If you’re looking for advice on how to talk to a child about an upcoming divorce, one common piece of advice you will receive is to assure the child that it’s not their fault. If you’re a parent and you’re having “the divorce conversation” with your child, you don’t necessarily have to give them the in-depth reasons for the divorce, but it’s good to make sure they don’t feel guilty.
This sometimes surprises parents, who never assumed that the child would feel guilty at all. They know that the divorce is due to adult reasons, whether that means financial instability, an extramarital affair or simply growing apart over time. Why would children think they had anything to do with it?
Unpleasant experiences
There are a few different reasons why this may happen, but one thing to consider is that children are learning about the world. When they are young, many of their unpleasant experiences involve their parents telling them not to do something. Some of these experiences also involve getting in trouble for things that they have already done. In other words, the unpleasant experiences were directly caused by the child.
The child then perceives the divorce as yet another unpleasant experience. If they’re very young, it can be hard for them to recognize that this doesn’t inherently mean that it is their fault. That is still how it feels to them, and they worry that they must have done something wrong to cause their parents to end the relationship.
This helps to show why you need to have these important conversations with your child, and why you need to know about all of your legal options to put your child first during a divorce.