Contents
About a 7-year-old boy who survived the death of his father shortly after the separation of his parents, says child psychologist Marcel Rufo.
Marcel Rufo is a child psychiatrist, head of the House of Adolescents (La Maison des adolescents) in Paris, where boys and girls aged 11-19 can receive professional medical and psychological assistance. He is the author of several books about the relationship between teenagers and their parents, including the bestseller Let Me Go! (“Detache-moi”, Anne Carriere, 2003).
Arno is 7 years old and his father has just died. The mother takes him to a psychologist, confident, like many parents, that it is necessary to rid the child of the feeling of unhappiness as soon as possible. In fact, the only basis for consultation would be the complete absence of manifestations of sadness in a child in such a situation.
Arno, on the other hand, looks sad, a little distant, he is absorbed in his sadness. And since the child is here, I can at least help him integrate the memories of his father so that he can continue to exist in his memory. To do this, I invite the boy to tell about some pleasant memories associated with his father, but he barely answers me, as if he cannot remember those happy moments that will not happen again.
Arno perks up when I ask him what he wants to be. “Architect,” he says and smiles sincerely, for the first time in our entire conversation. I reply that I think it’s a great idea to continue the work of my father, and from this remark Arno begins to glow with happiness.
Read more:
- “Appreciate the opportunity to be yourself”
I also tell him that, despite his great grief, he was still lucky to remember his father. In contrast to the younger brother, who is only four and who in the future will have not real, but restored memories. “Yes, it’s because I lived with my dad for 7,5 years, and my brother only knew him for 4 years,” Arno proudly adds. “That’s just one of the tasks facing you – you can help your brother keep the memories of his father, tell him about everything that you did together once,” I remark in response. After that, I ask mother Arno to come out and leave us alone.
From that moment on, the boy’s behavior changes, he starts chatting about everything, asking me about my profession … However, not forgetting about his sadness. After a while, I again ask his mother to join us to see if Arnaud will not “react” with mourning in her presence. There is nothing surprising in such behavior: children often do this to be at one with adults. They try to match as much as possible what they think is expected of them. My hypotheses are shattered as soon as the mother says: “There is something else that I have not told you yet. My husband and I separated about a year ago.” Here Arno intervenes: “I realized that it’s all over, you will never live with dad again.”
It is these words that explain the degree of his sadness. The divorce of his parents made Arno vulnerable, and the death of his father further emphasized this vulnerability. The parents broke up, but the boy kept asking his mother about when they would live together again. He defended himself by seeing the situation as reversible and temporary. Death suddenly brought him face to face with the irreversibility of the separation of his parents, reality ruined his fantasy of their possible reconciliation. Then he fell into despair. Perhaps simply the loss of a father would have been less painful for this child; it was the divorce-death sequence that made things worse. In this case, the death of the father occurred in the post-traumatic period, while the primary trauma was caused by the separation of the parents, which made the child vulnerable.
Read more:
- Divorce: what do children think about it
For adults, divorce has become commonplace. This does not mean that he does not cause pain, but in our time, separation is considered quite possible. Modern parents, always very attentive, often come to counseling before a divorce, asking me what they can do to prevent the child from suffering. I answer them that I will meet with their children when they are already suffering, because it is impossible to prevent suffering.
Do children always suffer? I think yes. Divorce for a child is never a common and banal thing; children need faith that they were born as a result of the love of their parents and that this love is eternal. Adults can dream of another love, a child cannot; he has a father and mother, whom he perceives only together. He needs a strong and idealized image of his parents until he knocks them off their pedestal in adolescence. But conflicts and parting, dissecting the couple, destroy this ideal image.
I want to emphasize that psychologists, by definition, meet with children who are ill, who suffer more than others from the divorce of their parents. For most, this event will not be too difficult. Of course, they will suffer, but suffering is part of life, and eventually they will deal with parental images. At first, they will believe, like Arno, that the breakup is not final, and then they will realize that life does not fully correspond to their dreams and that their parents will never be together again. This will take time, and each child will experience suffering in a different way: one will have problems at school, another will sleep poorly or behave aggressively… Often these are temporary reactions that should be considered for what they are: children often try to disguise themselves so as not to add to their parents’ worries.
Подробнее см. Mr. Rufo “Untie me! Separating to grow” (Editions Anne Carriere, 2005).