Last year, I had the chance to do my internship with a school psychologist in primary schools. I was able to meet many children, with very different problems.
A situation particularly touched me, so I decided to present it briefly today, and to analyse it theoretically.
This situation is that of two brothers, whose parents have been separated for 4 years, at the time of our meeting. Initially, the custody of the children was organized by mutual agreement, but since 2019, the parents have been tearing custody of their boys apart. For example, parents sometimes meet at the school gate to pick up their children and argue. The two parents can no longer communicate with each other, even with the help of a judgment and the school psychologist.
The father says his ex-wife refuses any negotiations. The mother feels very helpless and not understood by the others because she is not French. In addition, she finds the eldest child very violent with his brother and even with her.
Regarding the children, the psychologist could see that this situation had direct repercussions on them. Indeed, the youngest is often violent with his comrades and very quickly feels attacked, accused by the others. He also verbalizes a lot of his parents’ arguments since the separation. Regarding the older boy, the year of the separation, he was also violent with his classmates and school professionals and did not fit into the apprenticeships. Today, he seems to be doing relatively well, at least at school.
From a theoretical point of view, Martin-Lebrun and his collaborators (1997) teach us that a parental separation is like a bereavement for the child, who has the feeling of losing his emotional bearings. He will therefore show signs of psychological suffering (anxiety, sadness, loss of confidence in himself, in the future and in adulthood). Moreover, the adaptation of children to the new family situation strongly depends on the persistence of parental conflicts. Here, it persists, and the children are unable to adapt (Dupont, 2018).
Then, the two children find themselves in a situation of “conflict of loyalty”, where they have the feeling of having to choose one of the two parents. This decision is impossible, and the situation wastes too much psychic energy for the children. They will therefore generally defend one parent to the detriment of the other. The child will take the place of the “separator” between the parents, which will generate great anxiety in him (De Becker, 2011).
This situation also takes too much energy from the parents, who will be less available for the children. children will be more anxious, and will find it difficult to bond, to regulate their emotions and may therefore find themselves violent.
We can also see this situation in the light of attachment theory. According to Bowlby (1989), attachment is an innate and essential need for survival. The child will therefore constantly be in search of physical proximity with the adult. In our situation, the parents are not available to offer the child a secure type of attachment.
However, in this situation of persistent parental conflict, children lose the trust they have in their parent. They also have a strong need for attention but feel excluded and neglected by their parents and all those around them, which may explain the behaviour of the younger child at school (Barbey-Mintz, 2015).
We can hypothesize that these two children develop an insecure-ambivalent attachment. Indeed, this style of attachment is the result of the inconsistency of parental responses.
The psychologist therefore proposed to the parents to do a family mediation, which would allow them to restore communication between them, to agree on the custody of their children. Children will therefore be able to be clearly informed of the changes in the organization of their lives in a concrete way. They also need to be reassured about the emotional security provided to them by each of the two parents.
Words learned: custody, argue, bereavement, neglected
Keywords : parental conflicts, conflict of loyalty, attachment, internship, emotional security