Your kids asking questions about divorce?

[dichotomy]

Have any of your kids - especially young ones asked you questions about divorce? My little one started asking me about breaking up with mommy, who she would live with, and what if I got a girlfriend, and why did I marry mommy???

 

I asked her where she was getting these questions from and she said "school". She would not tell me if this was other kids, or her teachers exploring family types. I mean are 6 year olds taling about daddy's girlfriend and divorce - at recess?

[rach63]

Absolutely, kids aren't oblivious. If one kid see a kid with one parent or the other, never both, they're going to ask. It can get messy depending on how the parents have explained their divorce to their child. My boyfriend and his ex wife saw a psychologist who told them to pick a cause and stick with it. Three years after their marriage ended and a year after being with me, the ex wife started to change her story, blaming me for the divorce, and their son is still confused about it. I have no idea what he would, or has told other kids about it.

[Ronni_W]

The more adults keep things from young children, the more they will try to make sense of it amongst themselves. They also get a sense of what is "taboo" or supposed to be kept secret...your daughter may be doing her best to protect her friends who are experiencing -- and trying in their own way to make sense of -- their parents' divorce.

 

It is lack of age-appropriate information, proper adult support. Usually trying to protect and shield children from the harsher, uglier realities of life...but it does not do a good job of that at all. Sometimes also because the adults don't have sufficient coping and, or communication skills, themselves.

 

Adults are also afraid to ask children questions, find out the child's thinking, and point of view...I suspect the adult is afraid that it won't have any answers; protecting its self-image rather than supporting the child's understanding, growth in an age-appropriate way.

 

All of it can just leave a child feeling more confused, less safe in her/his world, without proper or trusted place to go for guidance, assurance, reassurance; a place where he/she can just feel loved, special, safe, protected.