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I overheard an argument about this recently. Especially regarding cheating or abuse.
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Impossible to answer. You would need to know all the details of why the people are getting divorced, how they expect to behave with each other after they are divorced and very specific details about the nature of the children.
Na, I am pretty sure this has exactly one answer.
"Timmy, you know your mom and I love each other very much, but we both really hate you. Honestly, it's amazing we lasted as long as we did. We are going to separate so that we are only forced to be around you every other week. Again, we can't stress this enough, we still love each other. It's just that doesn't compare to how much we dispose you."
There’s alway going to be exceptions.
There’s a girl in my daughters class that lives with her mom and her fathers parents who never sees her father. She doesn’t know the details of why she has this living situation. She doesn’t know why there was a period where her grandfather’s cop friends alway drove around her neighborhood.
But the parents all know the rumors. We all know that her grandfather came by their house unannounced and found out what his son was doing to his daughter in law. We don’t know the specifics but we know that he confronted his son and “convinced” him to give up his custody rights to his parents and leave town.
They are in an extreme situation but those situations exist.
>We all know that her grandfather came by their house unannounced and found out what his son was doing to his daughter in law. We don’t know the specifics but we know that he confronted his son and “convinced” him to give up his custody rights to his parents and leave town.
Good on the grandfather to confront his son like that. Couldn't have been easy.
And nice for him that one of the benefits of being a retired cop is that you have friends that are cops and lawyers and can use that as leverage. I wish the system worked as well for people that aren’t either wealthy or connected.
I can't imagine this having a single answer. If the answer is "mommy and daddy just don't have enough in common to make things work together anymore, but we both still love you", sure, I can't imagine that being a problem to tell the kid. If the answer is "daddy/mommy is a cheating bastard and apparently has been for the past three years", then maybe not.
In my case my parents split up because my mom got knocked up by her boss who she ended up marrying. I was 4 so I didn't know what was going on but I figured out that my sister wasn't really premature when I got older and my mom just laughed nervously and didn't deny it when I asked. Probably best that they didn't tell me.
I'm nearly 50 and don't know why my parents got divorced. People, including children, deserve to know the details of the events that shape their lives.
Maybe my parents fell out of love, maybe it was financial problems, maybe my dad was cheating...I don't know....
I’m 44, my parents divorced when I was 7, I knew why but that was just because I picked up on it. Dad said it was because they fought over finances, but…… to this day I spend Holidays with his Tennis Instructor, a.k.a. My Stepmommy. lol.
I think so. Maybe not right away, depending on the kids' ages, the nature of the reason for the divorce, post-divorce living situations, or any number of other factors, but I do think that they should get to know the truth eventually, probably like 18-20 at the latest.
Not if the kids are young as that will just hurt the child. Telling the truth in these cases is just weaponizing your anger and bitterness to try and get your child to take sides.
and kids can smell a lie a million miles away, so if the parents are not being 100% completely honest with them they will still blame themselves. (even then they'll probably still blame themselves.)
Depends on the situation - abuse to the child, absolutely. They need to know why they can't see their other parent, supervised visitation, etc. They need to know what the other parent did to them was wrong, etc.
Cheating - wait until the kids are older. Tell them the whole truth when they're 13 or older. They deserve to know why their family was torn apart and that it is healthy to firmly enforce boundaries in a relationship. Especially if it was an extended affair - they need to know their other parent is capable of long-running deception about critical things, lies of omission, and violating their deepest commitments to others out of sheer selfish greed.
Well, the Qanon / crystal healing / antivaxx crowd will tell you that fluoride is a mind control toxin that will eventually kill you - only mindless sheep use fluoridated toothpaste!
If it can be done in a totally fair, honest and non-biased way, yes
About the only way I can imagine doing this is to have both parties explain their side of the argument to a neutral, disinterested third party and have that person create a written statement
The parties involved will each have their own version
My parents got divorced when I was 14, I’m 38 now. I am incredibly close with both my parents and I still don’t know all the details of why they split up. I have the general idea, but I don’t need to know the nitty gritty. My parents are amazing parents and I don’t want to know anything that would make me dislike one or the other when it doesn’t really have that much to do with me, if that makes any sense.
Ew no. I'm divorced. After my ex had our second kid sex became less and less frequent. I wasn't giving her the emotional support she needed (mostly) because she was acting like a buddy and she was acting like a buddy because I wasn't giving her the emotional support she needed. It was an odd dance that she didn't want to fix, so I filed for divorce.
I'm not explaining that to my kids lol. They already know we're just friends nothing else needs to be added to that
I lean towards no, at least not until well after when there's a fairly good chance you can do so without attempting to poison their relationship with their other parent. Bad relationships between spouses should not lead to bad relationships between parents and children if it can be helped.
This is a tough question, but the best answer is any answer where you can assure your kids that they are not the ones at fault for whatever is plaguing the marriage, cause it is super common for kids to internalize whatever discontent they see with their parents.
Past that point, its very dependent on the particulars of the situation, but i would generally lean towards revealing what you need to so that your kids understand the why, of course depending on your kids maturity level and age.
Impossible to answer without context. What was the reason? How old are the kids? Do the kids need to know? Can you explain it in an age appropriate way?
If you are asking should you tell your 6 year old that daddy is moving out because he gave mammy chlamydia that he brought back from his trip to Thailand, no probably not.
If you are asking should you _never_ tell your kids why a divorce happened, out of some notion that it is not their business or that they would never be able to handle any answer, I would disagree with that also.
They can, but in the end, the kids will figure it out on their own.
My divorce was after a 32 year marriage. My ex has behavioral issues. There was no infidelity, no abuse. It was just time to admit that it was not a healthy relationship for either of us.
The one thing I will not do, and no parent should ever do, is try to influence their children to hate or despise or blame the other parent. It's not our role and again, the kids will figure things out on their own.
I was 5 and my brother was three when parents got divorced. I didn’t need to know my dad was having a baby with my babysitter. I didn’t find out until I was 16. But my parents did a phenomenal job parenting apart, so it never mattered.
And my experience has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else’s. There is no right answer here. Context is *everything* here.
I think it's important to let the kids believe it's because of them. Maybe they'll behave better thinking that their parents would reconcile if they clean their room.
The chance to tell me you were joking was in response to my previous post. Yeah sometimes I have trouble with detecting tone, especially in text form. You don’t have to be rude about it
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I overheard an argument about this recently. Especially regarding cheating or abuse. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Impossible to answer. You would need to know all the details of why the people are getting divorced, how they expect to behave with each other after they are divorced and very specific details about the nature of the children.
Na, I am pretty sure this has exactly one answer. "Timmy, you know your mom and I love each other very much, but we both really hate you. Honestly, it's amazing we lasted as long as we did. We are going to separate so that we are only forced to be around you every other week. Again, we can't stress this enough, we still love each other. It's just that doesn't compare to how much we dispose you."
There’s alway going to be exceptions. There’s a girl in my daughters class that lives with her mom and her fathers parents who never sees her father. She doesn’t know the details of why she has this living situation. She doesn’t know why there was a period where her grandfather’s cop friends alway drove around her neighborhood. But the parents all know the rumors. We all know that her grandfather came by their house unannounced and found out what his son was doing to his daughter in law. We don’t know the specifics but we know that he confronted his son and “convinced” him to give up his custody rights to his parents and leave town. They are in an extreme situation but those situations exist.
>We all know that her grandfather came by their house unannounced and found out what his son was doing to his daughter in law. We don’t know the specifics but we know that he confronted his son and “convinced” him to give up his custody rights to his parents and leave town. Good on the grandfather to confront his son like that. Couldn't have been easy.
And nice for him that one of the benefits of being a retired cop is that you have friends that are cops and lawyers and can use that as leverage. I wish the system worked as well for people that aren’t either wealthy or connected.
I think people should be honest, but don’t have to disclose all the messy details.
I can't imagine this having a single answer. If the answer is "mommy and daddy just don't have enough in common to make things work together anymore, but we both still love you", sure, I can't imagine that being a problem to tell the kid. If the answer is "daddy/mommy is a cheating bastard and apparently has been for the past three years", then maybe not.
In my case my parents split up because my mom got knocked up by her boss who she ended up marrying. I was 4 so I didn't know what was going on but I figured out that my sister wasn't really premature when I got older and my mom just laughed nervously and didn't deny it when I asked. Probably best that they didn't tell me.
I'm nearly 50 and don't know why my parents got divorced. People, including children, deserve to know the details of the events that shape their lives. Maybe my parents fell out of love, maybe it was financial problems, maybe my dad was cheating...I don't know....
I’m 44, my parents divorced when I was 7, I knew why but that was just because I picked up on it. Dad said it was because they fought over finances, but…… to this day I spend Holidays with his Tennis Instructor, a.k.a. My Stepmommy. lol.
I think so. Maybe not right away, depending on the kids' ages, the nature of the reason for the divorce, post-divorce living situations, or any number of other factors, but I do think that they should get to know the truth eventually, probably like 18-20 at the latest.
Not if it's a young child. Older kids maybe, but it's important that kids have a good relationship with both parents
Not if the kids are young as that will just hurt the child. Telling the truth in these cases is just weaponizing your anger and bitterness to try and get your child to take sides.
I'd say it's important to reassure them it's not their fault since they tend to blame themselves
and kids can smell a lie a million miles away, so if the parents are not being 100% completely honest with them they will still blame themselves. (even then they'll probably still blame themselves.)
Depends on the family, depends on the situation, depends on the kid
Depends on the situation - abuse to the child, absolutely. They need to know why they can't see their other parent, supervised visitation, etc. They need to know what the other parent did to them was wrong, etc. Cheating - wait until the kids are older. Tell them the whole truth when they're 13 or older. They deserve to know why their family was torn apart and that it is healthy to firmly enforce boundaries in a relationship. Especially if it was an extended affair - they need to know their other parent is capable of long-running deception about critical things, lies of omission, and violating their deepest commitments to others out of sheer selfish greed.
Why on earth is this question on this sub? What does this have to do with politics?
It’s a question that may reflect one’s world view depending on how they answer
Really? This feels about as political as favorite brands of toothpaste.
Well, the Qanon / crystal healing / antivaxx crowd will tell you that fluoride is a mind control toxin that will eventually kill you - only mindless sheep use fluoridated toothpaste!
If it can be done in a totally fair, honest and non-biased way, yes About the only way I can imagine doing this is to have both parties explain their side of the argument to a neutral, disinterested third party and have that person create a written statement The parties involved will each have their own version
My parents got divorced when I was 14, I’m 38 now. I am incredibly close with both my parents and I still don’t know all the details of why they split up. I have the general idea, but I don’t need to know the nitty gritty. My parents are amazing parents and I don’t want to know anything that would make me dislike one or the other when it doesn’t really have that much to do with me, if that makes any sense.
Ew no. I'm divorced. After my ex had our second kid sex became less and less frequent. I wasn't giving her the emotional support she needed (mostly) because she was acting like a buddy and she was acting like a buddy because I wasn't giving her the emotional support she needed. It was an odd dance that she didn't want to fix, so I filed for divorce. I'm not explaining that to my kids lol. They already know we're just friends nothing else needs to be added to that
depends how old the kids are
I think this should be handled on a case-by-case basis. Every situation, family and child are different.
I lean towards no, at least not until well after when there's a fairly good chance you can do so without attempting to poison their relationship with their other parent. Bad relationships between spouses should not lead to bad relationships between parents and children if it can be helped.
This is a tough question, but the best answer is any answer where you can assure your kids that they are not the ones at fault for whatever is plaguing the marriage, cause it is super common for kids to internalize whatever discontent they see with their parents. Past that point, its very dependent on the particulars of the situation, but i would generally lean towards revealing what you need to so that your kids understand the why, of course depending on your kids maturity level and age.
It depends too much on the specific context and on the people involved, there's no general answer to this.
Depends. How old are the kids?
Impossible to answer without context. What was the reason? How old are the kids? Do the kids need to know? Can you explain it in an age appropriate way? If you are asking should you tell your 6 year old that daddy is moving out because he gave mammy chlamydia that he brought back from his trip to Thailand, no probably not. If you are asking should you _never_ tell your kids why a divorce happened, out of some notion that it is not their business or that they would never be able to handle any answer, I would disagree with that also.
Case by case basis for sure
They can, but in the end, the kids will figure it out on their own. My divorce was after a 32 year marriage. My ex has behavioral issues. There was no infidelity, no abuse. It was just time to admit that it was not a healthy relationship for either of us. The one thing I will not do, and no parent should ever do, is try to influence their children to hate or despise or blame the other parent. It's not our role and again, the kids will figure things out on their own.
I was 5 and my brother was three when parents got divorced. I didn’t need to know my dad was having a baby with my babysitter. I didn’t find out until I was 16. But my parents did a phenomenal job parenting apart, so it never mattered. And my experience has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else’s. There is no right answer here. Context is *everything* here.
Why is this posted here? It’s not a political question. It should be in r/parenting.
I'm so confused about all the personal advice/taste in television/random, clearly off-topic posts on this sub.
You're of course free to not answer them. But this sub is useful because liberals and conservatives often have different sensibilities.
I think it's important to let the kids believe it's because of them. Maybe they'll behave better thinking that their parents would reconcile if they clean their room.
Please say psyche?
Look, you can have happy, psychologically well adjusted kids, or you can have a clean room. You have your priorities, I have mine.
False dichotomy but ok…
My sense of humor is dark and your irony detector is broken.
The chance to tell me you were joking was in response to my previous post. Yeah sometimes I have trouble with detecting tone, especially in text form. You don’t have to be rude about it