Helping Children Deal With Divorce

A child dealing with a divorce can be a very traumatic experience. However, I feel that if parents are not getting along, it is far easier on a child for the parents to divorce than have to live with parents that hate their guts one monent, want to kill each other the next and then want to love each other til death does them part.

I come from a family that did not divorce but stuck out their marriage through thick and thin. I can attest that there were a lot more thin days than thick ones. I truly believe that my parents loved each other dearly but they were so incompatible that the older they got the more you could tell their differences and the more you knew they shouldn't be together. I witnessed many drunken nights with verbal abuse back and forth between the two. I can see now that most of the problem was the alcohol because when my parents weren't drinking they got along just fine.

I, unfortunately, got married to my first husband and then realized that I was living in a trap. I wanted so much more out of life than he did. I wanted a career. I wanted success. He didn't. I got divorced and then married my second husband, who I am still married to right now. My two children faired the divorce and remarriage quite well and it was because when I raised my children I taught them to respect their elders and not to have attitude.

I wish I could say the same for my friend's teenage stepdaughter. My friend got divorced and married her childhood sweetheart. Her new husband had a daughter that eventually came and lived with them. That daughter brought attitude and disrespect with her from the day she moved in. I have never seen anything quite like it. My friend is so frustrated and just doesn't know how to handle this child. Her husband gives into his daughter's every whim and whimper and gave her total freedom. Well, sadly this backfired on him because the daughter ended up getting pregnant while doing drugs. The husband refuses to kick the daughter out of the house. The daughter does nothing to help out around the house, does not work, is not going to school. She has attitude every time she is spoken to and I mean every single time. She is so disrespectful to my friend. The only thing my friend has ever done was to help provide for this child and she does not get any respect from the daughter, whatsoever.

My friend says that her husband does realize that he made one mistake with his daughter and that was by giving her total freedom to do what she pleases. Unfortunately that total freedom has caused this child to be burdened with a pregnancy that she does not need at this point in her life and her life is pretty much screwed right up. The daughter has no place else to go and no-one else that she can turn to so my friend knows she has to put up with it or leave herself.

I have one piece of advice for anyone that has children going through a divorce. I think that the parent that is going to raise the child and the new partner should sit down and discuss how to raise this child and to not leave that discussion until all parties involved agree that they will abide by the rules. I have one other piece of advice too. From what my friend is going through with her stepdaughter because of the fact that the father gave her total freedom, never do this. Never, ever give the stepchildren their total freedom because they will take it and abuse it. They should earn their freedom once they have shown respect and drop their teenage attitudes.