How to Tell Children About Divorce

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Hi, welcome back to the Beyond the Session segment of the Securely Attached podcast. I’ve got Dr. Emily Upshur here. How you doing?

Dr. Emily Upshur (00:51):

Hi, good to be here.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:54):

So I have a question that a parent wrote in and she wrote, “Hi doctors. I’m a big fan of the podcast and very appreciative that you release these episodes where you help answer questions. So I was hoping you could help me with something. My husband and I have decided to separate. Our kids are five, nine, and 12. We’re both on the same page that we’d like to tell them together and do whatever we can to minimize any damage this could do to them. I’d love for you to give us any suggestions you have for how we can broach this with our kids in a way that will have the least negative impact on them. Thank you in advance.

Dr. Emily Upshur (01:31):

Oh, good one.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:32):

It’s hard. I can hear in this mom’s question, she’s scared. There’s like, I want to minimize damage. I’m worried that this is going to have a negative impact. I think that is such a lens through which parents kind of approach this topic. I mean, understandably, but I think it really shows the kind of fear we have about how much divorce is going to hurt our kids.

Dr. Emily Upshur (01:57):

Well, right. I think that it’s so important that we think about that language, right? Because when I heard damage, I said, “Ugh, that doesn’t mean there will be damage.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (02:07):

I know. I feel like I want to start with some reassurance.

Dr. Emily Upshur (02:12):

Right. Or some reframing. I almost feel like it’s important for both these parents to reframe. It sounds like they’re in a kind of agreeable place, at least based on this. Maybe it’s not the most contentious separation, which just can help ease some of the concerns around the transition, right? Because that means you guys are still communicating a little bit, you’re on the same page with telling the kids, you’re on the same page with wanting to do it together. So that’s a lot of strengths and I just want to highlight that that really is the antithesis of damage, right? If you’re able to communicate and you’re able to sort of keep your children at the front and center of this, the likelihood that there will be damage is really low. So I just want to say that part I want you to say like, how can we optimize health for them after this conversation as opposed to minimize damage? Just a little tweak in the language can help us feel a little bit more confident in how we approach this.

Dr. Sarah Bren (03:14):

And listen, I wish I could quote research here, but I don’t actually have it offhand. So I’m curious about some of the research on this, but qualitatively in our practice, I mean you and me, we work with so many families that are divorcing and obviously there’s a bit of a self-selecting bias because people who are coming to a therapy practice to help them work through divorce with their family is obviously at least somewhat psychologically minded and like looking to sort of, they’re invested in doing this with support, right? But that said, most of the parents that come to us are scared that this is going to have a really damaging effect on their kids. And I just really want to emphasize that how we do something is far more important than whether or not we do something. You can divorce. I have seen so many families move through divorce in ways that protect and continue to support their children’s wellbeing, the health of the family system, because the reality is even if you are divorcing, you are still part of a family system that’s not going to change. And the shape and size and sort of structure of that family system is going to change. But I mean, if you have kids and you get divorced, that is not changing.

(04:41):

So I think when families are able to do certain things and we will talk about what those things are and we’ll bury the lead so much, but like if you do certain things to support your kids through this, like they can be phenomenally resilient in the face of divorce. It’s not a, I don’t know, like what happens to us is not what causes traumatic experience. It’s how we make sense of what happens to us and helping children make sense of the changes in the family system when divorce is happening or separation is happening is really critical and can be the thing that allows families to like be really okay.

Dr. Emily Upshur (05:27):

Yeah. I think that’s exactly right. And I think the idea of talking to them together is also a really healthy way of approaching that. So to your point, they’re already off to kind of a good start in that way. I guess just in brass tacks, practical things, the thing I always think about is tell your kids what you know and not what you don’t know. I’d love to start there. Tell them what you know will be the same and what you know will be different. And I think these children are ages five, nine, and 12, so there might be less questions with the younger set and more questions with the 12 year old. It really depends. I think you can have, this doesn’t have to be one conversation and I guess that’s sort of the other piece that you want to pick up on there.

Dr. Sarah Bren (06:25):

Yeah. It doesn’t have to be one conversation with all the kids, meaning like you could actually introduce this with each of these kids individually and I think it really depends on your kids and the way your family kind of like, you know your kids. I could certainly see a world in which I might tell each of these children individually, like together, like both parents sit down with each kid one at a time so they can really tailor the language to the developmental level of that child and to the unique kind of way that child might take in information, right? It’s not just about ages, but it’s also about like, know your kid. Some kids run anxious, they need a lot more reassurance, they need a lot more fill in the blanks. Some kids really struggle with emotional conversations and want to avoid and squirm and get out of there.

(07:18):

And so having that conversation where maybe we’re doing something together and they can put their attention on something else while we’re having this conversation, like less eye contact, more like parallel conversation when we’re walking or we’re driving or we’re playing with Play-Doh, like whatever how old the kid is. But also not just one conversation, meaning like with all of them, there’s going to be multiple iterations of reviewing this and having this like ongoing sort of linear conversation that they can drop back into like we don’t have to tell them once and then we don’t talk about it anymore.

Dr. Emily Upshur (08:00):

I always say to parents like, “So you’ve been thinking about this and talking about this and planning around this for probably a pretty substantial period of time.” So it’s kind of like you’ve had a lot of runway to process and so when we tell kids and we’re surprised by their reaction or surprised they have a reaction or we’re surprised they don’t have a reaction, we’re sort of taking away the fact that this is new information for them, even if it’s not new information for the parents. And so I think that’s also a really important thing to remember, which is this might be their first reaction. It doesn’t mean it’s their last, right? So there’s a lot of, I think a lot of parents that are like, “Oh, it went terribly, they’re all very upset or nobody said anything. Sometimes kids are just like blank.” Again, that’s their first reaction.

(08:54):

When was the last time your first reaction was the best reaction? So I think it’s really important to leave the door open, leave it open for questions, revisiting this conversation at moments that might be organic and pop up, you’re driving to soccer practice and being able to really hold the space for that wherever your child lands with their feelings or their questions Is really important.

Dr. Sarah Bren (09:22):

Yeah. And as you were like saying all that, it made me think of like, not like a template, but like maybe kind of like a very loose template of like certain types of things I’d want, certain notes I’d want to hit in this conversation. Again, you got to tailor it to the kid, you have to tailor it to how they handle new information or emotional information. You have to tailor it to their age and their developmental kind of level. But basically I think you start with saying the thing, “We are going to separate. Do you know what that means? It means this. ” And then again, saying what that looks like. What you know so far. “What I know is going to be the same, what’s going to be different. Daddy and I have decided that we are going to separate. That means that we are going to live in different places.

(10:22):

We are going to still be your mommy and daddy no matter what. We are going to still be able to have whatever is going to be the same, right? “Exactly. “Pick you up, drop you off, take you to whatever, whatever’s not going to be the same, right? I’m going to be living here now or whatever is going to be different. Some of that might mean different schools. It might mean other things are changing. Allow them to ask questions, allow them to not have any questions and sort of say like, ” We could talk about this more now. We could talk about this later. If you have questions, you can always talk to me. I’m going to keep checking in with you even if you don’t have questions, just to see how you’re feeling about it. And then the other thing that I think is really important is this like reassurance.

(11:22):

We are going to love you even if we are not going to be living together or married anymore. We still respect each other and that is going to stay … We can reassure them about the relationship you do have again in the capacity that it will continue, but also reassure them about your and their relationship, right? Your relationship with them and how that’s not going to change. No one did anything wrong. This isn’t anyone’s fault. This happens to some adults and even if adults can decide they don’t want to be married anymore, like a parent child relationship doesn’t work that way. You may have better ideas of how to articulate this, but I’m trying to like really communicate like. Yeah. Some kids are going to have that thought like, “Well, can you decide that you don’t want to be with me anymore?”

Dr. Emily Upshur (12:27):

Right. I mean I think that speaks to like we talk about this all the time with couples, right? Like in couples actually, healthy love should be conditional, right? If you can’t stand up and have boundaries in a relationship, in an adult relationship, but child, parent child love is unconditional and I really think that that sort of highlights the thing that we want to say out loud to our kids, which is there’s nothing you could do to make my love for you go away. There’s nothing you could do to make me anywhere be in a different place than you in that kind of way. And I think kids actually sometimes need to hear that even though even if we’re not worried about that, right?

Dr. Sarah Bren (13:13):

Even if they don’t look like they’re worried about, even if this is like the 12 year old you’re talking to who’s not having magical thinking like, “Could you divorce me? ” The five year old might actually ask that straight up question. The 12 year old probably isn’t, but you need to say it anyway You got to say like, “I need you to know that the relationship that parents have is so different than the relationship the parent and child has. No matter what we don’t ever end this.

Dr. Emily Upshur (13:43):

” And I think the other piece is that developmentally actually in all of this age span kids are still pretty self oriented, right? So saying out loud, “This is not your fault, there’s nothing that you could have done.” It’s so hard because it’s like the, “It’s not about you, it’s about me in the adult world,” but it really truly isn’t. And I think kids tend to orient to like, “What could I have done? What did I do? ” Because they’re self oriented appropriately. So I do think also the other thing to say out loud, even if you don’t think that’s what’s happening is there’s nothing you did, there’s nothing you could have done. This isn’t something that has any impact on our relationships and results from that at all. This is a decision that grownups had to make. I think that’s a really important piece because we know that sort of self blam can be a vulnerability for children and we want to sort of curtail that as much as possible.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:47):

Did I cause this and will you divorce me are basically the two things you need to reassure them about even if they don’t ask those questions.

Dr. Emily Upshur (14:55):

Exactly.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:56):

And then I think the other piece that I would want to say is to give them a litle bit of a preview, right? Like a little cope ahead like, “Hey, this is going to feel a little weird for a while. It’s going to feel a litle bumpy. Some things will feel different and we have to get used to that, but also we’re going to do a lot of things to try to keep it feeling as comfortable as we can. ” You don’t want to be too Pollyannish and like silver lining and like rush it under the rug. It’s going to be totally fine. I think you want to just name the reality. There’s going to be moments that’ll be tough, but we are a strong family and we will get through this. So sort of that like supportive statement, right? Like this is hard and this is difficult and you’re going to have feelings about it, you’re going to have questions about it. There might be things that we have to go through that are like challenging and I know that you can handle it. I know that our family can handle it. And I also think it’s again, like this really depends of course on, like you were saying at the beginning, like how amicable the divorce is. I think saying like our family is going to look different, but we are still a family because I do think that’s that other piece of the reassurance that like I say this a lot for totally different things in therapy with families is like, but I say this phrase a lot, which is families come in all shapes and sizes and we can also change our shape and our size and we can be okay.

Dr. Emily Upshur (16:36):

Yeah. And I think it’s also important like I think when I, anecdotally the things I hear the most are, I think the thing we’re best at is reassurance as parents. I think the thing we’re surprised at is if the anecdotally kids who are like, “Nope, that’s not going to work for me. ” Or the kids who are like, “No, I’m not doing that. ” Or anger, right? Bigger, less sad, more angry feelings. So I think that’s also normal and I just sort of wanted to put a plug in there for that too, because that’s also a reaction that I’ve seen a lot where parents are really thrown because they’re expecting their kid to be sad and upset in sort of like the same grieving place that they’re in.

Dr. Sarah Bren (17:23):

Right, like the big eyed mouse, it’s so much easier to like lean in instead of like the porcupine that’s like- Exactly. “No, no, no, that’s not happening.” It’s harder to lean in when your kid’s being a porcupine.

Dr. Emily Upshur (17:35):

Exactly.

Dr. Sarah Bren (17:36):

So one piece of advice if that’s going on, because it’s so hard, I mean it’s an emotional time for you obviously so your bandwidth might be a little fried, but if your kid’s having a really big reaction, it’s okay to say, “This is tough, let’s just take a break. We’ll come back to this conversation later and just move, like end it and move on. ” It’s not the time to get in … I hate to say this because it’s so hard because it’s so understandable if you have this reaction, but it’s definitely not the time to get into a power struggle with your kid, like to assert your authority and have this moment be like, “This is happening and you don’t get to have a say in it or whatever you need, whatever it is that they get really reactive about. ” And then we could get really reactive to their reactivity and start turning it into like a parenting moment of like, “You need to behave in a certain way.

(18:25):

This is inappropriate.” I think we just need to let lava have lava’s flow and really be like, “This is their lava.” It makes a whole lot of sense and I’m going to keep them safe. I’m not going to let them hurt themselves or other people or damage property, but other than that, I’m not going to be doing much like teaching- Redirecting. … disciplining around appropriate behavior in this moment. We’re just going to let them erupt and just name it, like this is huge, this is big, it’s really hard, this is too tough right now, so we’ll come back to this. You don’t need in that moment to sort of set that like, “Well, it is happening and you’re going to have to deal with it. ” That’s just unsaid but true and you can say that later and it totally, you just got to give your kid time to kind of come back to it.

Dr. Emily Upshur (19:21):

Yeah. It sort of goes back to my like, remember your first reaction to this might not have been like what you expected either, right? And so I think that’s like the other piece of this is like just being…

Dr. Sarah Bren (19:35):

And we also don’t think our kids necessarily, sometimes we’re surprised although maybe it makes sense when we step back and think about it, when our kids have like super egocentric reactions like, I don’t care about you guys. I’m worried about how this is going to impact me or things that feel so trivial. I don’t want to change my bedroom and you can’t make me and that’s not happening and I’m never going to just, like they could get stuck on something really concrete and trivial.

Dr. Emily Upshur (20:02):

Or I think blame is another one. Oh, this is one of the parents’ fault. That’s a really important thing. Again, I say all these things because maybe all of them or maybe none of them are maybe one of them, but I do think the less surprise you are as a parent, the more you’re like, “Okay, this could go lots of different ways. I can handle that. ” Like a support statement to yourself, right? This is going to be hard.

Dr. Sarah Bren (20:24):

Also go into that conversation on a full belly and like having slept, like you need your own energetic gas tank full to have this. Don’t do it when you’re like multitasking or like holding a bunch of stuff. I mean, definitely be emotionally kind of grounded. Go into that conversation really at your own three out of 10. I do think- Don’t go into it at a seven out of 10.

Dr. Emily Upshur (20:52):

I do think it just reminds me, as you were saying that though, I do think having a little bit of having thought out options for something a little structured afterwards or at the end of a conversation like this can really help with the transition because sometimes you’re then stuck, okay, this heavy rock has just blown up our living room and now what? So I think sometimes I have parents like go out to dinner or like think through it depends on, again, it’s so nuanced based on the relationship with your parents, but it might be that you have a plan for what you think would be a sort of semi-structured post conversation time.

Dr. Sarah Bren (21:38):

Right. If your kid didn’t have like a massive meltdown, right? Because that would be probably, be willing to throw any plan out the window if that’s the case.

Dr. Emily Upshur (21:46):

But I also think sometimes having, even if your kid had a massive meltdown, again, I think what’s the recovery, what’s the repair, right? Thinking through like, okay, now we’re going to make dinner. Okay. We’re still moving through life a little, I think is actually containing as opposed to letting it go on and on and on or have a sort of boundaries or structure around like how long we have to stay in this space.

Dr. Sarah Bren (22:17):

True. That’s a very good point. Yes. I would not let this conversation unless your child has, well, even if they have lots of questions, I think again, I guess it depends on the complexity. I don’t want to give you like a hard and fast number, but like I would say this doesn’t need to be longer than 20 minutes, maybe 30 like max because…

Dr. Emily Upshur (22:39):

And I think it could be as little as five, you know what I mean?

Dr. Sarah Bren (22:44):

Oh yeah. It could be very, very short, but I wouldn’t, even if it’s constructive, I don’t know that I would stay in it for that long. If you’ve got that much to talk about, I would say you have so many thoughts and so many questions. Why don’t we make sure we have some time over this week to keep coming back to this. But right now, it’s time for us to go make dinner, like you said, or like let’s go for a walk, let’s kind of shake this off and try to pivot to another … I just, this idea of like not lingering in it and sort of sitting in it for a little too long, especially not. Yeah. If your kid really wants to, I think it’s also important to be like, “I think we’ve covered a lot. Let’s stop here and come back to it because I think really if your kid’s still going it’s because of anxiety at that point potentially.” And if it’s you that’s stretching it out, it might just be because you’re anxious and so short and sweet. I’m actually thinking 30 minutes, it depends. We’ve seen this conversation be more structured and supported. One thing our practice does and has done…

Dr. Emily Upshur (23:57):

I was going to say that exactly, yeah.

Dr. Sarah Bren (23:58):

Is actually had facilitated family therapy sessions where we present this and we support a parent or parents in presenting this information to their children in our session because I also think, especially when there’s less amicable divorces or there’s more complexity or there’s just more going on having support from a therapist in the room to kind of keep things contained, keep things on track, keep things focused on the kids, to be able to support the parents in attuning to the developmental needs of the different ages of the kids and just hold the space for the whole family dynamic to kind of be supported and contained can be incredibly helpful.

(24:52):

I mean, you don’t have to be in a contentious divorce for that to be beneficial either. A lot of parents will choose to do that kind of prophylactically just to be supportive, but that is another thing is that you don’t have to necessarily do this by yourself. You can certainly get help from therapists, particularly therapists that are specialized in child development and family therapy. I think that would be if I’m looking for someone to help me, I’d be looking for that like sort of set of experience specifically because I think there is a lot of relational family therapy support that gets used in those kinds of sessions, that skill set and then knowing how to tailor this information to different ages of children’s development and developmental needs is also really valuable. So that’s something that I would, if you’re going to try to get some support, I would look for someone who has experience in that.

Dr. Emily Upshur (25:54):

Well, right. And as you were saying that, I was thinking at least in our practice it runs the gamut, right? If someone like this is like, “I really want a tailored, I need to talk to somebody about my kids, my specific kids and I just want like one or two sessions with somebody who like has done this, helped families with these types of conversations before,” you could do that. We could also facilitate it in person in a place like our practice where you do it with an actual family therapist or clinician or child clinician who has experience doing this in person. So it really runs the gamut of how much support…

Dr. Sarah Bren (26:33):

A family might need. Yeah.

Dr. Emily Upshur (26:36):

Yeah, your family might need and sometimes it’s worth one or two conversations just to sort of, you might feel great after you have one conversation and like we can do this, we’ve got this, we can do this at home. So I just think just to help you have another step of processing it sometimes it’s nice to bounce it off of a professional, even if it’s not a long term treatment type of thing.

Dr. Sarah Bren (26:57):

Right, because I think when you do it with, when you did get like a consultation, the nice thing is you can kind of speak to the things we talked about, like the age of my child, not just their chronological age, but their actual developmental age. Like what type of kid am I talking to here? And like any other things, like how do they process new information, complex information. So you could get a very tailored to your specific child, your specific family system. If you wanted to have like a consultation with someone who can help you make a plan, you could just do that one off like a lot of therapists if they have training in this can do this. Like for example, our practice, because we are licensed in New York, we would only be able to do the family therapy in office sessions in New York. So if you’re out of New York and looking for something like this, these are the things I want you to think about when you’re asking around to find that support. But if you were like just wanting to have one or two sessions where you could just get a plan that’s tailored to your individual child and your individual family needs, we do that nationally so that’s also available and I’ll put a link to our website in the show notes so that if you’re interested in just getting more information on it, you can go there.

(28:21):

Well, good luck to you. I think that you are asking the right questions. You are oriented to the right place and you’ve got this and I really think I’m hoping these reframes help because this can be something that is not at all damaging. It’s just challenging and there’s a big difference.

Dr. Emily Upshur (28:39):

No, that’s great.

Dr. Sarah Bren (28:41):

Thanks, Em.

Dr. Emily Upshur (28:42):

See you next time.

Dr. Sarah Bren (28:43):

Bye.

(28:43):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.