How To Tell The Kids In High Conflict Divorce

Telling the children about your impending divorce is always a fragile, emotional conversation. The general rule is both parents tell the children together, refer to the decision as mutual and assure them that they are loved and their lives will continue with limited change. However, when facing a high conflict divorce, such advice may be unwise and even dangerous. If you are expecting your high conflict ex to blame you, create undo chaos and emotional overwhelm and catastrophize your choice, telling the children together may not be in their (or your) best interest. Listen as Karen walks you through another, one that you don't typically hear and that may resonate as safer and more aligned with your reality.

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How To Tell The Kids In High Conflict Divorce

The Spirit Behind Standard Divorce Conversations

Welcome to another episode of JBD Team Talks. I'm discussing how to tell the kids in a high-conflict divorce. So many clients have reached out and asked because there's so little information on the topic of telling the kids with high conflict, and so much information and helpful information on how to speak to your children when you're in more of a standard or garden-variety divorce. I want to take a few minutes to look at the spirit behind the rules of telling the children in those more standard divorces. One of the key things is that you want to do it with your spouse. You want to present as a unified team, unified co-parents, and you want to keep it simple.

You want to not give them any more information than they need. The keep it simple part is that you don't want to go into all of the details. You want to give the information. It's going to be upsetting. It may be shocking. Everybody has a different way of grieving. Even though they may ask going into a lot of details about what happens next, where we're living, and all of that, it doesn't make sense. Answer the age-appropriate questions. The key rule is, “We both love you. This isn't your fault. You didn't cause this. We're going to keep life as similar as possible.” Those are the key talking points.

The spirit behind this is, number one, that the children see that while you may be getting divorced in terms of how you show up for them, you're a team. The spirit is to ease their concerns, bring comfort, and minimize fear and chaos. When you sit down, there's enough upsetting about the fact that life is changing and the family is altering. You don't want to add to that. That's the spirit behind all of the suggestions and advice on telling the children in a standard divorce.

The Importance Of A Child-Centered Decision In High-Conflict Situations

Let's look at high-conflict divorce. When you are getting divorced and one party feels angry, betrayed, or overly upset about what's happening, if you know that your spouse can come to the table and behave that way that we talk about for standard divorces, then by all means, it's the best approach to telling the children. However, in many situations, that's not the case. My key piece of advice is to make your decision about how to tell the children. Make it a child-centered decision. Not a spouse-centered decision, not a self-centered decision.

Make your decision about how to tell the children a child-centered one—not spouse-centered, not self-centered.

If you know that your soon-to-be ex is going to perhaps blame you or overemphasize how horrible this thing is, how devastated the family is going to be, or how you're the wrong person, you're being thrown under the bus, then you need to take a look at whether or not your desire to tell the children with that spouse is a child-centered decision. If that were the case, that is going to take what is an incredibly difficult conversation for the children to receive. It's going to exponentially make it more difficult.

When you're making this decision, part of what you want to think about is how the children will hear this best. I'm going to use Mom and Dad, or the two co-parents. I'm going to use the terms Mom and Dad. If Mom is overreactive, angry, and going to make this conversation so much more difficult on the children, and Dad wants to tell the kids together because that's everything he's read or listened to, take a step back and determine what would be best for the children.

If you on your own can tell your children in a calm, level-headed way, and if you're the one who made the decision and your spouse is going to say that, you might want to say that up front. Be able to deliver that information in a way where they can hear it, they can receive it, that's not filled with the chaos or the crisis orientation that the other parent might be bringing to the table. Even though those children will hear Mom's perspective after Dad presents this nice, calm perspective, you're still laying the foundation. You're still providing them a narrative and a context that is comforting. We want to ease their concerns. We want to minimize fear and chaos. We want to comfort them.

You can say all of those same things. “Mommy and I will always love you. We will always look out for your best interests. This isn't your fault. This isn't about you. We're going to try and keep things as similar as possible.” You individually can still say all of those things, even if the other parent, in this case, Mommy, might create more chaos, havoc, her own heartbreak, devastation, and upset in telling the children in a way that's going to be hard for them. That way, at least your children have these two narratives. They may be able to go back and forth and ask more questions.

You need to go with your intuition. I often have had clients who have avoided beginning the divorce because this piece of telling the children together is so overwhelming, frightening, and devastating because they know how their soon-to-be ex is going to behave, and they want to protect the children from that. If that's you, think child-centered. With everything that we talk about in high conflict, the general advice out there is that it's good, it's solid, and it's brilliant for standard divorces. You have to take your unique situation in mind when you make this decision. Go with your intuition. If telling the children together creates more dis-ease than ease, don't do it. Make that child-centered decision, not the spouse-centered or self-centered one.

You have to take your unique situation into account when making this decision. Trust your intuition—if telling the children together creates more dis-ease than ease, don’t do it.

The other thing I want to say is that regardless of the age. The other thing I've heard a lot of is that there's not a lot of information out there for me when it comes to my young adult or older adult children and how to tell them. The same rules apply. If it's a standard divorce, it's great if you and your spouse can tell them together. Age-appropriate is going to share more information. If it's a high-conflict divorce, it's the exact same thing. If your adult children hear it from both of you, while one parent is accusing, blaming, bashing, or creating this vision of total chaos and devastation, that is not child-centered. You want to make that decision regardless of the age of the children.

The other thing that I do want to talk about for a moment is in terms of telling all of the children together or telling them separately. Again, the rule is that the whole family should be together. I have a slightly different perspective. I handled it differently myself with my divorce. My children were enough years apart that the kinds of questions that my older child would ask and the amount of extra soothing and comfort that my younger child would need informed my decision to do it the same day back-to-back, but separately so that I could be fully present for each child and what they needed at that time.

The other thing to keep in mind may not be an age thing. It may be for older children. It may be more of a personality thing that your children will react so differently that it makes sense to be able to be present for each of them individually to support them in that moment as best as possible. The final thing I want to say on the topic of telling the children is that when you deliver this kind of information, it immediately kicks off a grieving process. In many structures of explaining grieving, denial is the immediate first stage.

Two things. One is once you say the word divorce, “Me and Dad,” or “Me and Mom have decided to get a divorce.” From that point on, your children may not hear anything other than wah, wah, wah. That fight, flight, or freeze reaction is kicked off. Things slow down. Brain fog overtakes the logical mind. That's the piece on keeping it simple. Don't share details at that point. Know that each person is going to react differently. Somebody might shut down. Somebody might go to tears. Somebody might say it's about time and walk away as if they're perfectly fine. Of course, nobody is perfectly fine.

Acknowledge, Validate, Set Boundaries

Be keenly aware of how much information you provide up front. Someone might start asking, “What does this mean? Are we going to stay in the house? What's going to happen with the school? How often are we going to see Mommy or Dad?” This is not the time to answer those questions. When you tell the children, however you decide to tell the children, and especially if you're the one who decided, I highly recommend that you present the information basically.

You do a lot of acknowledging and validating. Even if they're coming at you, even if they're angry at you, no matter what it is, “I hear what you're saying. Given the way you're looking at this, it makes perfect sense that you would be angry at me, that you would be upset.” Acknowledge and validate. Do not defend. 1) They're not going to hear you. 2) It diminishes their emotional reaction. When you acknowledge and validate, you keep letting those children know that you hear them, whatever it is that they're saying, “I hear you.”

No matter what they say, what they're feeling makes sense because feelings aren't right or wrong, they are. You acknowledge. You validate. If they're asking questions and demanding answers, you set a boundary. “Those are good questions. We don't have all the answers right now. Those are good questions. We are going to be having more conversations about this, but for today, we're not going to talk about that.” It's an opportunity for you to work on your boundaries, acknowledge, and validate. Of course, it's emotionally jarring for you in the telling.

Feelings aren’t right or wrong—you simply acknowledge and validate them.

I guess it was twenty years ago, and I can remember it like it was yesterday. My children don't remember it at all, by the way, but they were young. I think they were 5 and 7. It was a heartbreaking time for me. Everybody is going to need some time to process and feel their feelings. The truth is, there will be many conversations. This first one is a gentle opening of this new paradigm, this new family restructuring that's going to happen.

Just a couple of quick tips. I'm going to recap here. The spirit behind everything you've been hearing is that you comfort your children, ease their concerns, minimize fear and chaos, and keep it simple. If you can do that with your soon-to-be ex, wonderful. If you cannot, make sure that the decision you make is a child-centered one. You share what you share, you set your boundaries so that you're not sharing more than they can hear, you acknowledge and validate, and you give everyone an opportunity to then step away and begin to process.

You keep inviting conversations so that they know that you're there to talk to them. Whether they're teen or 40, this is what you want to do. If you have adult children and you haven't listened to our episode on adult children that we released, The Plight of Adult Children, it has some experts who give more information on dealing with adult children. I hope this was valuable and helpful. We will be back again shortly with another Team Talks.

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