How Do I Talk About Divorce With My Kids?

Whether you’ve gone through it personally or been deeply affected by it, divorce is heartbreaking. It can also be challenging to navigate conversations and dynamics with kids, friends, and others as you walk through the changes that come from the death of a marriage.

This episode is a part of the newest season of Therapy & Theology: “You Asked … We’re Answering.” Through podcast reviews, direct messages on social media, and more, Lysa TerKeurst; Licensed Professional Counselor Jim Cress; and Proverbs 31 Ministries’ Director of Theological Research, Dr. Joel Muddamalle, collected your most asked questions. Now they’re spending an entire season answering!

Today’s topic is really hard. I am so sensitive to the conversation we’re having today about divorce.
Honestly, my team and I wrestled with how much we wanna continue to talk about this topic.
But I personally know many of you are struggling with the dynamic surrounding divorce.
After reviewing previous episodes and receiving emails and comments and deans from listeners who have so many questions, we realize there’s still more to unpack.
So today, we’re gonna talk about some of the questions that really affect us when we’re walking through divorce or the divorce effect on individuals, families, and friendships.
Now before we get into the content, don’t forget about the free listener guide that you can download using the link in the show notes.
Now, we’ve got several questions to talk through. So let’s go.
First question, how do I talk to my kids about divorce?
How do I talk to my parents about divorce?
You want
me to go first? For sure. Well, mine’s gonna be, uh, again, I think simple at one level.
How old are your kids? I always wanna start with people throughout questions. I’m gonna say I’ve gotta interview them.
Well, how old are your kids?
For that matter, if you’re talking about your parents, if you go there, how old are your parents?
How much of the truth can they hold in in almost a need to know basis?
I’d look at with parents or kids, could they turn and weaponize it on?
We told you not to marry him or her, or that this was going to happen.
I think that assessment of oneself of reading the room, knowing your audience, how much can they handle around this?
With your kids, um, how much do your kids already know about? The current situation. Was there infidelity involved?
Some kids, you know, were so we we know all this.
So usually we find out kids know a whole lot more going on than we think they do.
So how much do they always already know?
I think if they’re minor kids, I’m always big on, you know what?
As a professional counselor, you need to get legal consultation, because it can involve other things.
Or if you’re talking behind the back or the kids end up as a conduit, taking it to your soon to be ex, or your ex, knowing what that is about.
And even, yes, professional counseling to say, the kids are here. We are a system.
What level Am I going to share and you cannot that I’m aware of, you cannot control your x or soon to be x’s narrative of what they tell the kids, and I think just answer your kids in an age appropriate way.
And my last thing on this is I would want you to give your kids at least the permission to ask you any question they wanna ask and give yourself permission as the parent who’s going through divorce or who’s gone through divorce, give yourself the permission that you answer only the questions you want to answer and how you wanna answer
Yeah. I do think it’s really important to try to do a little bit of assessment of what do the kids already know and they may or may not be honest with you around that, but sometimes it’s not so much that the kids wanna know all the facts.
Mhmm. But rather They just wanna know what this weird feeling is that’s been in their home.
And so I do think that if they ask a certain question and you’re not able to answer it, you can be honest with them, but don’t lie to them.
Because the lying is gonna form secrets and secrets within a family really are destructive.
Joel, do you have any thoughts about this?
Yeah. Um, I I’m empathetic. I would well, I would say my primary experience with this has been as the youth in in years past.
And so I’ll I’ll speak from that perspective.
The majority of the conversations that I have with students, uh, junior high and high school, The interesting thing is the perception of the conversation was so much about themselves as the active agents as the cause of the divorce.
Yeah. And so one of the things just pragmatically that I would say is reinforce.
If you think that you’re saying it too much, say it a little bit more.
Your value and your love for these children, um, you know, that they don’t take ownership for the things that they should not take ownership 4.
And you verbalizing and saying that to them will be the track record of repetition that they’re going to need as they consistently process this in other environments that are not the environment that is safe and contained like home.
And children are talking. You know, I’ve got, um, my kids are 12108 and, uh, we’ve got Emmy just gonna turn 4.
In the other day, Luke came in and he had some conversations with some friends who were going through, you know, the parents went through a divorce.
And for him, this is the a child of a right?
He came in, and he started asking, asked some tough questions. Mom and dad, would you guys ever get divorced?
Like, what what would happen when we get to, like, So the conversations are happening in other environments and that ability to consistently reinforce our love for our children, their value, their worth, their dignity, I think is super, super important.
You know, I think for me, when I was walking through the divorce.
I had so many conflicting feelings.
Sure.
Because there was a part of me that I have been really hurt and I wanted to protect my kids from being hurt in some of the same ways.
And I’m not talking about physically. I’m talking about emotionally.
And so I have this great desire to protect them And at the same time, because they were adults, I knew they needed to have their own journey.
And so there was this great battle inside of my heart I wanted to do good in the midst of what was really, really hard, but sometimes there just aren’t good answers.
I wish today that I could give you a script. And I could say, this is what to do.
This is what to say. This is what not to say. But honestly, in my experience, it was so organic.
It just unfolded. And my primary thing, every day, was lord help me to not say the things that would be harmful or hurtful in this dynamic only let me say what is helpful.
And where I mess up, please give me grace and protect my children.
And where I get it right, will you give me some encouragement in my heart that that was the right thing to do?
And, you know, I just wanna encourage you that it’s hard.
And if you have friends that you think have really walked this journey really well, and they’ve had to communicate things with their kids, ask them about some of their experiences because I just don’t think we’re gonna be able to give you a perfectly Yeah.
You know, put together script, I think it’s gonna be so much more organic.
I will say that one of the most pivotal conversations for me was when my adult kids came to me and said that they needed to draw a boundary with some of our conversations.
And, um, the boundary was that they didn’t want me to bring uh, their dad.
If they needed to talk about their dad, they would place him up, but they didn’t me to bring it up.
And at first, I’m bristled with that because I thought, how is that gonna work?
But I quickly figured out You know, the dynamics were already hurtful enough. I didn’t need to reinforce that.
What was much healthier for me is to continue to make them toward good things that we’re gonna walk toward in the future, even though we are experiencing this deep hardship as a family.
Know we’re talking about divorce particularly, but if I could take a step back and talk about foundational principle, um, I remember at least one of the things that you had said to me very early on.
I to you because I’ve always marbled at the closeness of your kids or adult children you guys like to have fun.
One of your daughters will always joke.
Like, she I think she can just live with you guys all the time, bring her whole family, just play games.
Like, it’s just an a beautiful thing. And I remember asking you, like, how did, like, how did this happen?
Cause I’ve got these little kids and try to navigate this.
My wife and I, and you said something that has stuck me forever.
Um, you said, Joel, you just keep him talking. Keep him talking.
And I just think about this conversation as it would relate to something as tragic as divorce and painful.
But the principle of this is also true for something like that or loss or uncertainty that happens, you know, in your family.
And it’s like, How do we talk about any of these things?
I think the investment early on, and it’s never too late to start no matter how old your kids are.
Early on of just, like, keep them talking, create environments of open communication so that when these things do happen, if they happen to the extent that they happen, there’s an ability to have honest transparent conversation, um, that’s gonna be healthy.
Yeah. I think somewhere along the way there became this universal statement that parents would say.
And it was like, don’t talk back to me.
And I understand that and we do wanna raise respectful children.
Yeah.
But I learned that when I would say things like that, the kids would shut down And when they stopped talking, I stopped having an influence or an in road into what they were experiencing.
So, early on in my parenting, I just said, you know what? Keep them talking.
And if they get disrespectful, the disrespect and don’t shut down the conversation.
She also says something like, if they say something that freaks you out, can you cut on the inside?
Yeah. Freaked on one side, but tell your face just stay. Yeah. Stay in that place.
We were like, come, that is really interesting.
Don’t show it on your face because the minute you show it on your face, it’ll also shut down the conversation.
And, Jim, I I very much like what you said too.
Sometimes you’re not gonna be able to answer the questions. So maybe you could say I can’t answer that question.
But I can answer this one and then figure out, you know, how to keep the conversation going. Okay.
What about your parents or even how do I talk about divorce with my church community?
Because both of those things can feel really scary.
I, uh, I have a little thing I use, if you wanna call them a technique or something you can’t, and I don’t do this in a smart aleck way or condescending way.
If someone were to say, Hannah would like to know so and so it’s going along with you right now.
One fair answer at times is if Joel asked me, that could say, Help me know how it would be helpful for you if I answered the question or gave you the data about what’s going on in my relationship right now.
I got a lot of people who can feel that that’s rude, but Sometimes we can just blurt it out or feel obliged.
I need to answer that.
So on the need to know basis, I really feel there’s a line delineating between your kids or your kids.
And there was that soon to be ex who was their parent and your parents or friends and churches.
I almost feel like they keep moving out in these centric circles.
But with your parents, just to say, again, why do they need to know specifics?
And if they want to know I want you to feel safe.
He actually used the word earlier in here, and I thought, ah, he’s got that critical language.
I use a lot. We talked about contained.
We talked about that in counseling of the contained and safety and to have the container.
So if I’m going to open this up here with my parents, I wanna frame it up, and I wanna do that myself.
Right, or for you to do it yourself, for you to do it yourself.
Here are my boundaries around this conversation. You have to know your parents.
Are they gonna start investigating or Well, we told you this wouldn’t work out or what I got.
That whole idea there is to say, what is it you need to know?
And how much do they need to know? Again, a common one I work with is in fidelity.
How much do your parents need to know about that? Right? And what are they gonna do with that information?
So are they the confidentiality or the privacy of it’s important how much do they need to know?
And then for you to be prepared that once you release that data, once you say to anyone, here’s what’s going on.
You have lost control. Over that. The toothpaste is out of the tube.
So I want a person to be willing to know once I say, well, here’s some of the dynamics.
I may not share publicly, but I’ll share with you then what they do with that is important, I’m clear on, as you and I did in the healthy conversations contract, is that I wanna be clear and say, I asking for your complete confidentiality and what I’m about to share.
Gotta be honest. I there says, uh, I don’t think it works. And anecdotally.
I don’t think it works much.
It works some because we’re just wired for gossip and we’re wired for, hey, I don’t tell you then what else, but I wanna at least say, I’m asking you, then get a receipt.
Joel, if I’m sending that to you, are you willing to keep this confident? I need to be careful.
Like, I’m in even with Brit at home. I don’t want you to even tell her Mhmm.
So I think getting that framed up and say, here’s what I’m asking for because you may have siblings and your parents tell the siblings, and you can only control what you can.
That’s the old serenity prayer. Right?
Now grant me the serenity, and we’ll change it to a different version of it, giving me the serenity god to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the person I can change and the wisdom to know the only person I can change is myself.
Yeah. That’s my thought around that.
I think it’s very dynamically unique to each person, how close you are to mom and dad, what do you wanna share?
And again, once you share it, you don’t get
you know, in one of our sessions, early on, Jim, I was feeling a lot of pressure because I felt like I don’t wanna be the kind of person who keeps secrets.
And so I was feeling the pressure that if I don’t say something, I’m being dishonest or if I just say a little bit but not the full truth, then I’m being dishonest.
And there was just a lot of conflicting emotions around that.
And we discussed in that counseling session that there’s a big difference between privacy and secrecy.
Privacy is withholding information for the sake of healing. Yes.
Secret is withholding information for the sake of hiding so that bad behavior can continue.
And so when I broke it apart that way, I’m not keeping secrets, but I am choosing to hold some things private, maybe for now, maybe forever.
And I think that allows us the freedom to not feel obligated to tell people the full story.
And there’s a big difference too.
You can share the basic facts of what are going on and facts are something that people can pray through, pray for, you know, all of that.
But going into detail, it’s like giving away so much information that people get distracted in all of the details.
And that’s where a lot of the debate comes in.
And if you’re going through this, You’re gonna be so emotionally exhausted.
You just don’t wanna set yourself up for a debate. So I think it’s reading the audience.
You know, who are you talking to, whether it’s your parents, your friends, your church community, and, um, and do what is helpful for you, but not harmful to other people involved.
May give you, uh, a practical one? You’ve heard me say, we did it in this very series.
You know what you get to do? Sitting them to chair it down.
Put it to, uh, 3 by 5, playdacs. Right? Mom’s name on it. Dad’s name on it.
Your children’s name on it. Friends in the church, whoever that might be, and Sarah, and just do a dress rehearsal and just practice it.
You might even put your phone out and record it and say, let me go back and see how I said that I’m a nervous herb Did I over talk?
And you can practice that. We do that in many other arenas.
Practice that before you kinda go on stage with these people and say, I now know maybe like to use your phone to record and go, I wanna edit that out and we have, like, notes that we use here.
Right? And we’re not just reading this and buy all the teleprompter here.
But we have some notes to say, here’s what I wanna say.
And some people I’ve coached too many and counsel to say, no. I do actually want you to write.
And I call it a teleprompter script to say, Mom and dad, kids, whoever, friends, here’s my statement, what I wanna read this much and no less, and I’m not open for comments or questions at the end of it yet, not yet.
But I think those are that’s that containment so that you don’t have this vulnerability heading over later.
Like, I wish I wouldn’t have said all that.
That’s really good. And, also, I think if the point of the conversation is to inform them, you can inform them without explaining everything.
But Another point of the conversation may be because you need some help.
You know, you need some practical help. You need some emotional support. Whatever.
So I would be clear not so much about the details, but about what you need from them. Yeah.
So, because immediately, people are gonna want to either leaning and no more, or they’re gonna wanna lean in and help.
And the people who lean in and wanna help, those are the people that you can be honest with, hey.
This would really help me in this season.
I think there’s an important part of that with the wisdom and the discernment too as you’re navigating who you trust, how you trust them, what levels of communication you’re going to have.
Jim, you’ve said often, uh, trust requires time plus believable behavior.
And I know that even in this discussion, this conversation, we’re trying to identify people that, can be that will hold your, like, highest good with a great amount of value.
Yeah. You know? And so in that, is the goal to get more info.
And then what is the purpose of just more information versus is the goal your health and your healing?
And finding you in a place where you’re making progress every day towards, um, ultimately Jesus and and moving on with your life in a in a positive way.
And so I think, discernment in those conversations is incredibly important.
And like we’ve talked about before, words frame are reality.
And because words frame our reality, I think it’s important to when we’re talking about a divorce to really express the fullness of what this really is.
And for me, it was the deepest grief I’ve ever known.
And so instead of calling in a divorce, I called it the death of my marriage.
And I ask people treat this as if I’m going through a death and that the process of grieving is sometimes gonna be messy and unpredictable.
And I need to let my grief take me where I need to go.
And that doesn’t mean that I’m always gonna be completely vulnerable with everything that I’m feeling, but the assurance you can have is that I am talking to people who are trained to help me deal with this grief.
And, um, I think that that’s really appropriate as well.
So as we wrap up, we’re gonna have to do this one really quickly.
Is it possible to not pick sides in a divorce? I’m gonna go first with this one.
I really can’t stand it when somebody says, you know, well, there’s 2 sides to every story.
That statement for whatever reason was hugely triggering for me because my thought is why are we picking sides?
This isn’t a spectator sport. This is a family being decimated.
And so instead of picking aside, why not just step in and help wherever you can help.
Be silent about things that you don’t need to talk about.
And if you use words, let them be words of great compassion and not judgment.
Any other things that you guys would like to say as we wrap up?
Yeah. I would just say, um, yeah, you’re gonna be surprised, Lisa.
I said, yeah, you’re gonna pick a side and the side is the greatest good of each image bearer in this discussion.
And that greatest good might mean sitting boundaries in a separation of relationship or it might be really diving deep into a relationship because there’s so much hurt and there’s so much pain and there’s a vulnerability that needs to be tended for and cared for.
But the filter is the greatest good of both image comparisons.
And like I said, some sometimes, um, it’s gonna take specific actions depending on the scenario.
That’s really good, Joel.
I think, uh, just looking sports, um, certainly looking politics and we are wired, especially in that lower limbic brain or if we’re in trauma, like the death of a marriage, known as a divorce, that were wired to pick sides and during that time is for allow that person focusing more than picking then and picking sides to say what’s going on to me, even the kids involved where do they have a safe place to go grieve and process it?
And and I’m, you know, it sounds like bad news as we end here.
I rarely see what I’m about to say, but, oh, if we could see this more.
And it is when I work with many couples who’ve gone through divorce, I’ve never told one person, I won’t.
You need a divorce. That’s not gonna be my decision as a therapist.
But I’ve said to them, It’s rare that people do an amicable divorce or if something goes on.
And what if your spouse even is out there trashing you or whatever else, then you can stay unilateral and no matter what goes on is to not forecast the sake of the kids to not try to put them in the middle for you to try to get them campaigning for them to take sides.
I will tell you I rarely see it. Hurt people hurt people.
Uh, and so appreciative of people who would say, I’m gonna take this particular healthy, godly high road with what goes on.
By the way, If you rip and say, I took a shot of my axe, repair it.
At least with your kids, I don’t wanna treat you the way that’s still your father, that’s still your mother, whatever But I think there’s so much limbic trauma brain going.
Most people are gonna pick sides, try to get people on their sides. I wish that could go differently.
Yeah. I would just make the request. Don’t use this to hate it. There’s two sides to every story.
While I understand the practical sentiment of that statement, It automatically sets the conversation up for a division that’s gonna be hurtful on both sides.
So thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Therapy And Theology.
Hi, friend. Thanks for watching this video.
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