What frequently happens to children when a divorce gets ugly?
Children of high conflict divorce pay a high price for their parents anger and non co-operation. When a child s energy is depleted by having to deal with parental conflict, he or she is less able to use that energy in positive ways such as concentrating on schoolwork, sports, art, friendships, etc. Children know whether their welfare or their parents anger is placed first in a divorce. A friend of mine whose parents divorced twenty years ago, when she was a teenager, told me, “The child s image of a parent can change dramatically when the child sees the parent acting like a jerk in divorce. There is a permanent loss of respect for the parent, a loss of faith because it s obvious that the parent doesn t have the child s best interests at heart.” There are many damaging things parents do to children during divorce: making false allegations of child abuse against the other parent, referring to children as objects to be possessed by using terminology such as “got” and “have” (as in “I got
