Telling your children you are getting a divorce

Divorce and children

On my Q&A Saturday check-in with my Divorce Empowerment course students this week, a question came up from a lady about how her children were feeling after telling them she and her husband were getting a divorce the previous night.

The next morning the children seemed to be okay (she’d read my book and said it was so useful when telling them they had decided to get a divorce). She and her husband are committing to having a kinder divorce. I once read that children link laterally and it is us the adults with all our emotional layers of stuff that serve to confuse them. If your children are okay, you CAN be okay. How? By keeping yourself on track, checking in with them, assuring them they are loved so much by you both and that they will be cared for, fed, have a safe home and to remind them, most importantly that they have done nothing wrong.

I’m a great believer that our children can teach us so much and if they are calm they are teaching us how it can be. This is the line in the sand to help you stay with this intention, holding your children as your focus and taking steps in this process as you move forward. Building a strong intention and sticking with it is what you can both, as a couple do. It is your framework for all of your future and using your children and minimising the fallout on them as your true north in all your actions, words, and thoughts.

We are so used to a more conflictual process that we are conditioned to believe begins on day one. What you have a choice over is how you move forward, to trust that you can do it in a kinder way - even if it is just one parent committed in this way, it is better than two parents at war with each other. Children have radars - they know when something is going down that isn't good, they internalise, they worry - especially if they are heading into school and you can reduce this pressure for them.

It is not going to be easy, there are going to be times when it is harder not to say something - based perhaps on fear, worries about your future, finances, living arrangements so do create a time and space each week away from them for you both to talk. Hold your children's wellbeing as your focus always, and trust that you can get through this process well, minimising the effect of your split on your children. Make your divorce about them with the intention that you are teaching your children valuable life skills that out of bad and unpleasant life events can come a better and kinder way to be.

My course is designed to take those going through the separation and divorce process with ongoing support so they are empowered to stay on a journey of a kinder path. If you are starting your divorce and would like a 1 to 1 call I offer up a 20 min Clarity call to find out more about where you are and share how I can support you. As a child of divorced parents I know only too well how it feels and what I needed from my parents to lessen the worries and fears so I could focus on my studies, not feel alone and scared and want to go home to a home that wasn't a war zone. Experiencing a Flight, Flight and Freeze life at 11 years old is something I wouldn't wish on any child.

Choosing to begin on the right foot will save you costly mistakes emotionally and financially and with the school year approaching fast, I can only assume that as a caring parent, you want your children to be in a good place to cope better moving forwards. You have the choice to get the support that is available so you can enable this to happen.

If you are a company and are interested in supporting your employees or giving your managers the tools to support their employees through divorce, here is a link to book a reBUILD call with me to discuss our training options further or head over to the page for more information.