PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MALADAPTIVE MOTHER-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS IN A FAMILY AFTER DIVORCE: ISSUES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING AND PSYCHOCORRECTION

Abstract

We describe four consecutive stages of the development of maladaptive mother-child relationships in a family after divorce: 1) an initial, but quite significant increase in tension, which stimulates the usual ways of solving some problems; 2) a further increase in tension in conditions when these methods for developing adaptive mother-child relationships in a family after divorce turn out to be ineffective and useless; 3) an event greater increases in tension, which requires the mobilization of external and internal sources for the development of adaptive mother-child relationships in a family after divorce; 4) if everything turns out to be useless, the fourth stage comes, which is characterized by increase in the level of anxiety and depression, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, and disorganization of the personality.

Іn order to identify the psychological conditions for the development of adaptive relationships between a mother and a child in a family after divorce and to the greatest extent possible to positively resolve the problem of socialization of a child from a single-parent family, the adaptation of this child as a whole to social life, in a family in which the parents have recently experienced a divorce, it is, in our opinion, possible under the conditions of planning, implementation of a set of measures with the aim: the earliest possible identification of psychological problems of a child, registration of a child from a single-parent family, if this is required by the child; the identification of the causes of psychological distress of a child from a single-parent family; provision of informational psychological assistance to a child from a single-parent family; the organization of prevention of inappropriate ways of raising a child from a single-parent family in so-called “socially oriented risk group”; under the conditions of psychologically directed coordination and organizational assistance to a child from a single-parent family by both a psychologist and a social educator, based on a psychologically conditioned algorithm compiled specifically for working with single-parent families. Psychological activity with the child should be organized in the conditions of the child’s education in a secondary educational institution, that is, at school, where we proposed the program “Socio-psychological assistance to children from single-parent families”, showing different ways of its testing and implementation, taking into account the fact that the basis of social disadvantage is significant violations in family interaction in the “Mother – Child” system.

The goals of the program “Socio-psychological assistance to children from single-parent families” there are: creating positive psychological conditions for the successful socialization of a child from a single-parent family, which was implemented by us through a system of psychological tasks and objectives, such as: early identification of single-parent families, their identification by a psychologist immediately after the parents’ divorce, identification before the child has developed serious mental traumatic conditions; providing informational and educational assistance to a single-parent family, both the mother and the child, by including them in an artificially created “socially directed risk group” by a psychologist; providing psychological assistance with the aim at largely successful socialization of a child from a single-parent family; if it is possible, carrying out the activity of a psychologist to reduce the number of single-parent families, such as families in which the child is raised only by the mother.