School Program Helps Children Handle Parents’ Divorce

Carol Penrose worried when her normally easy-going 9-year-old son, Nicholas, started showing occasional temper flare-ups. So she warned his Simi Valley teacher that the child could be reacting to his parents’ acrimonious divorce.

“He was keeping everything inside,” Penrose said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him cry over it.”

Until recently, the teacher would have had to juggle the boy’s problems with the rest of her teaching duties. But with an innovative program expanded this year to all elementary schools in the Simi Valley Unified School District, help was available outside of class.

Some elementary and middle schools in Ventura and Oxnard have started similar programs in recent years, while other Ventura County districts are working to develop them, said John Elfers, a state Department of Education consultant who helps the county’s schools develop substance abuse-prevention programs.

In small support groups, children having trouble coping with divorce can talk about their feelings and possibly head off bigger problems down the line, such as drug and alcohol abuse or academic failure, school officials said.

“You can bury your feelings, but you bury them alive, and that’s what these kids are doing,” said school psychologist Judith Burkhartsmeyer, who helped to develop the program. The counseling sessions were tested at six schools in the last two years and expanded to all 19 elementary schools this year.

The support group program targets a growing challenge for teachers as societal problems such as divorce increasingly are invading the classroom and limiting a child’s ability to concentrate and learn, officials said.

About half of all children will experience divorce in the family by the time they’re 18, Burkhartsmeyer said. Of the several dozen students participating in the Simi Valley program, 40% say one or both parents have problems with alcohol, she said.

“We’re facing more and more of this on a daily basis,” said Principal Jim Lian, whose Abraham Lincoln Elementary School was one of the program’s test sites.

None of the district’s general fund money is used to pay for the $44,000-a-year program, said program administrator Ellen Lee. Instead, the district is using state and federal grants aimed at preventing substance abuse, Lee said.

The idea is to intervene early when a teacher or parent first sees that a child is experiencing or could soon encounter difficulty in class, to stop an academic slide before it becomes chronic, administrators said.

Providing services beyond the three R’s acknowledges that the role of schools is changing, Elfers said.

“Our traditional thinking, of kids learning certain values at home and learning academics at school, is definitely changing,” Elfers said. “That’s not to place blame. It’s just the way it is.”

Schools are not trying to solve societal problems, he added. “It’s working with the students to the degree that we can get them in a better position to be learners,” Elfers said.

At the weekly support group sessions, children not only talk about their own reactions to divorce, but they hear similar confessions from classmates and realize they’re not alone, Burkhartsmeyer said.

That was the benefit for Robin and Erin Bologna, two Parkview Elementary School students who participated in separate support groups after their parents divorced two years ago, the girls said.

“It was just nice to have people to talk to, because they’re in the same position. You have all these feelings that you feel like you can’t talk to anyone about,” said Robin, 11, an articulate fifth-grader.

Although the girls seem well-adjusted to the changes in their family, the support group bolstered their confidence in talking about issues or concerns that might arise, said their father, Lawrence Bologna.

“I came from a broken family, and it wasn’t possible in those days to just go up to anybody and say ‘I’ve been feeling like this about Mom and Dad,’ ” said Bologna, 43.

Dialogue is vital to the emotional well-being of many children who may be feeling deep sadness or anger over their parents’ split but who hide it from their families, said Burkhartsmeyer, the school counselor.

“Many of these kids really attempt to protect their families from their feelings, because they know the family is in crisis and they don’t want to add to it,” Burkhartsmeyer said.

Many children succeed in fooling their families, as evidenced by the number of parents who consent to their student participating in a support group while arguing that it isn’t really needed, Burkhartsmeyer said.

“Typically, parents tell me, ‘He’s handling it really well. I don’t think he’ll want to join, but it’s fine with me,’ ” Burkhartsmeyer said. “Then you get the child in the group and it’s like the dam broke. Somebody finally asked them to talk and you can’t get them to stop.”

While safely hidden at home, those negative feelings often surface in class when a normally good-natured child starts getting into trouble, ignoring homework or daydreaming, said teacher Terri Field.

“To ask them to sit in their seats and handle the day’s instruction is really difficult for them,” said Field, a fifth-grade teacher at Abraham Lincoln Elementary.

Once they begin to fail or cause trouble, the children can be ostracized by other students and may drop out or begin abusing drugs or alcohol by the time they reach high school, Field said.

“Boys and girls are much more malleable at this point than they are in high school, or even junior high,” Lincoln Principal Lian said.