86 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
may actually recover somewhat more easily from their parents’
divorce, at least psychologically speaking, than do their older
siblings.
Grade School and Early Childhood
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and
tyrannize their teachers.
—Socrates
Kids who are in elementary school (ranging approximately from
kindergarten to grade four) tend to have a more intuitively men-
tal and quizzical response to their parents’ separation (though
undoubtedly much of this is subconscious). Their brains have
become developed enough that they worry more about cause
and effect. These kids may feel either extremely rejected or guilty,
thinking that perhaps they were the ones who made mom or dad
leave home. This is also the stage when kids tend to fantasize
excessively about the family being rejoined someday.
Kids choosing sides. As children approach the end of elemen-
tary school (about ages nine or ten), they become more exter-
nally and visibly angry about the divorce (as compared to the
more internalized sense of anger experienced by kids aged five
through eight). They can become extremely, and vocally, angry.
This unleashed anger is often directed particularly at the parent
whom they blame for having caused the divorce. Kids at this stage
are particularly susceptible to aligning themselves with one par-
ent against the other. They are willing, and even anxious, to take
sides in the divorce. After all, they are themselves at a stage when
the linear or logic side of their mental development is just ger-
minating. Thus they tend to see things in rather black-and-white
terms. Not surprisingly, the performance of kids at this stage (in
the contexts of both school work and relations with their peers)
can sometimes drop precipitously during a divorce.
These kids have the clearest memory of the family during its
fully functional days. Hence, they are the ones who feel the great-
est sense of loss and trauma at seeing it shattered. They often also
take the brunt of having to shoulder extra household chores and