Telling our children

[Spottycoat]

We are going to be putting our house on the market soon, and will need to tell our children that we are separating. We have 3 primary age, the eldest in year 5. They dont know anything about this yet and we have tried to maintain normal family life whilst we have been getting to this stage but sadly I wouldn"t be surprised if they have picked up on things being difficult even if they don't realise it. We have to sell the house and both move and can't afford to get another house set up separately in the meantime to be able to give some concrete plans to them so they need to know we're selling up, why, and what our plans after that look like.

I've looked into the best ways to tell them and have read a lot of similar threads here, I have some idea of wording, we will tell them together and at an appropriate time etc. What I'm still not too sure of is the situation, I've read a lot about not making it a big reveal type moment, so telling them when we are doing something relaxed. I was wondering how others did this and if you have any advice. Did you tell them out on a walk, or doing some activity at home? Or did you tell the children in another way?

It feels like the most awful thing to be gearing up to do and I would welcome any advice on helping to do this in the best way we can for them.

Hugs as appreciate how difficult this will be.

Finalise as many decisions as possible before you tell them, so that you will be able to answer any questions. Try to keep a unified approach between you both from here on out (i know in practice it may not be so easy), try not to contradict each other or talk bad about the other parent. This is from now for the rest of their lives in my opinion. And make this clear to the kids - E.g “mummy and daddy won’t be together anymore, but we will still both be there to watch you at football/school plays” etc.

When it comes to the approach, I personally feel it depends on the emotional maturity of the children, but however you do it make sure they know it isn’t their fault and that they are loved, and that they can ask you questions any time. Also maybe have a quiet word with their teachers since kids spend so much time at school, teacher will know to keep an eye out for any different behaviour and maybe help with support resources.

There’s lots of books out there for both you and the kids - books to help you with your approach in telling them/steps in divorce, and books to help kids understand life with two homes, if you think these might help.

Can’t think of anything else to mention but also certainly search through threads on here, you will find so much advice. Well done on making a firm decision which is probably for the best for your children - maybe I’ll be flamed for that but as a child of two parents who should have gotten divorced but didn’t, I think it’s a brave move.

I would limit what you tell them until you have more certainty. They are young and don’t have any control over the events that will unfold. Tell them things when you know exactly what the change will be and when your lives are going to change.

@Squash24 Thank you so much for taking the time to reply and for the support and understanding you have shown here, I may reread this at different times. It's been a very difficult journey to get to this point but we absolutely need to separate for all of our sakes - it is incredibly hard managing it all isn't it, and I'm sorry you also experienced an unsettled family growing up. Thank you so much again for the advice which I will take time to go through.

@LemonTT Thank you so much for taking the time to reply, I've found the 'when' of telling then difficult for this very reason. If we could get our next houses confirmed I would much rather wait until then, but my worry about waiting until then is someone seeing our house on the market and it being mentioned somehow before we have told them. So I think we will need to tell them when we have it up for sale, and although we wont know exactly where will be living next, we will at least be able to say what area we will be looking for a house in. However if there is a way around this I'd love to hear experiences from others, I really want to get this right for them (although I know it is always going to be upsetting).

It might be better to think about how you market the house if you don’t want them to know or be worried. You could do viewings when they are at school and not put the sign up outside. People find properties online anyway.

In terms of selling do you know what your next steps will be? I wouldn’t be selling until I had a financial agreement in place and knew what I could afford and where?