Dealing with a Divorce
Younger kids won’t fully understand what’s going on, but older kids will know and they will be torn to bits should the case occur when parents are planning on getting a divorce. We all know that divorces happen and when they do, they are extremely difficult to explain the children and that is multiplied for the teenagers and older children that can grasp the situation. How parents explain it to them, however, is what keeps them together and not confused over the situation. When a divorce occurs, there are so many thoughts that run through a child’s head that the parents may not even think about or comprehend. The children may think that the divorce happened because of them or that they had something to do with their family breaking up. It is crucial that while you don’t want to go into full specifics with the children, they need to understand that a divorce never happens because of something they did. If you’re going through a divorce, take the time to sit with your children and explain things in a simple manner and that there’s no yelling, screaming or fighting in front of them. Simply let them know that things will be changing and at no time should the children feel at fault because of it. They’ll ask questions and wonder what’s happening, but keep those things to yourself or you’ll have the children upset at one or both of the parents in the situation. Divorces can be traumatic on a child and it’s never a simple thing to go through, but assuring your children that you’ll be there for them no matter what helps ease the transition just a bit. Remember there are going to be simple things that you want to express to your child and things that you’ll want to keep to yourself, so make a “Do and Don’t” list on what your child should no. Despite having troubles with the other parent, make sure that you two work together on this list so that no matter which parent the children will be with, they get the same answer from both sides. Of course, given extreme circumstances in a divorce (cheating, physical abuse), these things are better kept to the parents in the matter. However, if it’s a simple thing that the parents just don’t feel happy together anymore, that is something that could be explained (delicately) to certain children that will understand the situation. For children under the age of five, these things kind of get swept under the rug until later when the child may question why mommy and daddy aren’t together anymore. In these cases, you have plenty of time to deal with the situation and make sure the reasoning is on the same page. No matter how parents feel about one another, it shouldn’t make a difference on the children’s feelings and there should be no animosity towards another parent (of course extreme circumstances could alter this quite a bit). Divorces are tough, work hard to ease the pain of the children involved; their understanding is completely different to these situations.