When I was three years old, my parents decided they didn’t work well enough together and got a divorce. They knew it was not only the best decision for them, but it was the best decision for their daughter—me.
Obviously, because I was just three years old, I’ve never had many memories of my parents together. I have a couple of memories of our house but none of my parents being together. As a kid, this made things both easy and difficult. On the easy side of things, I didn’t remember one big happy family which meant I didn’t know what I was missing out on. On the difficult side of things, all my friends did have big happy families which made me feel like there was something wrong with my family dynamic. How come I was the only kid that would move from one parent’s place to the other’s every week?
Now that I’m older, I understand why the divorce happened and I can appreciate both the difficult and positive sides of this event. I think it’s important to share what those experiences were like in order to, hopefully, allow someone to find validation in their own experiences. Divorce is hard on a child, whether you remember it or not, but it’s also important to recognize the positive changes this experience can result in. So let’s go through some of those experiences.
Pro: Double Everything
This is something that most people find selfish but honestly, it’s something that little me really liked (and let’s be real, I still enjoy this). I got double the Easter egg hunts, double the birthday parties, double the thanksgiving dinners, double the Christmases and (my favourite part) double the presents. I remember my elementary school friends being jealous of me and it made me feel special. I’m also quite positive this is where my materialistic personality came from!
Con: Missing My Parents
This was one of the hardest aspects of divorced parents. My parents decided on splitting the custody 50/50 which meant one week I would live with my dad and the next week I would live with my mom. Often, I’d spend the first part of the week missing the parent I was just with and not understanding why I couldn’t just see them. I’d also end up feeling guilty that I was missing the parent I wasn’t currently with. It was a confusing thing to deal with and it was something I never really seemed to grow out of. While I did lose the feeling of guilt, I never stopped missing the parent I wasn’t with at the time.
Pro: Larger Family
One really cool part of my parent’s divorce was gaining a new family on both sides when they remarried. I gained new step-parents and step-siblings from each new marriage. On top of the immediate family, I also gained a third and fourth set of grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. My small family grew quite big in the span of three years. With a new group of people added to my family, I also had more people that loved and cared about me. I’ve never once believed there wasn’t anyone who loved me because I knew that wasn’t true. Both of these new families welcomed me with open arms, which is something I’ve never stopped appreciating.
Con: Feeling Out of Place
While gaining a larger family was great and I am constantly grateful for my family, it was easy to feel out of place as a kid. While the adults of the new families treated me like I had always been there, I noticed the kids felt a little different. They were young enough to know I didn’t “belong” but not old enough to deal with those feelings in a very mature way. This led to me not being able to form close and lasting relationships with some members of my new step-families. While I know none of it was my fault because I was between the ages of five and eight, it definitely made me feel like I wasn’t truly a member of the family.
Pro: Different Styles of Parenting
This is something I’m sure can have both a positive and negative effect on a child, depending on the style of parenting. For me, both my parents had their own style and each one is just as good as the other. Being a young adult, I can see that the styles of parenting wouldn’t have worked well together but on their own, they were effective and helped me be able to better myself. There were definitely times when I preferred one method over the other (depending on how much trouble I thought I would be in!) but on the whole, both my parents knew what they were doing. I know I would’ve turned out drastically different had our lives not gone down this road!
Con: Judgement
When you hear that someone’s parents are divorced, the first thought is usually “oh, I’m sorry to hear that”. My life and family dynamic became somewhat of a sob story, and I was constantly dealing with other people’s sympathy. As a kid, I often felt like I wasn’t living a normal life; everyone was feeling sorry for me. I also noticed that people seemed to have this need to give me their opinions on my life, which was incredibly annoying. As a young adult, there is less stigma around divorce but I still have people telling me it sucks that my parents are divorced. It doesn’t suck for me, it’s just been the way it is. However, it is definitely much easier to sport that frame of mind now than it was when I was going through elementary school.
So there you have it. I’m turning 20 years old and I can officially say that being a child of divorce was not traumatizing or negatively life-altering. Of course, these are my own experiences, and you can never have the good without the bad, but on the whole, I had a good childhood. Divorce is scary and confusing for a kid, and I know I went through those emotions, but it’s not scary and confusing forever. There are always silver linings and moments of positivity, even in the hardest of things!