MOMENT | Got to tell your children some hard news? Here's how - with Dr. Anne Lane

0:07It's so true in my experience that one of the most damaging things in my personal experience is secrecy and half-told truths and I couldn't put a story and I couldn't figure stuff out. But what I wanted to ask you was age appropriateness. Because whenever I talk about this, I get lots of questions about, well, do I tell the real reason why I'm getting divorced, which is that my partner cheated? Or do I really say the real reason we're moving house is because we can't afford this rent anymore? Or do I just jazz hand it up and say we're moving and it's going to be great? And I really have no idea.

0:42I'm fascinated to hear how does someone get that congruence as you've talked about and that truth and we've talked about children know and that was my experience I knew energetically what was up but it wasn't said so how do we navigate that it's really important co-developed story with a child so around divorce around financial difficulties around a parent's mental health all of these things children perceive them and what happens is if they don't have a story around them they can make it about themselves I was the reason mommy left when I asked for that extra pair of pajamas that's why we're in financial distress that's why we can't keep the house it's because I wanted that extra pair of pajamas or I had the expensive birthday party so children prefer to make something about themselves than they do about their parents because that ensures they're safe If they're the problematic person in this, they're safer because their parents are still preserved.

1:41But there is a big burden to making yourself the problem. Now, your question of what's age appropriate is really interesting. And the way we know that is we take our child's lead. So it might be that you are separating from your partner and you tell your child that very clearly the bare bones, you know, mommy and daddy are not going to be living together anymore. or mummy and daddy aren't getting on, we're arguing a lot, and we think it's much better if we live in separate houses and the two of you come and stay. And so you explain the bare bones of what's going to happen and what you know at that point.

2:18And then you listen to see if they've got any questions about it. So children, even children, so this is I'm talking from the age of sort of like four on to about 12, they can't take on very much information, especially when it's emotionally big for them so conversations have to happen in lots of parts so you begin the very basic and then you want to know whether they're able to emotionally cope with this and regulate so then you wait a little bit quite often when you tell a child something in the first instance they are just trying to process that emotionally and their emotions are all over the place so they might well just suck their thumb or shrug or they might say they want to watch tv they want to want just get away from that piece of impatient that's fine but what you do is you give lots of opportunity for lots of little conversations about it sporadically so there might be that conversation as they're going to bed you can say how are you feeling how are you feeling they might shrug they might still be in that quite defensive place but then the next day your return you might talk to nana on the phone about it with them there in a very simplified way you might sit them up on the counter with you and this is even if they're eight or nine or ten you can still sit them up on the counter and you say nana we told jenny yesterday that daddy and i are not going to be living together and let her listen a little bit take it in and you could say jenna what was it like when i told you and she might still shake her head so you're you're trying at first to work out whether a child's ready to talk a little bit more and you give them lots of little opportunities but what tends to happen is before bed a few days later you'll get a bit like I don't want you and daddy to spit up and I don't like this and I don't want it and it's at that point you can climb into the bed a little bit and you go you don't like this so you're empathizing you don't like this and that's when you say daddy and I we love you so much but sometimes when you're grown up these things can be really tricky to manage and sometimes they do so you take those conversations in slowly slowly parts always watching their emotional reaction if they come up with any questions you answer it as simply as you can you take it away from the realm of the child being responsible but you also try and not go enter into a lot of shame or blame or anger around it you're trying to kind of place everything without too much frustration or anger or pain and that's hard that's really hard Zoe because we feel a lot of frustration or anger we can have had partners who are unfaithful we can have had financial situations which are unfair there can be a lot of trauma around the things that happen to a family but your job is to try and place things very calmly