Children Of Divorced Parents Support Group
This community is for the children of divorce, both for adult children who have lived through a divorce as well as parents concerned about the effects of divorce on their children. Share your story and get advice in this support group, where there are others going through similar challenges.
Is it bad to want your parents to divorce?
I've been wanting them to split for two years now. Over the past two years, my two younger siblings and I have been subjected to daily yelling from our father. He wakes up each morning to scream at my mother waking up the whole house. The worst thing is, he forces my siblings and I to take sides - something which I struggled not to do (all of us tried not to). he regularly tells us that our mother abuses us, that she has anger issues and that we are blind to the issues. once while telling us about their marriage issues i asked him to stop telling my siblings and i this as we didn't need to know this.
his response was that it was crucial for us to know what a horrible person our mother is. all whilst yelling and screaming at us each day. if anyone yells back they have an anger issue and need help.Even worse, a few years back my older sister was going through issues with my mother (we moved accross the ocean and she was taking her pain out on my mother) so they went to see a therapist. they had a had a fight that morning and my mother was angry so in the five minutes she was talking to the therapist she was terse and upset. the therapist wrote a final report and in it she said that my mother was angry and needed to deal with it.
my dad sent this 13 page report (12 pages of which contained private information about my older sister) to my siblings and i claiming that we needed to 'see it'. my older sister begged and pleaded him to apologize but he refused to apologize once again saying that we need to see the truth about our mother. now, my siblings and i have been divided. my brother, older sister and i with my mother and my younger sister with my father.
evidently he shows a lot of favortisim towards my younger sister. he buys her expensive shoes, tells her that my mother is crazy when she tries to make her do her chores and overall just showers her with love. the other three of us are suffering.my older sister who lives away from home (something of which i am constantly jealous of) has been slut-shamed for having a boyfriend and hasn't spoken to my father in a month. my younger brother gets yelled at for the tinest of things for example, he accidentally put a fork forcefully down on the table (he's ten and gets mad sometimes) and got screamed at.
as for myself, i constantly get harassed to read the report that my dad sent (it made me so sick to my stomach i couldn't bear to read it) and otherwise completely ignored. i asked my dad the other night to stop screaming as i was studying for my maths exam which was the following day and he responded 'i don't care.'yet, he think he's the perfect parent and perfect husband. on the other hand, my mother is falling apart and i feel bad because i have no clue how to comfort her or how to help her deal with this. she wants to get divorced but she can't work here and needs to wait until we move back (in 5 months) so that she can do it and still have custody of us.
i'm 17 years old and i feel like i'm drying a little every day
-A.P.
http://unityandstruggle.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf
My best advice, don't engage. Walk away if you can. If you can't, reflect his feelings back "you are angry at mom."
Your sister is learning to bond with her father because he's the strong one. There's nothing that you can do to stop it. But it might help to understand and know that she's the one that will be hurt the most in the long run, especially if she marries a man with the attitudes of your father.
My little adopted sisters still live with my Dad and step-mom, and they go through something similar to you and your siblings. My siblings and I have confronted our Dad about his anger issues, but it doesn't seem like it has helped as much as we were hoping for.
So I have had to think about ways to help my little sisters through what they are going through. I have come up with two things. First, my siblings and I need to cultivate a strong and supportive relationship with our little sisters so that they have a loving and healing relationship to help them grow. Second, my little sisters need to reach out to a school counselor so that they can get some emotional support and advocacy.
My Dad and step-mom are not giving my little sisters that loving and healing support they need, but they need to get it from somewhere, and one of the ways to get that support is from us. So my siblings and I become supportive to our little sisters by cultivating strong friendships with them. We have fun with them, listen to them when they have important things to say, playfully tease each other, play games, and anything else to strengthen that bond of love and friendship. And they love it; they look forward to when we can spend time together.
Seeking out a counselor at school may help my little sisters because the counselors are there to help young adults and children going through family problems. The counselor helps them to find ways to grow and deal with the emotional pain they are experiencing. The counselor can also advocate for them if it is necessary.
If you are feeling like the situation with your parents is too much to endure, then I would like to say this to you; you can get through it. You can get through it by cultivating supportive relationships with your older sister and your younger sister and brother. You four are in this together. You four can become good friends who support each other through what you go through with your Dad. If you endure it alone, then this is hard. But if you endure it together by being a support to each other, then the pain will be lessened and become more endurable. Think about it, what if you could look at your sisters and brother and show by eye contact or by the words you say or by the hug you give them that you trust them and love them and you know what they are going through – do you know how much this could help them? And if they did the same to you, do you know how happy or comforted this would make you feel?
But what if you don’t have a good or supportive relationship with your siblings? What if you have all felt too broken and isolated from each other to have good relationships? It doesn’t have to be like that from now on. You can make the effort to cultivate a strong relationship with your siblings. It requires some effort to do this, and right now this sort of effort might seem like too much. But this effort of giving yourself like this not only benefits them, but it benefits you too. Think about what your relationships can become if now you labor to make them stronger. I think it’s worth it.
Finally, it may also be beneficial for you all to make a visit to the school counselor so that you can be heard and get more direction. I think it would be comforting to you and your siblings to get the positive feedback that a counselor gives.