'I'm nineteen and I'm scared to believe that anything lasts forever. Every relationship that I go into I constantly remind myself that in a month, or a year, or whatever I will lose them.' This was the resulting thoughts of a teenager due to the conflict in the marriage of the students parents. Parents who had conflict in the their marriage have an affect on their children. In Afifi's ted talk she says she's the voice of all the kids with divorced, separated, or conflicting parents.
Afifi starts out talking about the previous history of divorce. She says that divorces from in the 70s and 80s have changed. Parents used to divorce because the relationship was unhealthy and bad, but people nowadays divorce for personal happiness and this causes irritation in the children. Students don't think this is the reason they are hurt, but because they are so much closer to their parents then they were in previous decades.
Afifi says their is one variable that affects children the most, parents conflict. Whether it be the parents are still together or if they divorced. A child who's parents have a lot of conflict tend to stunt the growth of their children's future relationships, and it also affects children's bodies. How parents fight can physically hurt a child. Those parents who fight a lot in front of their children, trigger the child to release stress hormones. The parents who are still together and constantly fighting are the parents who are causing the most detriment to their children.
Children are also affected when they feel caught between parents. When they have to act as a mediator for their parents. Children settle this caught feeling by attaching to one parent and lose their relationship with their other parent. They also avoid the problem, or become aggressive.
How can parents change to keep their children from harm:
Try to create rules to coparent and cooperate.
Figure out why you're angry and how to fix the problem
How to effectively change and define the new relationship
Eliminate emotion
Listen to your child's voice, think of the long term impact that this can have on the child.
The most interesting thing about this talk was how much I could relate to it. I related to how the kids felt and what helped to change their feelings.
