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Healing The Children Of Divorce

Return to "Rehabilitating the Heart: Ministry to Children of Discord"

Basic principles underlie various programs a congregation can adopt to assist children of divorced parents. These principles include:

1. Listen to the children and encourage them to express their feelings in a nonthreatening atmosphere.

2. Allow the children to express negative feelings toward one or both parents without interrupting the outpouring of these feelings.

3. Encourage these children to develop or continue a relationship with both parents, even though they are no longer living together. A child’s physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual development are directly affected by the quality and character of the relationship with both parents.

4. Seek to reduce ongoing parental conflict, either overt or covert. This may involve additional counseling with therapists and/or clergy. Parental conflict undermines a child’s sense of self-worth, identity, security, stability, and hope. Ongoing parental conflict can fracture a child’s worldview and his or her ability to relate to others.

5. Help break the cycle to protect the adult’s emotional health and to protect their children’s developmental health. A divorcing parent must step out of the conflict, even if the other partner won’t.

6. Emphasize to parents the need for committing themselves to a process of changing, healing, and growing regardless of what has happened in the past.

7. Help each partner in the divorce realize he or she cannot change the past, but can learn from it. This means putting to rest what deserves to be left behind, while concentrating on growing in the future.

8. Counsel divorced parents that, if they continue to live with bitterness, revenge, and disappointment, they are shaping the lives of angry, depressed, sorrowful, and confused children who may never be able to reach their God-given potential.

With a program that faces these issues, the church can be a positive force helping to heal the wounded children of divorce.

Charles Dickson, Ph.D., is a pastor and college professor who lives in Hickory, North Carolina.