How to Tell Your Children About Your Pending Divorce

How to Tell Your Children About Your Pending Divorce

Even your pets will feel the emotional impact of your divorce. They will not necessarily understand what is happening, but their entire world will be different moving forward. Children likewise suffer through a grieving process when such a major change impacts their lives. Yet staying together in a loveless marriage may do more harm to them than good.

Tell Your Children About Your Divorce Together

It will always be best for the children to explain your separation or divorce as a couple. While you may not be a couple, you will always be Mom and Dad to your children. They will never stop seeing you that way, and no matter how you feel about the other parent, your children will never stop loving them or wanting to be around. So when you break the news, do it together. 

Give Your Children Time to Acclimate

You want to give your children at least two to three weeks to prepare for the separation. That is two to three weeks of the whole family being together. During that time, you want to discuss your plans with your children. Tell them where you will be moving and how visitation is going to work, even if you do not know yet. Providing your children with a sense that a new stability will emerge from the present chaos helps absorb the shock. 

Dealing With Questions

Your children will likely have several awkward questions. Most of these questions will be expressions of their own needs. Children like things the same way they were the day before, so expecting a mixed bag of reactions can help you and your spouse anticipate any emotional disturbances. The questions may come slowly over the next few weeks. They may deal with issues that are relevant only to the child. For instance, your children may be concerned that they will have to switch schools. They may be concerned that activities and events that they are looking forward to will now be canceled. They are experiencing anxieties over the divorce. This is natural. Let them know that the things they are looking forward to are still on the horizon.

Ugly Divorces

The aforementioned scenarios all require that you and your spouse mutually agree that a divorce is necessary. What happens when one spouse feels otherwise, becomes angry, or goes into battle mode?

Even in ugly divorces, it is necessary to present a united front. Using the children as pawns in an emotional chess match between you and your former partner will hurt your family, not help it. Unless the parent is a danger to their children, endless combat is not emotionally sustainable. Nonetheless, children do find themselves in between two quarreling parents often with the result that the parents have custody decisions taken away from them and placed into the hands of the court.

Talk to a Cook County Divorce Attorney Today

SAM LAW OFFICE, LLC has represented the interests of hundreds of spouses during divorce. We will discuss your goals and protect your interests as you start the next chapter of your life. Call today.