How To Tell Your Children About Divorce
The Modern Woman’s Divorce Guide has been running a series of Weekly Divorce Tips. This week’s tip offers some simple advice for a complex problem- How to tell your children that you are getting divorced.
Telling your children about divorce is challenging, but essential. According to Gary Neuman, a psychotherapist and divorce expert who appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show a few weeks ago, “the way children are told about their family breaking up is a seminal moment that no child forgets.”So, how do your tell your children about divorce without scaring them for life? Gary Neuman recommends you do it by following these basic rules:
• “Both parents should be present to tell the children together - with the main message being, you, the children, are still our priority.
• It should not take more than 45 seconds.
• Practice what you’re going to say, before blurting out things that can hurt forever.
• Never disparage the other parent, because it makes your child feel guilty about loving them.”
I offer a few more thoughts:
- Your children are not divorcing your spouse, only you are. If your spouse is bad, imperfect, or completely flawed, let the children discover that themselves. You do not have to flag your spouse’s faults for them.
- Do not make the children choose sides. To the contrary, children should be encouraged to have a relationship with both parents.
- Tell the children, particularly if they are young and may not understand, that nothing they did caused the divorce.
- Re-assure them that both parents love them.
Do you have any tips? Please share your thoughts and comments.
Thank you Daniel!
Helene
Thanks for your insights on this difficult topic. You are correct in your sensitivity toward telling kids about divorce. My own experience more than a decade ago led to my writing a new guidebook for parents on how to create a storybook with family photos and history as a successful way to have this tough conversation. It's called How Do I Tell the Kids about the Divorce? A Create-a-Storybook(TM) Guide to Preparing Your Children -- With Love! Therapists, attorneys, mediators, educators and other professionals from around the U.S. are attesting to the value of the fill-in-the-blanks, age-appropriate templates. Six therapists contribute their expertise to the book, as well. I sincerely hope divorcing couples will stop, talk and create a plan before having that crucial "divorce" talk with their children and pray, for the sake of their kids, that they will decide to move ahead in creating a child-centered divorce. Free articles, a free newsletter and more information can be found at www.childcentereddivorce.com.
Best wishes,
Rosalind Sedacca, CCT
rosalind@childcentereddivorce.com
Telling children about a pending divorce, preferably together, is perhaps the first step in the important task your child desperately needs: for you to form a cooperative co-parenting relationship with your now ex-spouse despite your own pain. I work for a small family charity whose aim is to help parents and professionals better meet the true needs of children when families are in crisis. The charity has created a free and interactive website that helps parents reduce conflict and focus on their children. Many parents have reported back that focusing on their children's needs was also the best path to their own healing. Please feel free to visit www.UpTpParents.org. All of the resources on the site are free and there are no commercial links.
Sounds like great cause.
Daniel Clement