Growing up with Divorce: Helping Your Child Avoid Immediate and Later Emotional Problems by Neil Kalter

Synopsis

THE CLASSIC WORK ON HELPING CHILDREN OVERCOME THE TRAUMA OF DIVORCE

For many years, Growing Up With Divorce has offered divorced parents transformative insight, solace, and practical guidance on how to help their children cope with the stresses caused by marital separation.

Every child is unique, yet there are certain common reactions to the stresses of divorce -- anger, a sense of divided loyalties, lasting intimacy issues. Dr. Neil Kalter explains that, for children, divorce is not a single event but is comprised of "a series of events that occur over many years." Identifying three stages of divorce, Dr. Kalter cites the particular struggles associated with each stage and explains how gender as well as cognitive, emotional, and social development also affect how children react.

Dispensing sage advice on everything from understanding and minimizing the anxieties that underlie various troublesome behaviors to smoothing out your child's transitions between her two households to incorporating a new spouse into your family, Dr. Kalter gives parents and the professionals who treat divorced families an indispensable guide to navigating the difficulties of divorce.

Annotation

New research shows that in divorce situations it is often the children who suffer the most, experiencing emotional distress that can have a long-term impact no matter what the circumstances of the divorce or the age of the child at the time. Growing Up With Divorce explains how and why children are affected.