to identify him with the absent husband emerges and, in particular, with all the unpleasant and undesirable aspects of his personality; This can happen whether the child is male or female, although, naturally, it is more frequent In the first case;

Similarly, here the causes may reflect gender conflicts and the deep, unconscious feelings of the mother towards all men and, secondarily, towards one in particular:

The boy's father.

In sum, the child may have become a burden:

Economic; A social burden or; An emotional burden for the mother, who begins to realize it.

In such a situation, the child necessarily fears being in danger of a second abandonment, this time by the mother, so regularly:

Specialists in children tell us that their feelings and responses during the clinical examination are those of the terribly insecure, distressed and frightened child, whose behavior uses all possible maneuvers to achieve or maintain a state of security;

You can use:

The docility, the passivity and a quiet withdrawal, to become the "good boy" that the mother should love, becoming an "anxious castrate". In most cases, he will fight through hyper-aggressiveness, hostility and rebellion, sometimes transforming himself into a small “criminal”, the black sheep of his family, who do not “understand” the child's behavior; You can attempt a regressive move to childhood behavioral levels, when, based on your memories, you really loved and longed for it; resorting to often fictional illnesses to elicit a loving and caring response. Whatever tactic you use -and he will use them all, one by one-, usually he cannot overcome, the hostile attitudes of the mother towards him, on the contrary, only manages to exasperate her

MATERNAL OVERCOMPENSATION

On the other hand, it sometimes happens that the mother's new attitude is more positive and devoted to the child, but to an overwhelming degree.

The mother, in her attempts to demonstrate that she is acting appropriately in the face of separation from the father (with all that this implies regarding the appreciation of her own worth), can become extremely solicitous and overprotective towards the child. which is necessary to satisfy their smallest desires and gratify all their needs, so that the son appears to the world as a satisfied and happy creature.

The mother practically drowns him with love and gifts to demonstrate to herself that she has not failed and will not fail in her maternal role:

In the absence of the father, the child becomes the mother's only libidinous relationship, excluding any other investment of any part of herself in other people or interests.

It is evident the harmful effects that such an overprotective attitude on the part of the mother exerts on the child, due to:

In the first place, to the impossibility of a complete affective reciprocity towards the mother on the part of the son. Such reciprocity is not possible. It does not happen even in the case of a “normal” home, much less in the face of the permanent absence of a parent. The harmful effects of such maternal behavior in relation to the adequate evolution of the child, towards autonomy and maturity, are evident, since these factors depend on the widest possible association of the child with other human beings, both creatures and adults. And, finally, the deviant and unrealistic conception of self-worth that is instilled in the child should always be considered when this is the only object of maternal love and overprotection.

In short, when this is the relationship between mother and child, the needs of the first and not those of the second become the true motivational factors of maternal behavior.

ADDITIONAL PROBLEMS

For the child whose parents are separated, there are other additional problems that, although I will only mention in a very brief way, are of utmost importance, as they usually fail to overcome these new hostile attitudes on the mother's part:

The son of a broken home feels "different" from the other children. His companions constantly ask him to explain the absence of the parent, to say where he is, to point to the parent who seems guilty and to declare which of his parents he wants More; Besides not knowing the answers to all those factual questions, you cannot express your feelings on this matter without feeling guilty;

Children in general are particularly wicked and curious about separated marriages and their causes, and such curiosity arises from the possibility of:

That the same thing happens in their own homes. For them, the son of separated parents constitutes a source of information on facts and feelings associated with the subject, and they tend to be unconsciously cruel in their attitude. THE "FAMOUS" VISITS

Many times, derived from these and other situations unresolved in mature form by the parents, there are, in addition, the conflicting feelings that arise each time the absent parent must be visited:

The child feels guilty for abandoning the parent living with him, particularly if he has much more fun during the visit than at home; on the other hand, if he does not want to visit the absent parent, he also feels guilty; unfortunately, he is subjected many times, by both parents to the manifest or implicit mutual hostility and / or to the devaluation of the other parent.

Both use it as an instrument to demonstrate that:

Each of them is better than the other, that he loves the child more, that the care of the other is inadequate and has caused all the unhappiness of the child, that the "other" is to blame for deficiencies in behavior, such as shyness; aggressiveness and / or academic performance: The child tries, if he can, a double attitude, mutually exclusive, of love and devotion towards both parents, in order to demonstrate to himself that he has a good father and mother who love him; But he seldom succeeds, and his attempts are often transient and blameful. Visits to the absent parent are regulated in frequency and duration by law, the decisions of which are not always appropriate. In that sense, I would like to suggest that visits, which are really necessaryThere is no doubt that they should not be limited to an isolated and occasional day or couple of days, nor to one or two vacations per year.Visits of this type usually create in the parent a compulsion to cover the child with gifts and take him to Countless fun places to show him that this would be the idyllic life he would lead if he were with him all the time, a much happier existence than he is now in his permanent residence. The child returns home with little or no real appreciation of the real value of the parent, and without feeling that the parent loves him for himself.

Visits should be long enough for the child to have an opportunity to appreciate both factors and, in particular, so that the child can retain a sense of caring for the absent parent and feel that such a relationship may imply significant continuity.

HELP TO FACE SEPARATION BEFORE CHILDREN

Dear readers, I leave you these indications, some very logical and others for your reflection, to face together, as a family, this difficult moment, which I have collated and searched in different pages related to the subject, plus my own experience and have selected the following.

Children need to know that their parents separate; it is decisive to explain to children that the separation is: Shared by the father and the mother, it does not matter that it was one of them who determined it and the other had no other option than accept it; the mother and father should jointly, and only when the decision has been made and there is certainty that there will be no going back, inform their children of the decision to separate; the opposite is to involve the children in the neurotic game of the parents; Talk about it with the children whenever the situation warrants it and respond to all the concerns of the child, but: According to the age; The smaller the more precise and concise the answer Tell the children: Where and with which of both parents will live; where the other will live and how they will maintain communication.The clearer the changes that are to take place, the better they will be able to assume them once they occur. Control affectivity and try to make it as exalted as possible when discussing it. In this way, it will be less traumatic for everyone and unnecessary disturbances will be avoided. With children under five, the explanations should be: Frank; Brief; Concrete and clear. That is, tell them which parent will leave the family home and when and how You will see it thereafter. Usually this information is sufficient as other details may be difficult for them to understand.With children under the age of five, the explanations should be: Frank; Brief; Concrete and clear. That is, tell them which parent will leave the family home and when and how they will see it thereafter. In general, this information is sufficient As other details may be difficult for them to understand.With children under the age of five, the explanations should be: Frank; Brief; Concrete and clear. That is, tell them which parent will leave the family home and when and how they will see it thereafter. In general, this information is sufficient As other details may be difficult for them to understand.