Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child (21 page)

Social scientists propose various theories for why young children from conflict-ridden families have more behavior problems and more difficulty with peer relationships. Some suggest that parents who are embroiled in disputes with their spouses or ex-spouses have less time and energy to spend with their children. Divorce and the conflicts leading up to divorce leave parents too exhausted, distracted, or depressed to be effective disciplinarians.

E. Mavis Hetherington describes the period during the parents’ separation and divorce, as well as the first two years following the split, as a time of serious disruption of parent-child relationships. During this period, “
a preoccupied and/or emotionally disturbed
parent and a distressed, demanding child are likely to have difficulty supporting or consoling each other and may even exacerbate each other’s problems,” Hetherington writes. Divorced mothers with custody of their children “frequently become temporarily erratic, uncommunicating, nonsupporting, and inconsistently punitive in dealing with their children.” And the problems don’t necessarily evaporate with time: “Difficulty controlling and monitoring children’s behavior is the most sustaining parenting problem faced by divorced mothers.”

Such findings echo the parenting problems we observed among participants in our own study who were experiencing stress in their marriages. These parents were more likely to be cold and unresponsive toward their children. They were also less likely to set limits on their children’s behavior.

Besides providing poor parenting, many experts believe that parents in stressed marriages provide poor examples to their children of how to get along with others. They believe children who see their moms and dads being aggressive, belligerent, or contemptuous toward each other are more likely to exhibit such behavior in their relationships
with their friends. With no role models to teach them how to listen empathetically and solve problems cooperatively, the children follow the script their parents have handed them—one that says hostility and defensiveness are appropriate responses to conflict; that aggressive people get what they want.

While it certainly makes sense that children who live with the negative influence of parental conflict learn by example, I believe marital discord may also have a deeper, more profound impact on kids—especially for those who are exposed to severe family problems from the time they are very small. I think the stress of living with parental conflict can affect the development of an infant’s autonomic nervous system, which, in turn, determines a child’s ability to cope.

There’s no arguing that children get distressed when they witness their parents fighting. Studies have shown that even small children react to adult arguments with physiological changes such as increases in heart rate and blood pressure.
Research psychologist E. Mark Cummings
, who has studied children’s reactions to adult arguments, notes that kids typically respond by crying, standing motionless with tension, covering their ears, grimacing, or requesting to leave. Others have observed
nonverbal stress reactions
to anger in children as young as six months. While babies may not understand the content of their parents’ disagreements, they know when something is amiss and react with agitation and tears.

My colleagues and I have observed this type of reaction among families in our own labs. One couple participating in our study of recently married parents, for example, brought their three-month-old daughter in for observation. Earlier interviews had revealed that the parents’ relationship was extremely competitive and contentious—characteristics that became even more evident in this experiment. Instructed to play together with their baby, the father caught his child’s gaze by jiggling her foot, while the mother started making cooing noises to steal the baby’s attention away from dad. It appeared that this conflict confused and agitated the baby, who looked away and began to cry. At the same time, her heart started beating much faster. Then, despite her parents efforts to soothe her, it took an uncommonly long time for the baby’s heart rate to return to normal.

Although our study of infants is not yet complete, such observations strengthen my belief that parental conflict can begin to take its toll in infancy—a time when the very pathways of a child’s autonomic nervous system are developing. Whatever happens to that child emotionally during those first few months may have a significant and lifelong effect on a child’s vagal tone—that is, the child’s ability to regulate her nervous system. Whether an infant’s cries are answered, whether she is frequently soothed or irritated by the sensations around her, whether the people who feed her, bathe her, and play with her are calm and engaging or anxious and depressed—all of this may make a difference in a baby’s long-term ability to respond to stimuli, to calm herself, and recover from stress.

Such abilities become increasingly important as kids grow and begin to interact more with others. Children need to regulate their emotions in order to focus attention, to concentrate and learn, to read other people’s body language, facial expressions, and social cues. Without these components of emotional intelligence, children enter social and academic settings at a disadvantage.

Our studies and many others have shown that children of divorced and high-conflict couples get lower grades. Teachers typically rate children from disrupted homes lower on scales of aptitude and intelligence. Writing in the
Atlantic Monthly
, social critic Barbara Dafoe Whitehead described the situation this way: “
The great education tragedy
of our time is that many American children are failing in school, not because they are intellectually or physically impaired, but because they are emotionally incapacitated…. Teachers find many children emotionally distracted, so upset and preoccupied by the explosive drama of their own family lives that they are unable to concentrate on such mundane matters as multiplication tables.”

Children carry such problems
into their adult years, as indicated by an analysis of the National Survey of Children by Nicholas Zill. Researchers interviewed a nationally representative sample of people in middle childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. Zill looked at data from 240 young people whose parents had separated or divorced before they were age sixteen. Even after controlling for variations in parent education, race, and other factors, Zill found that eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds from disrupted families were
twice as likely as other youths to show high levels of emotional distress or problem behavior. They were also nearly twice as likely as those in nondivorced families to drop out of high school. And among children who did drop out, those from disrupted families were less likely eventually to earn a diploma or a GED.

But perhaps the most heartbreaking result of Zill’s analysis has to do with the connection between divorce and the parent-child relationship itself. His research shows that 65 percent of those young people whose parents divorced reported poor relationships with their fathers, compared to 9 percent of those whose parents did not divorce. Zill comments that this result is “hardly surprising,” given the fact that a majority of separated or divorced fathers in this group neither provided financial support nor maintained regular contact with their children. At the same time, many children’s bonds with their mothers appeared to suffer from divorce as well. Some 30 percent from the divorced families reported poor relationships with the mothers, compared with 16 percent in the nondivorced group.

“The fact that most grown children of divorce are alienated from at least one parent and a substantial minority are alienated from both is, we believe, a legitimate cause for societal concern,” writes Zill. “It means that many of these young people are especially vulnerable to influences outside the family, such as from boyfriends or girlfriends, other peers, adult authority figures, and the media. Although not necessarily negative, these influences are unlikely to be an adequate substitute for a stable and positive relationship with a parent.”

Other studies reveal how parental divorce affects people across the life span. In a variety of studies, adults whose parents have divorced report having more stress, less satisfaction with family and friends, greater anxiety, and a diminished ability to cope with life’s problems in general.

And now we find, according to results of a recent long-term investigation, that parental divorce may even cut a person’s life short. Begun in 1921 by psychologist Lewis Terman to test his theories of heritability of intelligence, this study followed the psychosocial and intellectual development of some 1,500 gifted California children, checking on them every five to ten years.
To find out how social stresses
affect longevity, Howard Friedman of the University of California
at Riverside recently checked the death certificates of Terman’s participants, half of whom had died. In 1995, Friedman reported that those participants whose parents divorced before they were age twenty-one died four years earlier than participants whose parents remained together. (By contrast, he found that a parent’s death during a participant’s childhood had little impact on life span. This is consistent, he notes, with other research that shows that parental divorce and separation has a bigger influence on psychological problems later on than does the death of a parent.) Friedman also found that children of divorced parents were more likely to become divorced themselves, although the participants’ own divorces did not necessarily account for their shorter life span. Friedman concludes that parental divorce is a key event in the social fabric of young people’s lives for predicting their premature deaths.

With so much evidence pointing to the harmful effects of divorce on children, unhappily married parents may wonder whether it’s best to stay in a truly miserable and undeniably hopeless marriage for their children’s welfare. Our research, and that of others, answers this question with a definite and resounding no. That’s because certain kinds of marital conflict can have the same deleterious effects on children as divorce. In other words, it’s not necessarily the divorce that hurts kids, but the intense hostility and bad communication that can develop between unhappily married mothers and fathers and may continue after the divorce. Some marital problems, including those where the husband withdraws emotionally from his family, are associated with children developing what psychologists call “internalizing” problems—the kids become anxious, depressed, introverted, and withdrawn. Hostility and contempt between spouses, on the other hand, is linked to kids becoming aggressive with their peers.

Given that staying together in an ailing marriage and divorcing can have equally harmful effects on children, is there any proven way for unhappily married couples to protect their kids? Our data shows there is. The way to buffer children is through Emotion Coaching.

P
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HILD FROM THE
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EGATIVE
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FFECTS OF
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ITH SO MUCH
evidence that children can be harmed by strife between their mothers and fathers, some parents may wonder whether their goal should be to ban all forms of marital conflict, or at least to keep disagreements hidden from the kids. Not only would this be a bad idea; it would be impossible. Conflict and anger are normal components of everyday married life. Couples who can openly express their inevitable differences and work through them have happier relationships in the long run. And, as we have learned, parents who acknowledge negative emotions are in a better position to help their children cope with their own feelings of anger, sadness, and fear.

In addition, studies show that children may benefit from witnessing certain kinds of family conflict, particularly when their parents disagree in a respectful way and when it’s clear that the parents are working constructively toward a resolution. If children never see the adults in their lives get angry with one another, disagree, and then settle their differences, they are missing crucial lessons that can contribute to emotional intelligence.

The key is to manage conflict with your child’s other parent so that it can become a positive example rather than a harmful experience for the child. Obviously, this is easier said than done—especially considering the way only spouses (and ex-spouses) can ignite each other’s emotions. Still, recent research provides some clues for how parents can relate to each other in a way that protects and benefits their children.

PRACTICE EMOTION COACHING IN YOUR MARRIAGE

Our research into the emotional needs of children makes it clear that kids are happiest and most successful when they are listened to, understood, and taken seriously by their parents. But what effects do such habits have on the parents themselves and on their marriages?

To find the answer to that question, my colleagues and I looked at the marriages of the parents in our study we had identified as
Emotion Coaches. (These are the men and women who are aware of their emotions as well as those of their children. They are inclined to use their kids’ negative emotional moments as opportunities to listen. They display empathy with their kids, set limits, and offer them guidance on how to cope with negative emotions and how to solve problems.)

In addition to learning about the Emotion Coaches’ lives as parents, we gathered in-depth information about their married lives. In lengthy interviews, we learned about the history of their marital relationships and their philosophies of marriage. In lab experiments, we observed them working out areas of conflict. And by checking in with them over an eleven-year period, we learned how many had divorced, how many had considered divorce, and how many were still happily married.