Divorce often instills a feeling close to panic in children of age six to eight. The departure of one of the parents threatens the security of their whole world and they often feel there is no safe, protected place for them to grow up in. Some children react and take on the far too heavy responsibility of protecting their homes and siblings. Others buckle under the panic and become almost paralyzed in their ability to function.

Routines are forgotten, their ability to concentrate at school diminishes. They regularly lose their toys, their school books. They are haunted by dreams of violence and disaster. Little boys, especially, easily break into tears and sobbing.

Separation anxiety, which the child should have grown out of by now, reappears. Where the child used to have two parents to count on, now he only has one. And the fear of losing that parent too, is almost more than he or she can bear. "I always used to get sick or even hurt myself when Mom went out," recalls a teenage girl. "Then I'd stay awake until she got home, even though the babysitter was there."

Parents often unwittingly exacerbate these divorce-centered fears in their children. Though these older children have a firmer grasp on reality than preschoolers, their imaginations still foresee calamity around every corner, and they are old enough to perceive hostile possibilities in the larger world. So when a mother (or father) says despairingly, "What are we going to do?" or "What will become of us?" the child's worst fears are realized.

Translated into the perceptions of the early latency child, such statements clearly mean there will be no Christmas presents, no food, no clothes, maybe not even a bed to sleep in. A child's lurking sense of rejection can also be confirmed by a parent's lament: "Why did he (she) leave us?" or "This wouldn't have happened if he (she) hadn't left us." It is little wonder, then, that children this age continue to have trouble sleeping and to have more than a normal share of nightmares.

Viewing the exaggerated grief of a parent can also add to a child's fears. And in divorce, it happens time and again. The child is sad. The child cries. The parent comforts the child but his grief is catching. Now the parent starts crying and, once started, can't stop. The child can see that the parent has stopped crying for him and is now crying for herself. The parent seems in worse shape than he is, and he harbors the growing unease that maybe that parent is not going to be able to protect him when he needs it. And the child feels more afraid than ever.


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