5 Secret Upsides of Growing Up With Divorced Parents

5 You Learn That Life Operates on Many Sets of Rules

When you're a kid, life boils down to two sets of rules: home and school. If you were the church-going type, there was a third group set aside for Sundays, but that was just the basic no cursing, no farting, and no racial slurs until we get to grandma's. That was more of a "when in Rome" situation than a daily occurrence.

It's easy to grasp, because the idea is a matter of "This is how I act in the house, and this is how I act in public." I don't think a lot of people realize just how many other sets of rules there are until we hit those big milestones like driving a car, starting a career, or going to your first strip bar. How you act at home isn't how you act at work. How you act around your co-workers isn't how you act in front of a customer. And don't even get me started on the dos and don'ts of lighting farts while driving.

Children of divorced parents get a massive dose of this much earlier than everyone else, and I don't think that's a bad thing. That's not to say it isn't jarring, but learning to adapt at a younger age gives them foresight into life that they just don't get anywhere else. And it's pretty much guaranteed to happen -- mom and dad went their separate ways because of irreparable disagreements. (Note: I'm not talking about divorces caused by abuse or violence in this article.) So when the kids start spending time at both houses, they quickly realize that the rules are no longer a collaborative effort. As long as they're not damaging the children, neither parent needs permission or compromise from the other.

Instead of an all-encompassing set of home rules, the kids are now adapting to subsets between the two. This is huge, because it softens or eliminates the shock involved when entering the real world and discovering, "Holy shit, if I act like my normal self out here, I'm going to be fired or thrown in jail for public nudity!" By the time those milestones roll around, they've already been broken in on the realities of modifying their behavior according to which environment they're in. That dude being hauled out of the club screaming "This is discrimination!" probably had parents with a great marriage.

4 You Learn Discretion

If there's one thing that sets every parent off, regardless of morals or their own questionable examples, it's catching their kid lying to them. We're used to living in a world full of manipulative cockdongs, but we need to be able to trust the little bastards that shot out of our crotches. For that reason, we do our best to teach them to be totally honest and open. Thankfully, every family sitcom in the world backs us up -- hell, even the morally corrupt House treats lying as an offense worse than murder.

The part that's hard for a kid to understand is that there's a difference between lying and holding back information, and the unfortunate part is that it takes practice to master. Here's a good example: When I was 10, I was having a light-hearted conversation with my dad when I let go of some information about a piece of furniture he wanted from my mom. She had told him it was broken and she no longer had it -- I told him the truth, because you just don't lie to your dad. Since both were what psychologists call "fucked up" parents and neither had a phone, I spent the rest of the day walking back and forth between their houses, a half mile apart, delivering heated exchanges.

I learned very quickly that there were some things I just had to keep to myself. Now, this is a touchy, fragile subject, so understand that I'm not saying that teaching a child to lie is a good thing. I'm saying that at some point in their lives, they need to learn the value of knowing how to recognize and utilize the gray area. Let's face it: You're not going to tell your boss, "Well, the truth is that I wasn't sick. I just didn't come to work because my favorite video game released an expansion I wanted to try out." You just use the sick time and keep the details to yourself.

Learning what I could and couldn't say around my divorced parents gave me a jump on my friends, who were mostly still in "honesty is never punished" mode. Yes, I understand that kids learn this lesson on their own, with or without divorce. The difference is that dealing with divorced parents forces you into it. Even nice parents are still human, which means that sometimes emotion overrides their "don't be a douchebag" switch. It happens.

3 You Learn to Be a Mediator

No matter how mature a person is, no matter how strong their willpower, eventually they're going to have a "fuck this" moment and get into it with the ex. At the very least, a person needs to vent, and human nature sometimes doesn't allow for us to calmly excuse ourselves to a secluded room to bitch in private. We can't help it -- anger is autopilot for bad decisions.

As horrible as this sounds, sometimes the kids will reach a breaking point where they're sick of hearing the bad-mouthing and arguments, and they'll step in to voice their concerns. It can range anywhere from angry outbursts ("I'm sick of both of you acting like entitled children! I'm about two seconds from dick-slapping your cheek clean off of your face!") to calming logic ("You know that's the way Dad is. It's why you got divorced in the first place. So why are you letting it get to you? Do you still want his big ol' floppy dong? Is that it, Mom? You want Dad's pecker?").

Regardless of the method, the children are playing the role of a mediator, defusing the situation before it builds up into an all-out fight. That's an extremely difficult skill to learn, even for adults. Tons of people spend years of college in psychology classes to become one professionally, only to give up and become driver's ed teachers when they realize they can't do it.

It doesn't take a psychologist to understand that this isn't a healthy position to place a child in, but I'm telling you from personal experience that it's one of the most useful skills I ever learned. Not just knowing how to disarm a volatile situation, but being comfortable and confident enough to even attempt it. At old jobs, that ability was what set me apart from other workers who were competing for the same promotion. Never underestimate the power of being able to turn a screaming fuckhead customer into a smiling human who walks away with a "Thank you" without having to pull out your katana.

2 You Learn to Manage Space (Especially When Packing)

This may sound intensely stupid and meaningless, but it's something you don't really think about until you're old enough to start taking trips on your own: You get to the hotel and realize you either didn't pack enough or brought so much that you have to charter an additional plane to transport it all.

That's one of the hidden upsides to the back and forth between mom's and dad's house. I'm not even talking about full-on flights and major travel -- just taking the car ride there and back each weekend is enough to train a kid to utilize space, knowing what's necessary for the stay and predicting "what if" situations in advance. "It's warm right now, but it's supposed to get cold on Sunday. I should probably bring an extra jacket and a flame thrower, just in case."

My daughter loves stuffed animals, and every weekend she wants to bring them over with her. When I made her responsible for the packing, though, she quickly realized what an immense pain in the ass it was to bring more than she could carry in a single trip to the car. On her own, she cut back on how many she was bringing with her and picked out her own carrying case to make it easier. She has since won seven awards at the Packing Grammys.

Eventually, those lessons carry over into things like shopping. Groceries, clothes, it doesn't matter. You know what you need for any given amount of time, and the guesswork just kind of disappears, like a practiced heroin addict with a syringe full of sweet, sweet relief.

1 You Learn Time Management

This isn't true of every kid, but then again, no one rule ever is. Well, maybe the rule that they will eventually submit to the crushing grip of a frail and flawed mortality. But most other rules are flexible.

I was once told that a good sign of success is when everyone starts demanding your time. How you manage that time will determine how far up you move on the ladder. This is important, because there is a direct connection to that skill from the moment the parents walk away from each other with their middle fingers in the air. What everyone immediately thinks about during a divorce is how to divide the kids' time between the parents. What they don't realize until later is that there are two sprawling families waiting on the sidelines to do the same, each with their own emotional pitchfork and torch.

Holidays become a mad dash of time-warping clusterfuckery as the children are rushed around from house to house in an attempt to see everyone before going to the other parent's home and repeating the process. Even regular, non-holiday weekends become a rush, because the parent is thinking, "We have three days. We need to make the most of them." When you're a kid going through this, you stop thinking of time in terms of weeks, instead breaking it into two sections. There's the part of the week that they're with mom and the other part where they're with dad. Without any extra effort to do so, they're learning to micromanage. Before you know it, a business tie sprouts out of their neck.

Because of this, the kids who can keep up and adapt to the process have a huge advantage in the working world long before they ever enter it. They understand the concept that talking to one person too long means robbing time from another -- that being late to one meeting could set all the other ones back unless that lost time is corrected along the way. I know it sounds cold and probably a little on the brutal side, but I just look at it like this: If you're in a shitty situation, and that shitty situation isn't going to change anytime soon, you might as well look for the positives that can be taken from it while you're there. It'll help keep you sane when your mind is telling you to reach for the closest chainsaw and thickest trash bag.

John is an editor and columnist right here at Cracked, with a new article every Thursday. You can also find him on Twitter and Facebook.

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