Rainbows Ireland teach children to cope after family breakup

FOR the past 25 years, Rainbows Ireland has been providing peer support to Irish children on how to deal with loss from bereavement, separation, and divorce.

They like to see their groups as extensions of the all-important extended family and as spaces where children can feel comfortable airing their thoughts and feelings.

Run out of primary and post-primary schools and from family resource centres, Rainbows Ireland can’t cope with the demand for their services.

The programme, which runs over 14 weeks before and after Christmas, was founded in the US and is used by 8,000-12,000 Irish children each year, with up to 3,000 voluntary trained facilitators running the courses.

“The fallout out from separation and divorce can be very similar to that following a bereavement: shock, denial, hurt, rejection, blame and guilt,” says national director Anne Staunton. “The difference is, however, that children will be public with a death but, with a separation, they will often try and hide everything. Often they are living secret lives and find it very difficult to talk to parents about it. You will often see parents protecting the children and children trying to protect the parents.”

Many of the Rainbow kids will shuffle into the first session “with no eye contact and head down” but by the time they have completed the course, they have regained something of their confidence and can once more look adults and their peers in the eye.

Children, she says, are sensitive to what’s happening in the family environment and many don’t realise there are plenty of their peers going through a similar experience.

“They will tell you that they thought they were the only one, that it was only them,” says Ms Staunton. “And so it’s about creating a space of trust where the children can talk to each other and learn how to cope. We’ll tell them that we can’t change what’s happened but we can help them better understand and deal with what is happening.”

The bottom line for Ms Staunton and Rainbows Ireland is that if separation is handled well, a child will learn to deal with the loss and will continue to grow emotionally.

“Parents want their child fixed but the ideal really is co-parenting, where the child is at the centre and aware of arrangements between both parents,” she says. “What is not ideal is continued acrimony and where the child is being used as a spy by one side of the split or else to carry messages from one parent to another.”

Rainbows Ireland believe that there is a need for Irish parents to become more aware of how to best handle separation and divorce. Ms Staunton would love to see Rainbows work with parents, and is a strong advocate for the child’s voice being heard more in divorce and separation agreements.

Her programme must be doing something right, however, as children who attended years ago are now returning to train as facilitators, saying that the programme was instrumental in them learning how to cope with their parents’ split.

“If handled well, separation can teach children a model of coping that will stand to them later in life,” says Ms Staunton. “But if not handled well, they can grow up very conflicted.”