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Telling Your Children About the Separation

If you have children, be aware that they will remember forever how you handle this moment.

• Tell them together. Rachel and Patrick are telling their children together, after they worked out their ground rules. Then Rachel and Patrick will speak with each one separately, listening to their fears and reactions. If only one parent breaks the news, the children could start to hope that the other parent will feel differently.
• Give them time. Rachel and Patrick are telling the children two weeks in advance of the actual separation. Some therapists think this is an ideal time. Others prefer 2 to 3 days before. Children need time to get used to the fact that the parents are going to split up.
• Be there afterward. Rachel and Patrick tell the children on Friday afternoon, just before a weekend. This gives the children time when both parents are present to process the decision and ask questions.
• Be calm. Children need to see the separation as an orderly, rational, mature process, not an irrational or violently traumatic one. If Rachel and Patrick can do this, children will be less likely to act out and become depressed.
• Be honest. Rachel and Patrick know that they are not going to work things out. They tell the children this. If this were only a trial separation, they would tell the children that as well.
• Be upbeat within bounds. Rachel says, "now we won't be fighting any more." She does not say, "You'll have two homes, and that's better than one." Their children would recognize that latter comment as disingenuous.
• Give them space. Rachel and Patrick are letting the children react their own ways and in their own time. The fact that their middle child seems to say little and accept the separation easily does not fool them. They know he will be very upset.
• Have followup conversations. Rachel and Patrick are prepared in the following days, weeks, months, and even years, to have this subject come up over and over again. They plan to be patient. Also, they plan to initiate conversations. It is important to tell the children that it's necessary to talk about things, even painful things. And, even in one-on-one conversations, each parent avoids criticizing or blaming the other.
• Be prepared for comparisons. Your children will start to compare what they anticipate with what they know of friends' families. The children have a close friend whose father disappeared after the divorce. Patrick assures the children that he will stay around.
• Don't raise false hopes. During the separation, Rachel and Patrick have one intense night together. But Patrick leaves before the children wake up. He knows that it is important not to re-unite in front of the children until he and Rachel are very sure that they are going to give the marriage another serious chance. Otherwise, it would be cruel to raise their hopes, sustain their fantasy of reconciliation -- and make it more difficult for them to accept an actual divorce.

For more on the children's experience of divorce, see For the Children .

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