Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I have with me, Amy Baker. She is the ministry resource director at Faith Church in Lafayette, Indiana. She’s been a part of the biblical counseling team there since 1987. Amy and I today are going to talk about this issue of children who come out of divorce situations. Amy, I read in the past a book that I think was very impactful to me just in seeing a sociological study on children to divorce. It’s by Judith Wallerstein, a sociologist and she tracks some of the impacts of divorce on children, over 25 years in a longitudinal study: How they think about life, how they think about marriage, how they think about love, how they think about the pain that came (no matter what age they experience their parents getting a divorce), and some of the difficulties that go with that. As important as a sociological study can be, that should as Christians provoke us to deal with that decay, deal with those problems, deal with the issues that a child might face in a breakup of a divorce from a Biblical perspective. And you’ve done some work to think through this. It’s very interesting to me as we think about our culture and how prominent divorce has become—1984, right, where we see no fault divorce. And then, now how easy it has become. Maybe we didn’t think about the unintended consequence it would have on children. Certainly, the Bible warns us about that consequence, but here we are in the middle and researchers have begun looking into some of these effects on divorce and how these effects can continue long past ten, twenty-five years into adulthood and so on. I want us to talk about some of these things. So, I want to give you an opportunity to describe this; you’ve counseled a lot of children in situations like this. What are some of the common struggles that you see that children have when their parents’ divorce?
Amy Baker: I think divorce frequently stirs up anxiety in children. One way I think that we see that, is children whose parents divorce fear that the other parents are also going to leave. I mean imagine just if you were a child, and you’ve just learned that your parents are separating, one parent is leaving. I would be scared to death—is my other parent going to leave as well? Am I going to be abandoned? So, fear I think is one of the effects of divorce on children.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, absolutely being anxious and fearful, even internalizing as if the child has done something wrong, feeling guilty, or something like that. But yeah, the fear is you know, one person who’s been an anchor and stability in my life, a common person that I’ve seen every day, that’s been a dynamic part of everything that I’ve done, now is gone. And oh, my goodness do I fear the other one is leaving as well? So, if I were a child and I think one of the reasons that I might be anxious or fearful, is thinking about never seeing your parents again. That feels even like death to some degree, right? And so, we can see that that would be an overwhelming fear.
Amy Baker: Yeah, I agree and sadly what you’ve just described that you might fear is not necessarily unrealistic. I’ve seen statistics, that one third of all children whose parents divorce never see one of their parents again after the divorce. And only one-fifth of children from divorced homes maintain a good relationship with both parents. So, what you’ve just described that you as a child might be fearful of, for many children that is going to be their experience. I think children may also fear that since their parents don’t love each other, they may not love them. You think about how divorce gets explained to children, and you know perhaps that got explained this way: the parents sit the children down and explained that they’re going to get a divorce. They say something to the child like, “well, your father and I, or your mother and I don’t love each other anymore”. But what comes next is, “we’ll always love you”. Well okay, you’re a child, does that make sense to you? Like you’re an adult, does that make sense to you? So, I think children may also fear that, you know, “maybe my parents are going to stop loving me.” Or since we know that many who divorce are going to end up getting married again, the children are probably wondering, “is this going to happen to me again? Is this going to be my experience again?” And we know that the divorce rate is higher in remarriages. So again, for many of these things that these children are feeling anxious about, those things are not necessarily unrealistic. Then just like all of us, if you’ve been hurt once, you don’t want to be hurt again. And so, “am I going to get hurt all over and is this just going to be my life from here on out?” So, I think fear is probably one of the main struggles that we would see children struggling with.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. It creates a tenderness, almost waiting on the next ball to drop off something bad that’s going to happen, that’s going to up-end their life, because this fear to them is very real. Because now what they’re living, going back and forth between homes, and all this stuff is reinforcing this fear, and this vulnerability of a child. We’ve talked a little bit about fear, which I agree is one of the more prominent, sort of overwhelming pieces, that a child will experience and is sort of is pervasive in lots of areas. But there are some other common struggles that we see consistently with children whose parents’ divorce. Describe what some of those other common struggles are.
Amy Baker: I think one of them is anger; children may be angry toward the parent who left. That they’re you know, they’re being deserted, that their responsibility was ignored. That makes sense to us. I think what is perhaps less intuitive is that the child may be angry at the parent who stayed—you chose someone to be my parent who was going to leave. I remember reading a quote by a 13-year-old who was angry at her mother who stayed for “picking as my father is the kind of man who would leave me”. And then if there’s a remarry, there’s often going to be children who may be angered at the stepparent because most children whose parents divorce have this dream of getting the original family back together. So now, there’s a remarriage and what just happened to their dream of getting the original family back together? Well, that dream got busted in a big way and who do they see as responsible for destroying that dream? They’re probably going to hold the stepparent responsible. So, I think anger would be another common one. You mentioned guilt briefly, and I agree; children may struggle with guilt, thinking that this divorce is because of them, and if their parent had really loved them, their parent would have stayed. So, they may struggle, thinking that maybe they’re unlovable, or maybe the parent is leaving because they were bad. And they’ve heard their parents arguing about them. “If I hadn’t been bad, if I hadn’t complained, if I hadn’t wined wanting this, then maybe my other parent would still be here.” Or I think probably the major thing that contributes to guilt, is just what we call loyalty conflicts, where the children feel as if they’ve got to be loyal to either one parent or the other parent. And whichever parent they choose, that often just stirs up guilt. Then just the going back and forth between parents: Do I really belong here? Then you add in that you know, we’re talking about children whose parents are divorcing, but these children are struggling, but they’re not the only ones who are struggling. We’ve got parents who are struggling as well. We know that, you know, divorce just up-ends your world. So, for many parents who are divorcing, they go to work, and they do their best to hold it together and not just have a meltdown while they’re at work, and they’re just pouring all their energy into just getting through the day. So, by the time they go home, they are emotionally and physically exhausted, and then there are these kids. Really what they want to do at that point is just crawl under the covers and hide from the world for a while. So, there’s a loss of parenting, there’s a loss of structure, and then just the feeling like I have to choose one parent or the other, that loyalty conflict. I think that that’s perhaps one of the most difficult things that children face.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, these are deep-seated and significant things. I know we’re talking about children but let me flip it around. When you talk about loyalty conflicts with parents, and the child can get in patterns of manipulation with things like this, because now the parent feels very guilty that they’ve caused this distress in their child’s life. They know the other parent is giving them nice things or treating them nicely or the discipline is not as strict, so they can play more video games at the other parents’ house. And now, I have to be the bad cop in the whole process. It’s what I call “parenting out of a deficit,” where you feel guilty for something that you’ve caused on this child. So now you want to, you know, sort of release any restrictions on the child. Part of what that does is it begins to teach the child how to manipulate parents: you know, go ask this parent, then they say no. I’ll go ask the other one and I’ll try to get my way. We create environments that can be very unhealthy. Okay, so that was a side, I want to get back to the children and let’s focus on them. There are several things that you brought up that I think are as I mentioned, deep-seated and really important for us to pay attention to. I think we could assume in many ways that children are walking through this stuff. So, you think it’s safe to say that almost all children feel some pressure to choose sides when there’s a divorce? And especially this comes up when we think about custody and all of that. They feel some pressure to choose sides as to, who was right? Who was wrong? Who should I go with? Who should I not? Talk about that pressure a little bit.
Amy Baker: Yeah, I do think that there is great pressure on the children and let me give you a couple of quotes that I think illustrates that. In Becoming a Stepfamily the author gave a couple of quotes from children that I thought were really powerful and haunting. The first one is from a nine-year-old girl and this sweet little girl said, “On Mother’s Day, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know what I should do or could do. If I went with my stepmother, my mother would be furious. If I went with my mother, my stepmother would be upset. I couldn’t even think about it. It’s the worst situation I ever had in my life” so you just imagine being a nine-year-old girl, and you’ve got to make a decision like that. and whatever decision you make, people aren’t going to be happy with you; at nine years old and you’ve got to make that decision.
Dale Johnson: Such a lose-lose situation, right?
Amy Baker: It is, and it doesn’t necessarily get easier as you get older. A quote from a girl in her mid-20s about to graduate from college, she said this, “It’s all so confusing. It’s supposedly my day, but if my father brings his new wife, my mother is going to be a wreck. But if I asked him not to bring his wife, he’ll have a fit. I can’t sort out what I’m supposed to do here”. Well, wise listeners, do you have an easy answer for that one? This is difficult.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, this creates a lot of inner turmoil for a child and a burden that they didn’t ask for, but here they are in the middle of trying to sort this out. And what you’re showing too, is this is not one difficult decision. This is a constant repeated decision with milestones in life. So, talk about maybe two or three ways that we help kids who are feeling this kind of tension.
Amy Baker: I think everyone gains if all the parental adults involved in a child’s life have a good working relationship with each other, in respect to the child. Where there is a good working relationship between the adults, the children’s loyalty conflicts generally are reduced. And as a result, they can go between those two homes more easily and relate more positively to their parents. So, I think for that to happen, the parents are going to need to cry out to God to help them, and to help them with their gentleness to be evident to all, especially to their former spouse and his or her new mate, if there’s been a remarriage. So, you think about that, and you just think about all the pressures that come with divorce and temptations that come with it. And then, you talk about letting your gentleness be evident to all. And when we think of gentleness, we think of words, like forbearing, large hearted, courteous, considerate, generous, lenient, moderate, and not irritable, rude, or abrasive. Those aren’t words that we naturally associate with divorce, and yet here in God’s word, we have this instruction, “let your gentleness be evident to all.” So as divorced parents are empowered to do that because of Christ’s love, just think about what that could look like and the impact it could have. Let me try to illustrate that for you. Dale, let’s pretend that you are a divorced parent, alright? So, you are a divorced parent, and you have two children in your imaginary family. Your oldest son Johnny is a seventh grader and Johnny loves basketball. So, Johnny has tried out for the seventh-grade basketball team, and he’s made the team. So, as his father, whenever you have the opportunity, when there’s a game, what are you going to try to do?
Dale Johnson: I want to go!
Amy Baker: Absolutely, you want to go! So, in our hypothetical imaginary family, Johnny has a game today. You don’t have any responsibilities, so you’re gonna go in our imaginary scenario. So you go, you get there early, you scope out the gym, you find a nice seat on the bleachers where you’re going to be able to see Johnny play and you’re set to just cheer for him. Now, your former imaginary spouse also loves Johnny. So, when Johnny has a basketball game and she doesn’t have a conflict in her schedule, what’s she going to try to do? She wants to be there and today happens to be one of those days. So, she also arrives at the gymnasium. She sees you where you’re sitting in the bleacher, but you’re divorced and her relationship with you is not all that amicable. So, she goes to the other end of the bleachers and finds a seat there. All right, so Johnny’s team comes out, and Johnny, he plays the best game he’s ever played in his life! As a father, you’re just so pleased with him. You’ve been working hard to teach him to be a Godly athlete, and in this game, Johnny not only scored the winning three point shot at the end of the game, making him the hero, but he also did all the other things that you would love to see him do as a Godly basketball player. I’m limited in my understanding of basketball.
Dale Johnson: He passed the ball when he was out on the court, he encouraged his teammates and did all these things in helping them overcome adversity. That was pretty good! Your from Indiana, you know basketball.
Okay, so they win the game. Johnny is the hero of the game. You’re just so pleased with the way that you saw God at work in his life. So, the team does what they do after a game, they go to the locker room. So now the question is, here’s Johnny, who had a beautiful game. What does Johnny want to do now? And I would pause it, Johnny doesn’t want to come out of the locker room because when he comes out of the locker room and re-enters that gym, he’s got to make a loyalty decision. Does he go here and come to Dad? Or does he go there and go to Mom? And all that joy and just pleasure of being able to perform well in this basketball game, I think it’s turned into “I don’t want to leave the locker room.” So, you Dale, are a parent who wants to let your gentleness be evident to all. So, you’re thinking about Johnny and you don’t want that to happen to him, you love your son. You don’t want him to have to be faced with that. So, it’s like, what can I do? How can I let my gentleness be evident to all, so that my son isn’t putting that in that position? So, prior to the game, you’ve gotten there first, so you’re sitting in the bleachers and your former imaginary wife comes in and sits down at the other end of the bleachers. And you think, “Oh, that’s going to make it hard on Johnny at the end of the game, so I’m going to move over closer to her so that Johnny’s not put in that kind of position.” And so, you do. You get up and you move closer to her, so that you’re both in the same vicinity, and that was a beautiful, Godly, kind of thing to do. But I just need to tell you, your former imaginary wife, she really can’t stand you. She’s really not interested in having you anywhere near her. So, when you come over and sit in her vicinity, she now gets up and moves to the other end of the bleachers. So here you are trying to use God’s grace to display gentleness and so, what do you do now? Do you say, “Well, I tried! See? That’s why we got divorced in the first place, there’s no working together.” Well, it may be tempting to do that in that situation, but I think in God’s grace we can even push the envelope a little bit farther here and think, all right so that may not be a possibility, that was an application. God’s word doesn’t command that you got to do it; that was an application, but that application just isn’t effective in the situation, so what other options are available to me? So, I’m asking God, “God give me wisdom.” What do I do in a situation like that? It’s like you know what, maybe I need to communicate with Johnny even prior to the game and I say to him something like, “Johnny after the game, I’m going to look forward to getting to talk to you about how the game went, but I would want you to go talk to your mom when you come back out after the game. You go talk to your mom, I’ll wait for you in the car, or I’ll meet up with you at home,” or something like that. Now as Johnny’s father, your son just had the best game of his life. Is that going to be easy for you to do to say, “here son, you go chat with somebody else, and I will step into the background and wait for you in the car or wait for you at home” is that going to be natural? Is that going to be easy for you to do at that point?
Dale Johnson: Not an easy thing, yeah.
Amy Baker: Yeah, I don’t think so, but here’s what I think it does. I think it brilliantly puts on display the character of our King, and our Savior, because instead of demanding your rights, you’re saying, “I’m thinking about you, son. And I’m thinking about what would be best for you and how I can show the most love to you.” You’re different than so many people in our culture, in our world. I think it puts the power, the grace and the kindness of our King on display in situations like that. Now, that’s just an application. It’s not like that’s going to work in every situation, but I do think we have to be thinking about how can I let my gentleness be evident to all here? How can I love my son and make it easier for him to reduce these loyalty conflicts?
Dale Johnson: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think the paradigm that you’re describing especially of divorce is, “I’m going to defend myself in this process.” You’re talking about flipping that paradigm and now think about the tension the child is under, how do we help relieve some of that tension in him before myself in this whole process. That shows growth for sure. Give us some more ideas about ways that parents may be able to help children through this process.
Amy Baker: I think another thing that’s important, Dale, is to teach children biblical love. Biblical love is not exclusive, and loving one individual doesn’t mean that you can’t love another. And you know I said that, and you don’t look shocked, like “what… I didn’t know that biblical love is not exclusive.” I mean, in this setting as we’re talking about this, “of course,” but that’s not what it feels like to the children. To the children, it feels like love is exclusive, and if I love one parent, that means I don’t love the other. And if I love the other parent, that means I don’t love the first parent. So, for them it feels like, with these loyalty conflicts, love is exclusive. If they choose to love one parent, what they are non-verbally shouting is, I don’t love the other parent. So, I think we need to teach the children biblical love, and that biblical love is not exclusive.
Dale Johnson: Right, so let’s hone in on some specific ways that we can teach that love is not exclusive in very difficult situations, like divorce.
Amy Baker: So, I think one of the ways that we might be able to do that is let the children know it’s okay to invite their other parent and stepparent to activities for the child. So, when you host a birthday party for that child, let the child know that it’s okay for them to invite their other parent. Help the child in projects that show love for the other parent. Help them pick out birthday cards for the other parent, to buy Christmas gifts. Encourage the children to save their best school papers that they got an A on, so they can show them to their other parent next time that they’re together, or encourage the children to call the other parent each day when they’re not with them. Things like that, you’re communicating, “I want you to have a relationship with this parent. It’s okay with me. You are not destroying me by showing love to them. You’re not communicating you don’t love me by showing love to them.”
Dale Johnson: This is getting down really into the nitty-gritty of where people’s lives are, right? Where a child is really wrestling with what you called earlier, loyalty conflicts. How do you continue to help a child who’s struggling with those conflicts in their mind?
Amy Baker: Yeah, I think another thing that would be helpful for children is teach them not to get involved in other’s conflicts. In Proverbs 26:17, we’re told “like one who seizes a dog by the ears, is a passerby who meddles in a quarrel not his own.” Now, I have never seized a dog by the ears. Have you, Dale?
Dale Johnson: No, not that I know of.
Amy Baker: Okay, but I have a picture in my mind of what it might be like for me if I seize a dog by the ears, and that picture involves me being transported to the emergency room. So, you think about it, who is the passerby? And who are the people who quarrel in a divorce situation? Well, the people who have the quarrel are the parents; the passerby is the child. Okay, “like one who seizes a dog by the ears, is a passerby who meddles in a quarrel, not his own,” we’ve got two parents who have a quarrel, and the child is just the passerby, but the child can so easily get pulled into those quarrels. I mean, just think about it: mom picks the child up from school, they’re driving home and it’s Dad’s weekend with the child. And so, she calls him while they’re driving home to find out what time he’s going to pick the children up and he says, “I can’t pick him up on Friday, I’m not going to be there till Saturday morning” and they get into a heated discussion about it and that discussion ends when one of them disconnects the phone conversation. And then there’s the child in the van, who is just hearing mom fluttering with rage after she hangs up. And now there is this passerby who feels like “I ought to do something”. You know, here’s my mom who is in distress, I ought to do something and so the child does something, but he becomes like the one who is “seizing a dog by the ear”. So, I think we want to teach children not to get involved in other’s conflicts.
Dale Johnson: Amy, I’ll be honest. I don’t know that I’ve ever looked at Proverbs 26:17 quite like that, but that’s actually a really good and insightful illustration that comes directly from that particular proverb. I think just an interesting application to think about children, and how they’re affected in that way by such a conflict. One of those areas where we see conflict the most is certainly with child visitation. Once we work through custodial rights and who has those responsibilities, give us some thoughts on how parents can really help children, especially on these issues of visitation, when they’re not with the other parent. What are some of the things that they can do?
Amy Baker: Right, because you know when you’re going back and forth between houses, especially with the non-custodial parents, it’s like, really do I belong here? So, I think a key factor is not to consider visiting children as guests. You give them responsibilities and you have them follow the house rules. So, to illustrate that, let’s say Dale that you and your non-imaginary, very real, godly wife invite me over to your house for dinner. And I will be happy to come over to your house for dinner and eat up your good food and enjoy fellowship with you. So, I accept your invitation, and I come enjoy a meal with you. After the meal is over, perhaps I offer to help with the dishes, that kind of thing. But at some point, I’m going to say, “been nice spending time with you”, and I leave. After I leave are you going to look at Summer and say, “she didn’t clean the bathroom before she left?”
Dale Johnson: “Or the dishes, she left the dishes!”
Amy Baker: Are you going to be offended because I didn’t do that? Because to be honest, I’m not going to clean your bathroom before I leave. I’m going to leave without cleaning the bathroom, but I think neither you nor your wife are going to be offended because I didn’t clean the bathroom, but why not? I mean why are you not going to be offended because I didn’t clean the bathroom? Well, who’s responsible for cleaning the bathroom? It’s the people that belong there. It’s the people who have a place in the family. Those are the ones who have responsibilities like that, it’s not the guests. And so, I think one of the ways that we can help children with that is we don’t treat them like guests. We give them responsibilities, we give them structure, we give them house rules. That communicates, I think, “you belong.” That’s hard for divorced parents because particularly if you’re the non-custodial parent you only get them, just as you mentioned, for a little while. And so, the temptation is, “I want to spend my time with you doing enjoyable stuff, not cleaning the bathrooms,” that kind of thing. But I do think that can be a misstep if every weekend becomes “I just want to be able to enjoy our time together.” We may actually be shooting ourselves in the foot and communicating to our children, you don’t really have a place here. So, I think that’s one of the ways that we can.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, well said. And you know one of the things that we talked about, that I think is a real challenge for children is loss of that parenting structure, which is realized through something like visitation, right? So that loss of parenting structure, and after divorce child’s parents are struggling even themselves to figure out, “okay, what do I do? How do I handle the child?” And then the child responds, maybe even rebelliously to certain things, throwing tantrums or just rebelling against even doing chores and discipline or anything like that. What are some important things for parents to remember when the situation gets difficult like that?
Amy Baker: You know a lot of times after a divorce, we see that loss of parenting structure. So, sometimes we see the children in the family stepping up. And now they’re doing the household chores that perhaps the spouse used to do. They are mowing the yard, they’re making sure that the younger children get their homework done, they’re cooking the meals, that kind of thing and we look at children and we mourn. We say “oh, they’re missing out on their childhood” because we see them doing these adult tasks and I would caution us against thinking that the remedy is found in providing a typical childhood for children. In Ephesians chapter 6, parents are given the instruction to bring their children up and the implication is that the parents should be shepherding their children into adulthood. Most parents implicitly understand that, and they rejoice as they see their children maturing and becoming more and more adult like. For example, Dale, you have a child who is five months old and your five-month-old starts walking without crawling. I’m pretty sure that I know this about you, you don’t mourn “oh my child just missed out on all those months of crawling, oh my poor child”. What you do is you get out your iPhone and you take a video of it, and you post it on social media “look, my child is maturing ahead of time! I am excited about that!”. So, we get that instinctively, but then when we see children, whose parents have divorced taking on adult responsibilities, it can be tempting to say, “oh they’ve missed out on their childhood”. So, I don’t really think the problem is that they’re missing out on their childhood. We like it when we see children maturing. I think the real problem is that we give children more adult responsibilities, but we don’t teach them how to grow in true maturity. So, for example, they may run the house, but they’ve never learned to respect authority. Or they may care for the yard, but they haven’t learned to work with a joyful spirit. Or they oversee the younger children, but they’re bossy and they’re demanding about it. In 1 Corinthians 13:11 we’re told, “when I was child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” We know from the context of 1 Corinthians 13, that’s known as the love chapter. So, I think the point here is that living like a child is to live with a focus on yourself and how to please yourself, over the more excellent way, the more mature way, is to live a life of love. Loving God and others and putting them first. So, the goal is not to send the children back to childhood but to teach them how to live in a way that shows the beauty of God, genuine maturity, not just adult tasks. And even though they’ve learned to fulfill adult responsibilities, they may never have learned that. So, I think what we really want to guide is a selfless love for others that comes as they put on trust in the Lord, when they love Him with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love others. So, the problem isn’t that they’ve been deprived of childhood. The problem is they haven’t been taught to live a life of love, a thing that we’re all growing in, all the time, right?
Dale Johnson: Amy, what you just did there was brilliant. Honestly, because what you’re helping us to see is even when there’s ashes, the Lord creates beauty out of those things. What you’re demonstrating is that we should be aiming, not just to tolerate the difficulty that is there, but we should still in that difficult season of suffering and loss and grief and struggle for the child, we should be pursuing godliness because that is good and beautiful. And that helps the person, the child in this case, to grow in ways that are so helpful and so good and God-honoring and peaceful for their own life as well. Amy, I tell you what you’ve done today, you’ve helped us to put our finger on some very specific and particular things that maybe we don’t think about what a child is going through when it’s divorce. We know it’s bad, we know it’s difficult, we know it’s hard, but you’ve put feet to that today to help us to really see the minutiae of the moment day by day. What they’re wrestling with in their heart, the different scenarios that might be difficult, and then you’ve helped to flip that script to answer that problem biblically which is exactly what we want to be doing is giving people biblical solutions for the problems that they face. And the children among us are some of those who suffer the most when divorce happens. So, you’ve given us biblical wisdom. So, sister, thank you so much for thinking through this, pointing us to Scripture, and really helping those who are the weak among us and pointing them to the wisdom of Christ.
