Divorce Support Forums: What to tell children............

You handle your 11 year old the way you would handle her in any explanation of how you want your daughter to handle relationships. In other words, she's WAAAY too young for you to talk to about her OWN dating habits, so it's not right for you to use her mother as an example of a BAD dating habit.

I've been reading a new book, Divorce Poison, that discusses parental alienation and the ways to combat or avoid it. I've determined that even if alienation does not take place at all, there are going to be times when teh other parent does things that we do not agree with, that we have to confront... it's an issue of teaching the kids how we want the KIDS to behave as they grow & mature, not teaching them that the other parent is behaving improperly.

This book gives you a series of questions to ask yourself before you tell the kid something, which provide a test of whether you're telling the kid for the right reasons or whether you're telling it in the right way or whether you're doing it for a reason or a way that will ultimately hurt the kid (by hurting her relationship with ehr mother or with you, for example).

Someday, when your daughter is old enough to know how you wnat her to handle boyfriends, pre-marital sex, etc... well THEN she might put two & two together and realize that what her mother was doing was wrong. And if she asks you, it would probably be OK to explain that you disagree with her mother.

But until you read the book and figure out WHY you shoudl do it this way, for THIS one, maybe it will help you to understand this... your daughter is too young to understand that her mother is being unfaithful. She is too young to even envision her own mother and father having sex without getting all grossed out over it. But she is perfectly old enough to understand that MOm and Dad each have friends. And it's not wrong for either Mom OR Dad to have friends. At some point, when she puts two and two togehter and realizes that Mom's friend is someone MOM was spending too much time with when mom was still married to dad... well... THEN is the point where she deserves informatino from you that MOm and Dad have a disagreement about what is right in that situation, and YOUR point of view is that married people should NOT have overnights with their special friends until AFTER a divorce and even then, if they're not married to their new friend, they maybe shouldn't have overnights with them either.

A few weeks ago, someone with a 3 year old was upset that the kid was going to visit with a parent who was maybe having an overnight visitor on a regular basis. This forum member wanted informatino on how to get proof of the overnights, if I recall correctly, so that he could show that she was being a bad parent. But this wasn't going to be proof of her being a bad parent.

Knowing that the friend's truck was in the driveway in the morning was not proof that the child would in any way be exposed to the inappropriate affair-like behaviros of their mother. At the age of 3 (or 4, or 5, or 8... however old YOUR child is when they first start REALLY understanding sexuality), the child does not even understand that if Mom or Dad has a friend overnight, that it is any different from when THEY have freinds overnight, They simply don't understand or compute the complicated sexual issues involved in ... well, APPROPRIATE sexuality is not within thier realm of understanding, so they simply don't have the tools needed to understand UNFAITHFUL sexuality.

A very good friend of mine, on teh say he caught his wife with another man, was asked by the kids why he was crying. He told his 9 year old (because Daddy caught mommy kissing another man). This child has never gotten over that. He's 12 and a holy terror now. And he's chosen sides in the divorce. NOT Dad's side. It's odd, but he somehow felt sorry for his Mother that his Dad was angry at her 3 years ago. He didn't understand faithful and unfaithful, he did not understand what kissing probably meant, he just knew that his Dad was angry at his Mom and she was upset and had to leave after that. And the day his Daddy got angry at his mom was the day the family broke up. His brother (older) and sister (younger) have gotten over it, but he is ... well, it's not been good for him.

My friend was trying to give him the inforamtion about infidelity in his own language... thinking he could understand that point. But the kid couldn't. My friend was angry and didn't want the kid to knwo about his mother's infidelity because it woudl help the kid, he just wanted the kid to know about it so that the kid would not be angry at the Dad when the family split up, and it backfired. And as I'm reading the book Divorce Poison, I realize that if my freind had stopped himself and asked these questions about why he was telling the kid this stuff, he'd have not done it at all.

Truly, I'm going to be recommending the thing for a while. It's a GREAT read to help answer questions just like yours.