7 Principles for Helping Children During a Divorce

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to handling a difficult break-up or divorce.

Every person walks that valley in their own way, through the grief, hurt, the reassessing of decisions and choices. Just as every adult goes through that process in their own way, so do children.

If you have children and are going through a divorce, the emotional toll can be huge on both parent and child. While I offer no easy solutions, I do feel that there are some general guiding principles. Here are seven ways to help your child as you walk through the divorce together.

1. Don’t assume you know how they feel.

They may be sad, angry, scared, confused, relieved, or any combination of emotions. But don’t assume. Relationship coach and pastor Danny Silk writes in his book on communication, “In a respectful relationship, each person understands, ‘I am responsible to know what is going on inside me and communicate it to you. I do not expect you to know it, nor will I allow you to assume that you know it. And I will not make assumptions about what is going on inside you.’” (Keep Your Love On).

This is excellent advice for romantic relationships, friendships, professional relationships, and within a family. Just because a person is young doesn’t mean their emotions are not big or complicated. Let them feel and never assume.

2. Keep a check on your own emotions.

It is easy to be driven by our emotions. And there is scarcely anything as highly emotional as a breakup or divorce when children are involved. But remember that your emotions are good passengers, but you have to have your will drive the bus. I remember a scene from the TV series Parenthood when the father tells his daughter, “Haddie, you can’t go through life allowing your pain to dictate how you behave.” Your children will be looking to you for strength and direction. If they experience only your emotions, they too will feel unmoored and unsure of themselves.

While this may be difficult, it can be helpful to set aside separate times to process, grieve, and be overly emotional away from their watchful eyes. When I was going through my divorce I would schedule times away overnight in a cabin by myself where I could work through this and take that big exhale without having to filter my emotions for my children. Every one of those sessions away was fruitful.

3. Everyone needs a therapist or counselor.

Parents and children cannot fill that role for one another. This means a couple of things. First of all, resist the urge to vent or purge your emotions with your children. Don’t ask them for advice. Their small shoulders are not equipped to handle the weight and consequences (and perhaps guilt) of adult decisions.

If you are confused about a way to proceed, seek a trained counselor for yourself. Don’t make that the burden of your children. This can be especially challenging if your children are of the age when they are intuitive and empathetic to the way you feel. They may try to fix and filter experiences for you. Resist the temptation to let them. Set that clear and healthy boundary.

Secondly, your child likewise may come to you to work out their problems—and you hope they do! But, be aware that you may not be trained to deal with all of them. That isn’t a failing on your part as a parent. If the issues they present you with are outside your wheelhouse, it is OK to say that. You can still offer prayer, encouragement, support, a listening ear while seeking out a good trained Catholic counselor.

I would drive 1.5 hours twice a month so that my children and I could see a counselor that I trusted. It is worth the investment of your time and energy to find the help you need—even if just a few sessions to get you through the worst of it.

4. Don’t talk badly about your spouse.

This is really important and maybe one of the toughest things—especially if the problems that led to the breakup of the relationship were or are public knowledge (say something like addiction or infidelity). It can be so difficult not to resort to sarcasm or passive-aggressive comments.

While you do not have to fake it or praise someone who is not behaving in a praiseworthy way (children can spot phoniness a mile away!) you can choose to say nothing and to offer up a prayer instead of a criticism. Save your frustrations to unload on a best friend or a counselor, and let your children be neutral in the battle. When one parent criticizes, the other the child feels forced to pick a side. This can cause so much confusion and sadness. So, difficult as it may be, practice holding your tongue.

5. Celebrate your family.

When a relationship that resulted in children falls apart and perhaps even declared invalid, it can be displacing as your children wonder, “If my parents regret their marriage, do they regret me too?” In our family, we have replaced celebrating my wedding anniversary with celebrating the “Birthday of our Family,” complete with cake and special family time. This helps our children to know that we never regret them, despite how the marriage started or ended. 

6. Be patient with one another and with yourself.

The poet Rilke said, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Relationships are messy. There is really no way around that. Relationships are broken people each learning to show up for each other, yet because we are broken we are bound to fall short. Learning to hold space for one another and extend grace in a spirit of patience and charity is crucial in making it through the mess in tact.

Be patient with your children when they are having a messy grace kind of day. Be patient with yourself when you are. By extending your children extra grace on those tough days, you are also teaching them how to extend that kind of grace to you.

7. Increase your devotion to the Holy Family.

When you feel like your own family is coming apart at the seams, the Holy Family can be your refuge, the model to point your children to the theological virtue of hope, the example for you all to follow for love/patience/virtue, etc., and the strongest and most faithful intercessors.

How can you do this in practical ways?

1) Find an icon or statue of the Holy Family and place it on your home altar. Don’t have a home altar? Time to start one!

2) Pray a Litany once a week (we like to make our family prayer time right after dinner while we are all still at the table) to the Holy Family, bringing them any specific intentions that are weighing you down.

3) Remember the Feast days of the Holy Family: the first Sunday after Christmas is the Feast of the Holy Family. St. Joseph has two feast days: March 19 and May 1. Our Lady has so many including her Nativity on September 8, her Immaculate Conception on December 8, and her Assumption on August 15. Of course we celebrate Jesus not just on Christmas, but at every Mass.

Really try to impart to your children that the Holy Family is more our family than the family we can see with our natural eyes. Learn to love them, confide in them, go to them for comfort, and to rely on their prayers.

Take heart and hold onto hope.

If you are going through a divorce, you are probably well aware of all the saddening statistics regarding the children of divorce. If you are a child of divorce you know them through first-hand experience. Be proactive, in touch, aware, and pious.

Having your eyes open to your children’s needs, tending diligently to your own, and being increasingly prayerful can help your family navigate these treacherous waters and arrive on the other side of divorce with a deeper love for our Lord and for one another.