From the author: A child’s reaction to a parent’s divorce depends not only on the fact of separation... Fears associated with a parent’s divorce in children can manifest themselves in a variety of symptoms. The parent (most often the mother) with whom the child remains to live must show maximum attention and patience in relation to these symptoms. They are not yet “neurotic” - they are a reactive adaptation to life changes, i.e. reactions of experiences. And they can go away on their own if adaptation occurs and fears are overcome. To restore the trust lost during divorce, children must be able to regress. Manifestations of regression include increased dependence, the need to control the mother (father), a tendency to whims and tears, the appearance of secondary enuresis, attacks of rage, etc. But this does not mean that everything should be left to chance and all limits of what is permitted should be abolished. Parents need to understand that at the moment, for example, their seven-year-old son is behaving like a three- or four-year-old, and he cannot do otherwise in this situation. The mother needs to soften her irritation and facilitate the subsequent reconciliation with her son. The child may ask the same questions that concern him every day, for example: “Why did you separate?”, “Why doesn’t dad live with us?” etc. And the mother’s task is to talk to the child and answer all his questions. Patiently, with love, convince again and again, assure the child that he was born from the greatest love, both she and his father love him, will always love him, and he will always meet with his dad. Many children don't ask questions at all. But parents should feel the child’s experiences and try to encourage them to have these conversations. Of course, a divorced mother, who herself is suffering from a divorce, needs absolutely obedient, independent children who do not really need attention and patience, at least until she herself is able to fulfill the child’s expectations. However, at the same time, the child needs a caring, soulful, patient mother, which she has never been before. Unfortunately, a mother in this difficult situation is much less able to show maternal feelings, because... she remains completely alone, overwhelmed with suffering. It turns out that as a result of divorce, a child loses not only his father, but also most of his mother. She loses precisely that part of her that was patient, understanding, caring, i.e. those aspects that give a feeling of security to the child. If in the first weeks and months after a divorce conflicts, and with them the child’s fears, increase, then a partial or complete breakdown of the protection system is possible. The defense system is a mental balance that a person unconsciously creates throughout his life in order to be able to overcome intrapsychic conflicts. And the child regresses to an earlier stage of development, because... During this period, old “pre-divorce” conflicts break through, contributing to the emergence of the child’s already too much uncertainty and fear. This means that, for fear of being captured by fear, the child’s self will try as quickly as possible to build a new defense against old feelings, thoughts, fantasies, which were activated by divorce and the disruption of the once-held defense, through repression. Sooner or later they will return again, but in an altered form - in the form of neurotic symptoms. They do not appear immediately, outwardly they can remain invisible, and sometimes manifest themselves in the forms of “positive changes” in the child’s behavior. For example, he seems calmer, more diligent in learning his school lessons, and many mothers are happy that the child no longer yearns for his father and has become obedient. Many parents and some experts consider such changes in children’s behavior after the completion of post-traumatic protection as a sign of successfully overcoming the divorce. However, these “changes” are the beginning of the neurotic consequences of a traumatic event - the parents’ divorce. It is based on four types differing inthe pathogenic meaning of “symptoms”, making one think about long-term consequences. 1) Reactions of experiences (spontaneous reaction to divorce) - adaptation reactions that may pass over time if the associated concerns are mitigated or corrected to a greater extent. 2) Development of symptoms, when fears and fantasies associated with reactions of experiences that do not have the opportunity to be processed are superimposed by other factors, for example, the stress of the mother. All this leads to a breakdown in protection. We are no longer talking about reactions, but about strong regression or destructuring of the mental organization.3) If at the moment of destructuring children (or parents) are not given active help, then neurotic processes in the classical version may arise: during regression, early infantile painful ones break through fears, therefore new ones, characteristic of divorce, and old, awakened, mental conflicts are again repressed, projected, somatized. Post-traumatic, already neurotic symptoms may outwardly appear not only pathological, but also as a reaction to a traumatic reaction to divorce. 4) If children are already neurotically burdened, they may outwardly appear unresponsive to divorce. More often, they experience intensified symptoms that arose even before the parents’ divorce - an indicator that divorce only contributes to the intensification of existing specific neurotic disorders. The relationship between the reaction to divorce and intrapsychic (internal) conflicts or defenses show that mental stress in the child began even before the divorce period . The reaction to divorce depends not only on the fact of separation or its circumstances (this includes how parents are able to help the child during this difficult period), but the child’s self-development before the divorce is also of significant importance. In huge numbers, conflicts and tense relationships between spouses begin from the moment the child is born, which subsequently lead to divorce. The reasons are varied and subjective. For example, the unconscious jealousy of fathers towards a newborn is the jealousy that they experienced in childhood, when they were overthrown from their “pedestal” as the only child in the family at the birth of a younger brother or sister. After all, the younger ones took away his mother’s undivided love, just as now his own child endangers his wife’s love for him. On the other hand, many women's desire for sexual intimacy (relationships) weakens - a man sees a threat to his masculine self-esteem. Often a woman unconsciously transfers her love and attention to the child, depriving her husband of these important aspects in the relationship. The father (husband) feels disadvantaged, overthrown from the dominant place in the family, giving way to his mother (wife). As a result, the child can actually turn into the main vital partner of the mother and for a long time displace the husband (father) into second place. In response, the husband ceases to be interested in his wife as a woman. It is not for nothing that people say that children are the meaning of the family. It turns out that children can pose a secret danger to a marriage. However, the emotional problems of parents, which later become the cause of true divorce, lead to pathological and pathogenic distortions of the early relationship between mother and child. The more serious the trauma of divorce is, the stronger the child’s internal conflicts were even before the divorce. They may not necessarily be expressed in external conflicts, i.e. tense relationships with others. For example, a well-adjusted, obedient child without difficulties communicating with others cannot automatically be considered a happy or unhappy child. This is revealed in neuroses or personality disorders during puberty. However, a certain amount of “disobedience” or the desire to be disobedient is also characteristic of mentally normal children. There is another very important phenomenon, thanks to which the child’s internal conflicts and mental stress are significantly smoothed out, and begin to appear only after a divorce - the phenomenon of the triangulating function of the father. Triangulation.