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Talking to Children About Divorce
Helping parents talk with their children about divorce is one of the earliest and highest priorities in the coaching process. Telling your children their parents are getting divorced is a conversation most parents dread, and some put it off for as long as possible. This is understandable, as it is often hard to find the right words, and if you are very angry or upset and don't want to say the wrong thing, keeping quiet may seem like the best solution. Your coaches will help both of you understand why this is a mistake: children are like sponges, and they pick up emotional information even before they can talk. Chances are they already know more than you imagine about your marital breakdown and may have made up stories to help them understand what is happening that can be much worse than the truth.
Almost all children know something about divorce, much of it wrong and a good deal of it pretty scary. Children may jump to the conclusion that they will have the same bad experiences they have heard about from friends or seen in the movies or on TV: In other words, they are not immune from the myth that divorce necessarily means war. If you can tell them together that you plan to divorce in a noncombative, collaborative way (without fighting), it helps them to see that you will both still be acting as good parents for them.
Coaches can be invaluable in helping parents speak with their children appropriately about divorce. For example, if you are the one who wants the divorce while your partner does not, it's quite natural to feel defensive and it can be difficult to keep that defensiveness from seeping into what you express to the children. Or if you don't want the divorce, it can be very difficult to separate your own sadness or feelings of betrayal from what your children feel and perilously tempting to enlist them as allies and try to bid for their loyalty -- without even seeing that this is happening. Some parents carry a desire for honesty to inadvertently destructive extremes, telling children far more about the breach between the parents than they can understand or should be burdened with. Others, in the guise of giving their children a voice in what happens, insist that their children make choices and decisions that place them squarely between their parents and cause painful feelings of divided loyalty and betrayal. Your coaches will help you and your partner sort all this out and learn effective ways of talking honestly and appropriately with your children in ways that protect them and help them feel well cared for.
In the exercises section at the end of this book, you will find materials that will give you a better idea of how coaches help parents learn to talk with their children about divorce. If your own divorce is moving more rapidly than your ability to mobilize a collaborative divorce team and it becomes necessary to speak with your children about a separation before you and your partner have coaches to help you do it well, these exercises can help you avoid some obvious pitfalls and errors.
If you and your spouse have already decided on a collaborative divorce but haven't yet begun the process, you can still tell your children that both of you are committed to moving through this change in the least painful way possible. You can explain in ways that your children can understand that you will have plenty of help to solve problems and make decisions in the best possible way. You can tell them you will have coaches to help you when you are sad or mad and lawyers who promise they will only help solve problems and never encourage people to fight. You can assure them that they, too, will be part of the process and will have a person to talk with, since the divorce is going to change their lives, too. This person, who has helped many other children through divorces, will be like a coach for them who can talk with them about divorce problems and figure out solutions.
Getting into the collaborative divorce process quickly is important if your children are already having to adjust to a marital separation. Children need to know that they will not be asked to choose between parents and that they will have a part in the decision making about their lives. All children are deeply affected by divorce. Knowing that their ideas and concerns will be considered gives children greater self-esteem, as it sends the message that they are people whose opinions matter. There is no better way to make such assurances concrete and real for your children than offering them the opportunity to work with a child specialist.
With your team's help, both you and your spouse will be able to send consistent, reassuring messages to your children that their parents are in charge of the situation and are working together to solve divorce problems even if they don't yet have all the answers. Don't make promises about what will happen if you don't yet know -- and at this early stage of the divorce you may well not know. Children are better off not being given false assurances. They can tolerate the unknown as long as they know that their parents are working to create a plan. Above all, parents need to talk to their children in constructive ways that tell the truth and avoid blame and judgment of the other parent -- not just once, but repeatedly. Even if your first conversations with your children must take place before you and your spouse commence work with your collaborative divorce team, you will have ample opportunity to rehearse with your coaches what will surely be ongoing conversations with your children, so that you can save them needless anxiety about their futures.
Click here to read other articles by Pauline H. Tesler MA, JD.
Click here to read other articles by Peggy Thompson Ph.D.
Copyright © Pauline H. Tesler, M.A., J.D., and Peggy Thompson, Ph.D. This article was reprinted from "Collaborative Divorce: The Revolutionary New Way to Restructure Your Family, Resolve Legal Issues, and Move on with Your Life," by Pauline H. Tesler, M.A., J.D., & Peggy Thompson, Ph.D.
Pauline H. Tesler, M.A., J.D., has been a specialist in family law certified by California State Bar Board of Legal Specialization since 1985. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband. Please visit her website
Peggy Thompson, Ph.D., has been a licensed psychologist specializing in families and children for thirty years. For the past fifteen years, she has been actively involved in the development and practice of collaborative divorce. Peggy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband. Please visit her website. Together they cofounded the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals. For more information, please visit this website. Reprinted with permission.
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