While positive and practical, Kimberly Delaney’s article “Transitioning Through Divorce With Your Children” in the Oct. 9 Redmond Reporter misses the mark on several fronts.

First, national research shows that most children do not process divorce nearly as quickly as she suggests. The effects of divorce on children often stretch well into adulthood.

Second, there are multiple factors that contribute to the severity of the effects of divorce on children: these include parenting styles, skills of communication and conflict resolution, financial stability, geography, and sibling support. The loss of the family unit is a profound shock for children and often requires years of therapy.

Finally, as I’m sure Delaney realizes, when parents divorce they may retreat into their own worlds. And their ways of living and what they value often become increasingly different. Yet the task of making sense of these differences falls to the child alone. The child becomes the object between the two parental worlds for the rest of his/her life. Developing resilience through this process is possible, of course, but even “relative absence of conflict between divorced parents” or what some call an amicable or “good” divorce “does little to minimize the magnitude of this task,” as Elizabeth Marquardt argues in her book “Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce.” This new developmental task, she asserts, fundamentally restructures childhood.

“In an amicable divorce the adults rarely conflict with one another (usually maintaining the peace by communicating less and less over the years). Instead, the conflict between their worlds has now migrated and exists, unseen, in only one place: within the inner life of the child.”

Robert Lamb, The Overlake School school counselor