{"id":7565,"date":"2015-10-09T07:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-09T11:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/?p=7565"},"modified":"2015-10-07T09:00:39","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T13:00:39","slug":"fighting-how-you-are-hurting-your-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2015\/10\/fighting-how-you-are-hurting-your-kids.html","title":{"rendered":"Fighting? How You are Hurting Your Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/files\/2013\/11\/fighting.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-5558\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/258\/2013\/11\/fighting-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"fighting\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a>Jack and Rachel have been in a contentious marriage for quite some time. Their friends would describe them as a high conflict couple. The stress is getting to their two middle school children\u00a0who\u00a0beg their parents to stop fighting and try to get along. The youngest child finds herself covering her ears and retreats to her room crying. But she can hear the conflict and feels sad.<\/p>\n<p>What is the impact of such fighting on the children? Significant.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Physiological effects<\/strong>: When parents fight, a child\u2019s heart rate becomes faster and their blood pressure rises. Stress hormones are released in their urine. The immune system is depleted, making them ripe for infections.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Emotional effects<\/strong>: It\u2019s hard for children to regulate their emotions during parent conflict. They are more focused on the upsets of their parent and less able to soothe themselves. They experience feelings of powerlessness\u2014they can\u2019t stop the fighting and that loss of control is frightening. The stress is overwhelming. In hostile family situations, children are more at risk for depression and anxiety.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Academic effects:<\/strong> Learning suffers. Grade point averages dive and they perform worse on standardized testing. In fact, grade failure is not predicted by divorce, but by constant marital conflict.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Social effects:<\/strong> Marital fighting makes children more at risk for teen pregnancy, poverty and being expelled from school. Truancy and absenteeism increase.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Relationship effects<\/strong>: Children often feel at fault for their parents\u2019 discord. They may be in the middle of conflict and forced to take sides. The lack of civil conflict discussions and resolutions means they don\u2019t learn how to deal with conflict in their own relationships as a child or later as an adult.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you need good reasons to work at conflict in a civil and respectable manner with your spouse, consider the above. This is not meant to place guilt, but help you understand the reality of high conflict marriages. Children need you to navigate conflict and provide emotional stability.<\/p>\n<p>For help, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0801016762\/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d53_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=desktop-1&amp;pf_rd_r=1TGXCFAY5Z0PR5HDPH6E&amp;pf_rd_t=36701&amp;pf_rd_p=2079475242&amp;pf_rd_i=desktop\" target=\"_blank\">We Need to Talk <\/a>by Dr. Linda Mintle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jack and Rachel have been in a contentious marriage for quite some time. Their friends would describe them as a high conflict couple. The stress is getting to their two middle school children\u00a0who\u00a0beg their parents to stop fighting and try to get along. The youngest child finds herself covering her ears and retreats to her&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[913,914],"tags":[503,1054,678,1033,1159],"class_list":["post-7565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-couple-relationships","category-family-relationships-2","tag-conflict","tag-couple-conflict","tag-family-conflict","tag-fighting","tag-marital-fighting"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fighting? How You are Hurting Your Kids<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2015\/10\/fighting-how-you-are-hurting-your-kids.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fighting? How You are Hurting Your Kids\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jack and Rachel have been in a contentious marriage for quite some time. Their friends would describe them as a high conflict couple. The stress is getting to their two middle school children\u00a0who\u00a0beg their parents to stop fighting and try to get along. The youngest child finds herself covering her ears and retreats to her&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2015\/10\/fighting-how-you-are-hurting-your-kids.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Doing Life Together\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-10-09T11:00:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-10-07T13:00:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/files\/2013\/11\/fighting-300x199.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Linda Mintle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@drlindamintle\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Fighting? 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Dr. Linda\u2019s fun personality and expertise comes through whether she\u2019s helping her audience stress less or make peace with their thighs! Dr. Linda has her Ph.D. in Urban Health and Clinical Psychology and is a national expert on mental health. She has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders, anxiety, depression and pain management. With 30 years of clinical experience working with couples, families and individuals, she brings her common-sense approach to people who want to live in positive mental health. Dr. Linda is also a bestselling author with 21 book titles to her credit, a radio host of the Dr. Linda Mintle show, professor, national speaker, winner of the Mom\u2019s Choice Award, a national news consultant, featured writer for Beliefnet and hosts her own website. Her academic appointments keep her abreast of current research in her areas of expertise. Her media experience includes seven years as the resident expert for ABC Family\u2019s Living the Life television show and regular appearances on network television and radio. It is often said that being with Dr. Linda is like having coffee with a friend. She makes the complicated issues of relationships and mental health easy to understand and applicable to everyday living. The ease she has with people, coupled with her clinical training and experience makes her a sought-after speaker on college campuses, conferences and special events. Whether she is doing a TV skit with Tim Conway or discussing teen violence with Queen Latifa, Dr. Linda will entertain, educate and integrate faith and mental health in everyday living. Check out her latest book Hope and Healing for Anxiety, a whole-person approach to eliminate anxiety. .","sameAs":["https:\/\/drlindamintle.com\/","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/x.com\/drlindamintle"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/author\/lmintle"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7565"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7567,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565\/revisions\/7567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}