Re: Explaining sister's divorce to my boys

Penny Gaines wrote: 
annie wrote:


I would love to hear some thoughts on how to explain my sister's
divorce to my 2 older sons (ages 9 and 7).  We aren't very close to
my sister's family, so it won't have much of an effect on them
personally, but we will be seeing my sister and niece (also 9) on
Thanksgiving and I want to talk to them about what is/is not
appropriate to say to them.  My 9 year old is very compassionate and I
know his first thoughts are going to be for his cousin and he's going
to want to do something to make her feel better.  I'd like to have
some ideas ready to suggest.

I also want to choose my words carefully so that there's assurance
that this won't happen to our family, so any suggestions on how to
communicate that would be great.



IME, of slightly younger children, is that they don't tend to notice
much if adults they don't see often don't turn up at family events.
In addition, divorce is sufficiently common (at least where we live)
that it doesn't need a great deal of explaining, as they have already
come across it in books and TV programmes.


My aunt and uncle divorced when I was about 9 back when divorce wasn't so common. I remember not knowing the word, never mind the concept. My cousins (aged 5,7,8,9,11) of course knew that their parents separated - their father and they were moving to California and their mother was staying in Chicago.

The cousins told me. There was basically no need for any adults to get involved - we had maybe a 30-second discussion on divorcing and whether it was good or bad. They thought it was good because the parents fought all the time. Because my parents didn't fight like that, I knew my parents would not separate.



Jeanne

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