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Heading Back to School After a Divorce
How Parents and Schools can Ease Transitions
By LINDA BARRETT

It is no secret that almost half of all marriages now end in divorce. As such, there are plenty of resources advising divorcing spouses on how to survive the change, but what about the children? In a way, it is their divorce too, and they have their own set of insecurities, needs and adjustments—especially as they head back to school.
Brad Care wasn’t planning on divorcing. In fact, he was surprised to return home one day and discover his wife had suddenly moved out. A divorce followed. At the time, his daughter was in kindergarten and his son in daycare. They are eight and six now.
“The first inclination most people have is to up and move. But I made the children’s needs the first concern, over mine,” Care says. “I feel I had good advice from family, authorities and neighbors, who stressed it was more important for the kids’ stability to remain in the family home and stay in the same daycare and the same schools.”
Care shares a one-week-at-his-house, one-week-at-hers custody schedule, switching every Friday. “You’d think that was a fair schedule, with 50-50 custody, but I have since read that it is probably more demanding on the children than not,” he says.
“The children don’t have longevity and stability when they are constantly moving to another home. What I hadn’t thought about was the fact they would have different sets of clothing, different school supplies, different lifestyles and even different styles of discipline and parenting to deal with.”
Who Buys Supplies?
With limited communication between the exes, “Even I don’t know who is going to buy the school supplies they need or who is going to coordinate their activity list,” Care says.
“I have basically taken the approach that these are my children. Whether their mother is communicating with me or not is irrelevant. I am going to do what I need to take care of them, and anything my ex adds is icing on the cake. I have the school list and I’m going to make sure they have the supplies they need. They may end up with two of everything.”
For Care, coordination of school schedules, activities and homework are some of the biggest challenges. Care believes that because his children are young, they may not be responsible enough to share the homework assignments they received one Friday with the parent who has them next week. Problems may not even be known until the teacher brings them up.
“I chose not to explain to the teacher about the divorce,” Care explains. “I didn’t want it to be a crutch, and didn’t want them viewed differently because of it. [Divorce] may be impactful, but it’s not a handicap.”
It was Care’s children themselves who publicized the changes, speaking openly on what was happening. “They would say, ‘My family is not together,’ or ‘My mom’s seeing someone,’” he says.
A Teacher’s Point of View
One pre-K teacher in southern Chesterfield County says parents should tell the teacher what is going on. “That way I’ll be able to watch for signs of isolation, depression or acting out. Otherwise I have no idea why they are acting like they are.” She says teachers may misinterpret behavior changes.
“It is an extra-sticky situation if the children do not live together,” the teacher explains further. She gives an example of a mother and father who left their young children with the babysitter and walked away. The babysitter now has custody of and cares for two of the three children in her home, including the pre-K boy from the teacher’s classroom. The oldest sibling lives with a grandparent.
“We [at the school] try to encourage contact with his older sister. I may say, ‘Give her a hug if you see her in the hall,’ for example.”
Supportive Schools
The school counselor at her at-risk school also provides support, she says. He sends notes to the parents and asks teachers if someone in their classroom is having issues. His school offers divorce and bereavement groups for parents and children, either together or separately, with parental approval.
Schools can also be used as a neutral zone where hostile parents can coordinate communication.
From the teacher’s perspective, it may be double work to sent two report cards and call two parents, but that is part of supportive communication. Even the school nurse faces the challenge of which parent to call to pick up a sick child. They may not know about the divorce, and may not ask the child which parent he or she is staying with that week.
Behavioral Issues
According to J. Eileene Welker in “What Parents Can Do to Help Children Adjust to Divorce,” “Children who experience divorce, compared with children in continuously intact two-parent families, are at somewhat greater risk for symptoms of poor psychological adjustment, behavioral and social problems, low self-esteem and poor performance in school.”
She states that in the months following separation, children may manifest signs of anxiety, sadness, aggression, anger, uncooperative behavior, sleep problems and disrupted concentration in school.
Younger children may blame themselves for the divorce because they are confused and fearful. They may also regress to earlier stages of behavior.
Children of elementary school age may become sad and depressed. Older children may feel anger toward one or both parents. Adolescents may also feel anger and may question their own ability to maintain a long-term relationship with a partner.
Misguided Thoughts
Many children of divorced parents may believe they are the reason their parents got divorced. They may think that if only they had gotten better grades or behaved better it wouldn’t have happened. Parents should stress that divorce is between Mom and Dad only.
“For most children, the distress is short-term, and they learn to adapt with reasonable success,” Welker explains.
One thing parents can do is be observant. Watch for problems in school or changes in relating to other children. Watch for delayed or reverted development, or unusual behavior such as withdrawal. Avoiding labels such as “broken home” or “real parent” may also be helpful.
School and behavioral adjustment may depend on the parenting skills, communication or conflict between the parents, economic hardship and other stresses such as moving to a new home, changing schools and parental remarriage. Welker supports maintaining a stable routine for the children, with minimal change.
How Teachers Can Help
Kim Leon and Leanne Spengler explain in “Helping Children Adjust to Divorce: A Guide for Teachers” that schools can support children through family transitions by taking a partnership approach, having informed attitudes, creating an atmosphere that welcomes all types of families, and by taking action that supports all children and parents.
Leon and Spengler remind teachers that parental involvement occurs on a continuum.
Some parents take an active role as educational leaders at home and school. Others may take a lesser role, acting as recipients of education and support from the school. Depending on a parent’s own transitional state, this may be all they can do at the time.
Teachers should welcome all family involvement and invite both parents and grandparents to participate in their child’s school activities, programs and field trips.
Open Lines of Contact
Often, mothers have managed the majority of communication between the school and the family. After a divorce, school personnel may not know, or may assume that communications will continue in the same manner.
Both parents should be actively involved in the communication and have equal access to health and school records, unless there is legal documentation such as a protective order prohibiting access.
Some teachers make up a weekly information packet for each parent, or send home a daily packet to the custodial parent. According to the Chesterfield teacher, it is great when the packet comes back with a note saying, “Let the other parent see this.”
A Guidebook Just for Children
Max Sindell used his own experiences to model his book, “The Bright Side: Your Guide to Surviving Your Parents’ Divorce,” as a guidebook for children ages eight through 14. It is issued by Health Communications, the same publisher known for the Chicken Soup anthologies.
Sindell’s parents divorced when he was just six. It was his father’s second divorce. His mother since remarried and his father remarried two more times. Now 21, Sindell addresses the many sides of divorce, including traveling cross-country alone at the age of eight and dealing with his parents’ new dating partners—and subsequently, stepparents and stepsiblings.
“Your parents start dating, and that’s really weird because maybe you’re in middle school, and you don’t even know what dating is. And now you’ve got these new men or new women, or both, coming into your household,” Sendell said in an interview with reviewer Simon Waxman.
Sindell viewed the divorce as a problem he got to solve, and in his book provides steps and helpful hints to aid children in retaining control over their own lives.
Some tips are practical, like remembering to keep a set of toiletries and school supplies at each house. Others offer experiential advice, such his suggestion that children avoid discussing the intimate details of one parent’s life with the other.
He wishes there had been more practical guidance available when he was a child.
“The literature, if it’s for teenagers, is very anecdotal. And all the stuff for little kids is really kind of pedantic,” he says. His book is his attempt to fill that void by offering a sympathetic perspective on a trying ordeal.
As kids head back to school, remember that all the important adults in a child’s life—parents, teachers, even bus drivers—can be supportive, working together in the best interest of the child.

Linda Barrett is a freelance writer and owner of a communications agency in Richmond. www.allthebuzz.net.
 
Archive Features: August 2007

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