RESILIENCE

Children's Resilience in the Face of

Parental Divorce
The resilience that children need is seen in their ability to regulate emotions
and optimism. Here’s why.
March 26, 2023 | Written by Atikah

Key points
 Resilience is a person's ability to survive, rise, and adjust to difficult
conditions.

 Parental divorce can have an impact on emotional reactions and will

reduce the optimistic attitude that exists in a child.

 Increasing resilience skills in children who experience parental divorce

is very important because it can help to minimize negative impacts and
help them develop positively.

Resilience is the ability to adapt and survive in circumstances that are

considered detrimental and stressful to individuals. Individual resilience can
maintain a person's mental health condition and increase their ability to get
out of difficulties experienced such as parental divorce. A child's normal
developmental steps towards individuation can be threatened simply because
of parental divorce. A child sees the parents as a figure who has separated
from them. This causes the child to be unable to move towards independence
and separation from the parent.

It is very important for someone with divorced parents to have positive abilities
to face challenges. This positive ability is commonly referred to as resilience. A
person is unable to avoid psychological disorders such as stress, depression
and others when facing problems because of their low resilience ability. Ismiati
(2018) explains that the impact experienced by children when facing parental
divorce is a feeling of pressure that causes them to become stressed and
depressed. By building resilience, adolescents have the ability to prevent,
anticipate, adapt, and deal with the problems they face.
Resilience serves to represent an individual's ability to survive and adjust after
experiencing trauma. Resilience has become an important concept in child
development and supports the development of theory and research related to
mental health. Many children are unable to deal with the problem of their
parents' divorce well because they have low resilience skills. A person's
resilience ability can be seen from how emotional regulation and optimism he
has. For this reason, this study aims to analyze children's resilience when
facing parental divorce in terms of emotional regulation and optimism.

Children's Resilience (Point 1)

Resilience is a human ability or capacity possessed by a person, group, or
community that enables them to face, prevent, minimize and even eliminate
the adverse effects of unpleasant conditions, and turn misleading conditions
into something that is natural to overcome. Resilience becomes an important
thing that is needed for every child when they are faced with unpleasant
situations or circumstances that make them depressed and depressed, which
each child has a different capacity to become resilient. Every child who has a
good resilience attitude makes them stronger, able to survive and adapt to
unpleasant conditions that occur in their lives. Reivich and Shatte (2002)
reveal that resilience is a person's ability to survive, rise, and adjust to difficult
conditions, resilience is a capacity to respond healthily and productively when
facing difficulties or trauma, which is important in managing the pressures of
daily life; the ability to adapt and remain resilient in difficult situations. It can be
concluded that resilience is the ability of the human capacity to face, prevent,
overcome, and be strong when experiencing unpleasant events in his life and
being able to take positive meaning over the negative experiences he has
experienced.

The Relationship of Children's Resilience Ability with Parental

Divorce (Point 2)
The harmony of family relationships can affect the psychological development
of children, when parents and children have a positive and adaptive
relationship, it will help children in achieving optimal developmental tasks and
vice versa, an inharmonious relationship between children and parents can
have a negative effect on adolescent life (Indriani, 2018). The main cause of
divorce is due to conflict between husband and wife and weak communication
functions and if divorce occurs it will have an impact on a child's emotional
reactions which include sadness, fear, depression and anger and cause poor
behavior in children at school and will reduce optimistic attitudes and
performance of developmental functions due to problematic behavior (Babalis
et.al, 2014). A child who experiences parental divorce sometimes has difficulty
controlling his emotions because he cannot accept well the separation of his
parents, it will also interfere with and reduce the level of optimism of children,
especially in the academic field. According to Brooks (in Uruk, 2019) someone
who experiences parental divorce will cause difficulties for children in
controlling emotions and the low level of optimism that is in them, children who
are unable to control their emotions effectively will cause them to experience:
(1) psychological disorders such as stress, depression, anxiety, and others,
(2) fear of losing family, feelings of guilt and anger, (3) mood swings,
complaining, and irritability or loss of interest in all activities and this can also
cause children to experience difficulties in their academics such as: (1) voicing
feelings and delinquency, (2) lack of social responsibility, (3) poor intimate
relationships, (4) dropping out of school, (5) dealing with antisocial peers, (6)
having a low level of self-esteem due to the reduced level of optimism that
exists in him. The process of children's psychological development is very
influential on how their relationship with the family, especially with parents, so
if there is no harmony in the family or divorce, it will affect the psychological
development of children and cause children to experience psychological
disorders due to their inability to control emotions and academic failure due to
low levels of optimism in themselves so resilience abilities such as the ability
to regulate or control emotions and the attitude of optimism that exists in each
child has an important relationship in dealing with parental divorce.

Impact of Increased Emotion Regulation Skills and Optimism on

Children in Parental Divorce (Point 3)
Parental separation is more damaging to child and family relationships
because the adjustment period for divorce is longer and more difficult for
children as most children go through five stages in this adjustment, including
denial of the divorce, anger directed at those involved in the situation,
bargaining to unite the parents, depression, and finally acceptance. Resilience
is often seen as a subset of personality traits and coping strategies that
enable a child or adult to cope with harrowing life experiences. A child who
has good emotion regulation and an optimistic attitude will find it easier to face
and resolve problems such as parental divorce. Traumatic experiences at a
very young age such as divorce from parents affect the potential for
depression in the future, but resilience abilities such as having an attitude of
optimism and good emotional regulation can be a protective and preventive
factor against the emergence of depression and feelings of neglect from
children, resilience is needed if an adolescent is faced with parental divorce
because it can minimize the negative impact and help them develop positively.
(Bucur, Bucur & Runcan, 2013; Schulz et al, 2014). By increasing resilience
abilities, namely having an attitude of optimism and being able to manage
emotions well, children will find it easy to deal with problems, they will be able
to address, solve, and accept the problems they are facing well and have a
high level of self-confidence so as to avoid difficulties in their academics,
especially for children who experience parental divorce.

Bottom Line (The Synthesis of 3 Points Above)

Resilience is the mental quality of a person that helps them to thrive even in
the face of stressful situations. Resilience is an important thing that is needed
for every child when they are faced with unpleasant situations or
circumstances that make them depressed and depressed, which each child
has a different capacity to become resilient. By having resilience abilities,
namely having an optimistic attitude and good emotional regulation, a child will
avoid experiencing symptoms of depression, stress, anxiety, and other
psychological disorders and avoid experiencing difficulties in academics. By
having resilience skills, namely having an optimistic attitude and good
emotional regulation, a child will avoid experiencing symptoms of depression,
stress, anxiety, and other psychological disorders and avoid experiencing
difficulties in academics.
The success of a child in handling and solving his problems can be seen from
the resilience ability that exists within him. A child has a different level of
resilience ability in dealing with parental divorce. Someone who has high
resilience will easily face and solve problems, and vice versa, people who
have low resilience abilities will find it difficult to solve problems and get out of
the pressure they experience.
Resilience has a positive impact on a person to rise from adversity or
problems faced so that we should increase resilience within us. so that when
faced with a problem we can respond with a positive attitude so that we can
solve the problem and avoid psychological disorders.

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