Just a question about separation

[OceanTurtle]

Is parental separation a very traumatic experience for children? I am going through my sons autism assessment and it has asked if he has gone through any “traumatic” life experiences like parental separation 🤔 we split when he was young and he has zero memory of us ever being together he has never known of me and his father to be together and I wouldn’t say it was really a proper relationship looking back as it was so off and on so I put no, is that suppose to be a yes? I’m guessing that’s more aimed at maybe teens and parents being married years?

I was about 6 when my parents split. I don’t remember any issues at the time, and DM never said anything in later years. I only have two memories of dad living with us, the rest is happy memories of me and DM.

Thank you, I asked on another group and people seemed to think it was still a traumatic life experience 🤔 me and his father broke up when he was a toddler and he never lived here, looking back I wouldn’t even call it much a relationship we were both quite young.

The evidence is that parental separation in itself isn't traumatic, it is all about how it is managed.

If the parents split amicably and treat each other respectfully, establish a cooperative healthy co-parenting relationship then there's no difference in outcomes from children living with both parents on average, probably because a significant proportion of those with parents still together are living in homes with toxic and unhealthy or unbalanced relationships.

If a separation is acrimonious and the children witness animosity between their parents or, worse, have parents involving them in their relationship issues or badmouthing each other then yes this is traumatic. If the separation results in the children living in poverty or having to move away from friends or change schools that will also likely be traumatic, and similarly if children are forced to have parents' new partners move into their homes, or have blended families forced on them, this generally creates trauma in most cases: it is the effects of the separation on the children's lives if parents don't prioritise their wellbeing and stability and needs over their own desires that causes immense damage, rather than the separation itself, per the research on this.

In your case most of those factors won't apply since you separated when your child was so young: it's much worse for older children. The main trauma they might have is the sadness of not having a father in their lives as they get older, particularly when they start to compare their family setup to peers.

There is no contact with his father. I took it to mean the separation itself like father moving out / divorce etc, I’ve explained on another question that he has no contact with his father. But the separation itself wasn’t traumatic

Yes, that's what I was saying: in your situation, having separated when he was so young, the separation itself won't have been traumatic. There could be some trauma from not having his father in his life (my children are in the same situation and it affects them increasingly as they get older). Or if you imposed a step father/ step- or half-siblings on him (the data shows that this has a highly negative impact on average). But the separation itself is very unlikely to have caused trauma with him having been so young that he doesn't remember any time before that.

Just FYI, in case it wasn't explained when you filled in the forms, the reason they ask these questions as part of the autism diagnosis process is because untreated trauma can manifest some similar behaviours to autism (although not usually the special interests and sensory sensitivities). Therefore, they need a full background to be able to rule this out as the underlying cause of the child's difficulties. That's not to say of course that someone can't have autism and trauma, so trauma wouldn't exclude someone from a diagnosis of course, just that the paediatrician and other specialists performing the diagnostic assessment need to be aware of it so they can perform their review thoroughly and understand what is causing different aspects of the child's difficulties.

They also need a full background and medical history because autism is a lifelong neurological condition so it's present from birth and becomes apparent (even if parents/ others don't notice until later) when children are very young, if you know what behaviours and indicators you're looking for. So by getting all the background of what happened when they can see if behaviours that indicate autism were present from birth or whether they appeared later as a result of a traumatic event, for example. Apologies if you already knew all of this but I thought from your original post maybe you were a bit confused why they asked you the question so thought it might be helpful information if it hadn't been explained by the paediatrician.