Children of any age can find it difficult to talk about how they feel about not living with both their parents. They say it’s ‘fine’ or just don’t talk about it. But general wisdom is that children benefit from talking about it – just like the adults do! Without talking to you about it they can often get it wrong and think all sorts of things that would make your hair curl if you knew. So, time to find out what they’re thinking and help them through.

When you start to look around for advice in this area the phrase you come across a lot is ‘age appropriate’ communication with children, and when you look for examples of what is age appropriate they’re hard to find. However, you know your children, you also know that what you say needs to be true because you can’t tell them one thing until they’re 18 and then tell them the truth because you think they’re now ‘old enough’ – that, quite frankly is asking for a HUGE backfire-ing session! Hard to imagine it working out well and child hugging parent saying ‘thanks for protecting me so well from such a horrid truth, I now feel well-adjusted enough to deal with it and will revise my feelings and attitudes towards you, dad and love in the light of it. Thanks wow you’re the best!’ So, keep it basic and heavily simplify the complicated adult bit, keeping the nub of what really happened / is happening there so that what you say is true and will still be true when they’re that 18 year old.

Children have to be pretty old (and boys even older than girls) until they can identify and understand their own emotions. It’s probably teenagers who are coming to grips with them and even they still need help with it. As a result children may not understand what it is they’re feeling, so you can help them by naming it: for example, ‘you might be feeling sad, or fed-up, or very miserable because you won’t see dad fro another 2 weeks etc’. Another alternative is ‘often children feel sad when their parents split up. Do you?’ There are numerous variations on the theme which I won’t bore you with, as long as you’ve got the gist….

And finally, children ARE resilient, but they are also capable of keeping an enormous amount inside. They say babies learn to smile first to hook us adults in by pleasing us. Pleasing grown-ups is a habit that’s apparently hard to kick (I know! I’m struggling to believe it too!), however it’s true, many children are so keen to keep Mummy and Daddy happy that they don’t want to add to their worries with their own questions, or upset them even more by raising the subject.

You see they’re NOT fine, so talk to them and help them tell you. Our worksheet (Worksheet for you and your children) gives you an outline of questions you could ask to help you and your children talk about a subject that’s bound not to by a laugh a minute, but incredibly important.