"It is imperative that we remind children again and again that a divorce is an adult problem. There is nothing a child or teen could every say or do that would cause his parents to divorce." p.119
". . . the child is some of each parent. His self-esteem is rooted in his family tree. When you negate the value of a parent or grandparent, you tear at the fabric of the child's being. That's why children will defend and protect their parents, often to an extreme. They are protecting themselves as well." p.121
"For adults who divorce, the event is a conclusion. For the children, divorce is often a beginning -- of unfinished business, of uncertainty. . . Adults like to think that kids go through a period of sadness immediately following a divorce and then simply bounce back to the way they were predivorce . . . But just because a child appears "fine" on the outside doesn't mean that all is well on the inside. If children have not grieved the change in their families and have not been given the attention they need to fully comprehend why their parents divorced, their grief and emotional issues end up being buried very much alive and someday will need to be dealt with." p. 122
Marta quotes a 15 year-old boy whose parents divorced when he was 10 -- "Divorce is a painful solution to an otherwise unsolvable problem" (p. 123). Makes perfect sense to me.
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