What to Do When a Divorce Poisons a Late Adolescent Child
By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.
Adolescent brain development plays an important role sometimes in divorcing families. Somewhere between thirteen and sixteen a storm occurs in an adolescent brain. Brain circuits have self-pruning episodes where the connections important to judgement, flexibility, self-awareness and conscience get cut and a brain's reintegration suffers. This developmental period serves the purpose of creating space for brain matter to increase and later to reconnect. This brain reformation continues until around the age of twenty-six.
A child during this period may seem to develop a rigid, strongly opinionated pattern of thinking. They become susceptible to two category thinking. They begin to assume that they are a reliable arbiter of right and wrong, good and bad.
Divorces tend to encourage loyalty battles between parents over the loyalty of children. And often with children this age, they join forces with one parent against the other.
Of course this violates an important long-standing commandment given to children, “honor thy father and mother” (equally).
In a divorce, this is the primary job of a child in a divorcing family. The Tennessee law codifies this advice as does the Bible and probably other faiths I'm not familiar with.
In the midst of the divorce and after, it’s the parents' job to support their child's relationship with the other parent. It is not enough to say nothing or remain uninvolved in their child's behavior toward the other parent. It is the job of both parents to require and expect their child to respect, love and obey the other parent.
Often one parent is badly psychologically and emotionally wounded by the divorce and perhaps even abused by the other parent. Sad and tragic as this is, the abused parent's job remains the same. Don't let the other parent's behavior towards you infect the child's relationship with the other parent. Perhaps this is an impossible job, but it remains your duty to help your child have a relationship with two loving parents. Give your child the respect to allow them to judge the other parent on how they treat their child not how they treat or treated you.
The role of a parent in a family is very different and much easier usually than the role of a mate. Perhaps the other parents performs well in the role of parent while not so well in the role of mate to you.
Be that as it may, the ideal divorce may not be yours. This is an example of how you might approach your child if they are over fourteen when the divorce happens and the child aligns with the other parent against you for what seem to be trivial reasons. Also assume that the favored parent appreciates and encourages the child's rejection of you and the child supports them against you.
A mother in such a situation called me for my advice. The family had been divorced for three years. The father was a charming, charismatic and a narcissist. Until the son was ten years old, the father had nothing to do with him. Then the son showed some athletic promise. The father jumped into the father role suddenly with both feet.
The formerly father-neglected son luxuriated in his father's new attention. He joined his father in his misogyny and disrespect towards his mother. As the boy's athletic success grew, his relationship became closer with his father. And at the same time the parents' marriage became more dysfunctional, and the father's drinking became worse. Often the son of fourteen was driving his drunken father back from basketball practice where his father had watched practice from his car while he drank diet Coke and vodka. The son idolized his father and wanted to be an architect like him. When he graduated from college, he hoped to join his father's firm.
At the time of my call with the mother, the son was sixteen. He refused to spend parenting time with his mother. The legal system had so far failed the mother. She remarried and was personally happier than she had ever been, but she couldn't give up on her son.
She knew of me as a child/parent reconciliation therapist. She had already spent $150,000 in legal fees for nothing. She wanted me to recommend a impatient treatment program (another $30,000) for two weeks, and to treat her and her son when they returned home. These programs often worked as long as the favored parent had no contact with the child, but often when the favored parent re-engaged, the child's relationship with the other parent disintegrated.
And to get to the place where the child and estranged parent can pursue the options, it takes a five-to-ten-day trial and $150,000 in legal fees.
If I were chosen as the reunification therapist, I would cost even more money. At least $10,000. For me to be effective, the mother would have to win the case, I would require access to the court when parties won't cooperate, and the father’s sincere turnaround in support of the mother. And with these if's, the positive results from the reunification therapy seem unlikely.
The main goal of the reunification process is to protect the child's dignity and ego. The mother would need to begin the process by sincerely apologizing to the son, eating crow to create a common ground with the first peace offering because the child doesn't have the maturity and ego strength to do that. And if you are a parent, there will always be some parenting mistakes you made as a parent, something that you sincerely regret.
This is a first step to building a bridge between mother and son, to showing your son some respect and demonstrating your empathy for his difficult position in this loyalty battle. He has two bad choices, and he must choose one of them. If he reconciles with the mother, the father will likely never speak to him again.
Though this is the first step after the court hearing assuming she wins, I don't recommend it. Instead, I recommend letting go of the relationship with her son for now; not spending this litigation money on her son now; focus her life on people who enjoy and appreciate her; building a new successful enjoyable life and family with her new husband.
This current loyalty battle strengthens the father's relationship with the son. They share a common enemy, her. She is their punching bag. She should stop offering herself up for this role.
If she is correct that the father is an alcoholic and a pathological narcissist and she is not there anymore as the container for the father's pathological poison, where will his poison go? On her son? On his girlfriend? Will his son witness his abuse of another woman?
We don't know, but it's a good bet that the father will self-destruct in some way and that his son will see it.
So I would make that bet. Take that $150,000 plus and invest it in her son's future. Perhaps use me or someone else as a priest or a master of ceremonies to facilitate an announcement to her son from her that he wins. She respects her son’s decision to reject her. While she is sorry and sad for now, she will enjoy life without this fight over him. Perhaps he is right and he doesn't need her protection; that she knows her son's kind, tender heart; that he sees who she is and who his father is. She is doing well and thriving in her new marriage. He knows that his father had a second DUI last month, and she knows who the adult is in that house. Perhaps he is correct. Living with his father is the best thing for this blended family. He is the only one who might be able to help his father. And she respects that choice. His father will never let him love her and she understands what an awful position he's in, so she’s decided to let go so he won't be in the middle anymore.
But in the event that someday he wants parenting from her, and he can let go of his disrespect for her, she would be happy to consider the rebuilding of a relationship with him.
But for now, she won't be investing in college tuition for him or a new car. Her energy and interests will go toward building a new life without him. She will give him to God, and she will pray for God to watch over him because she can't. She respects his choice and honor his sacrifice.