When do we tell our children we're divorcing?
The mistake that some people make is to tell their children they're going to get a divorce when they're not sure and when they don't know when the family's actually gonna split up. This heightens childrens' anxiety to the point where they don't know what's happened to their life, they're losing predictability and trust, they may even try to negotiate a reconciliation and they may feel that they're responsible. So, telling children before you actually split up is going to be a problem, and therefore, I advise that you don't tell your children until you're really ready to move to different households. It's very hard for children to understand parents living in the same household, but that they want to get a divorce. And, of course, this depends a great deal on the age of the child. Younger children have little conceptual framework to understand a separation divorce. What they can understand is that parents are going to live in two different houses. Children under the age of five understand that their parents are going to still be their parents, but live in two separate houses. Five ot ten year olds feel very badly about their parents divorcing because they're in a position now of developing peer relationships, understanding more about relationships, they even understand the idea of divorce, and so they often feel that it's their fault and they've done something wrong. They'll hear their parents argue about parenting, so they'll feel that they have actually been the cause of the divorce. Teenagers and pre-teens are usually extremely angry because at a time when they're trying to separate, they want to feel they're separating from something solid and they want to feel they still have their anchor to move away from and when their parents break up everything just dissolves. Also they feel like they have to take care of their parents at a time when the last thing they want to do is take care of their parents, what they really want to do is not care about their parents very much at all and all of a sudden their parents are saying "I need you as a friend, a peer, a support system", which of course, should never be what a parent should ask of a child.
