Third culture kids - Keep Your Life, Family and Career Intact While Living Abroad - page 41

father and his new girlfriend has destroyed Martha's fantasy. Feelings of jealousy and hope-
lessness finally set in when she realizes the divorce is irreversible.
Terminating a marriage involves a lot of tearing and restructuring. Couples are usually
preoccupied with their own feelings and trying to survive such a drastic change. Sometimes
children's needs are unintentionally ignored. Seldom are they given a chance to express
their feelings towards the parents' separation. They may be caught in a tug-of-war or be
called on to take sides.
Children from expatriate families experience additional adverse effects when their par-
ents divorce. In many cases, when a couple gets divorced, one partner may lose the legal
right to remain in the foreign land. Others by choice choose to return to their home country.
In either case, children can be a continent apart from their non-custodial parent. Not only
do they experience the split-up of their family, but also a long-distance separation from one
parent. Weekend visits are impossible, and telephone contact is prohibitively expensive.
Such a setup creates a damper in maintaining the stable parent-child relationship which a
child needs in the process of growing up.
Divorce for an expatriate child means losing more than a parent. If they are in the cus-
tody of the repatriating parent, they then lose school, friends, and the country they grew up
in and consider home. This can lead to resentment and bitterness. Without opportunity to
clarify their confusion, children will draw their own conclusions over who “really” caused
a divorce. Furthermore, without a channel to voice their feelings, they inevitably feel alien-
ated from one or both parents. This leads to frustration and feelings of helplessness. It will
also have a negative impact on how they treat or view other relationships in the future.
In helping children to deal with divorce, parents must share with them what is happening
in order to avoid any misconceptions. Reassure children that they are not responsible for
breaking up the marriage, and that it is entirely the adults' decision. It is important to point
out that even though the parents no longer live together, both will continue to love and care
for the children.
Avoid lying for the sake of “protecting the children's feelings”. Unless children are giv-
en clear information, they will form their own conclusions, which may be incorrect. Given
the real facts, they are less likely to entertain any false hopes of parental reunion. They are
also more unlikely to take sides, or to favor one parent over the other.
Finally, children ought to be given opportunities to voice their feelings, ideally before
the divorce, so that all parties can have a better understanding of others' reactions and try
to work it through in the best way they can.
T HE E MPTY N EST