KEEPING DAMAGE OF DIVORCE FROM HARMING CHILDREN.

Byline: Melinda Sacks Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Divorce may be an accepted fact of life in the 1990s, but its deep impact on children - especially the grieving it causes for some - is just beginning to be understood.

Fortunately, there is new hope for these kids: Therapists have learned a great deal about how to lessen the pain for children whose parents break up.

To try to mend this emotional damage, court-ordered programs that teach feuding parents how to stop, and children how to express their feelings, are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Using mediation techniques long called upon to resolve other types of conflict, counselors are finding that all but the most angry or violent divorcing couples can do better once they receive instruction.

``How people handle divorce, and their children during the divorce, has nothing to do with power, education, position or intellect,'' says divorce counselor Roberta Anderson, who with colleague Mary McKenna co-founded the Center for Changing Families, a program of Family Service Mid-Peninsula in Palo Alto.

``Before, when people divorced, they went their separate ways,'' says Anderson, who, like many of those in the field, is divorced. ``That was it. The family dissolved. Now, we have a new entity, and that is the co-parenting relationship. We haven't settled on a title or a definition of how ex-partners can have that relationship. But they will have it for the rest of their lives. The courts are telling them, `You will co-parent.' ''

The problem for children, say Anderson and others, is that so many divorced mothers and fathers co-parent poorly. Children are routinely caught in the middle of horrendous custody battles.

``Kids get squashed in the middle, and they become so immobilized they can't move toward one parent or the other,'' says Anderson. ``They are always afraid they will hurt someone.'' In younger children, confusion, crying and clinging are common. By the time they reach 7, kids will worry excessively, feel rejected and torn by divided loyalties. In early adolescence, moodiness, shame and withdrawal can occur. Forming intimate relationships, bonding with others and trusting can all become issues.

``The thing we see a lot of is broken hearts,'' says Nancy Fallows, executive director of Creative Family Connections in San Jose, a nonprofit group that runs Kids Connection for children of divorce. The course was the model for Family Service's program.

Kids Connection and About Kids, both aimed at lessening conflict and improving children's lives, often are a court-ordered remedy for divorcing parents.

Feuding mothers and fathers are put into different small groups; children are divided by age and assigned their own support program.

``It's such a painful time,'' Fallows says. ``The children need the parents more than ever, and the parents aren't there for them. We try to get the adults to put aside their own pain and problems to deal with the children.''

The Kids Connection program teaches children to express how they are feeling and what they need; at the same time, it shows parents how to listen and respond. Classes meet once a week for six weeks.

Parents begin by watching a video called ``Pain Games'' - vignettes of feuding couples. There are the parents screaming at each other as they exchange a child for visitation. There are children being used as messengers and spies by their parents.

As they watch the video, people's eyes widen in recognition, says Fallows. The effect is beyond anything a lecture could accomplish.

Next is the video ``Listening to the Children,'' in which kids from 4 to 16 share their feelings about divorce.

By the time they see both tapes, parents are almost always ready to talk. The coed groups allow people to hear the male and female perspectives without the baggage of hearing it from an ex-spouse.

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