Telling DC the truth about abusive dad?

[nevertoldanyone]

Have namechanged. Please don't out me if ytou think you know who i am.

I've only spoken of this once, and that was on here a while ago, so please bear with me.

Years ago i was in a violent relationship with my DC's father. He was a very cruel and controlling man, and a heavy drinker. He beat me mercilessly and i hated him. He'd beat me in front of my youngest DC although at only a year old, i'm not sure how much of it he remembers. He raped me repeatedly - the last time being when DC2 was less than a week old. I'd had a 3rd degree tear having her and he raped me with a glass bottle. I put up with this because he made me believe that he would get custody of the children if i tried to leave. I know thats stupid now, but when you;re living it.. well.. you don't have the energy to fight anymore.

I plucked up the courage to leave when he insinuated that i might find DC2 dead in bed one day from cot death. We left in the clothes we stood up in. We were put in a hostel in a different part of the country and started to get our life back together. But he found me. He beat me so severely that i was in intensieve care for a week, in hospital for three weeks. There was a particular policewoman who helped me find the courage to press charges for what he'd done to me. He was found guilty and sent to prison, where he hung himself.

DC are now 11 and 9, and we're ok. I'm in a new relationship of a few years with a good man who has taken the children on as his own. We're happy.

Lately though DC1 has been asking questions about his biological father. I don't know what to say to him. I've been avoiding talking to him about it, and i can't put it off anymore, it's not fair on him.

But what do i say? Do i make up some lie? Is he old enough for the truth? I honestly don't know.

I don't think I'm old enough for the truth, and I'm 35. :(

Just what you've written here is absolutely chilling. You are amazing to have got through something like that and made a happy life for you and your children.

Would Women's Aid be able to help you with this I wonder? You can't be the first woman to have questions like this to answer.

I would have thought some version of the truth is the right way to go, but obviously age-appropriate. How much of it (if anything) does he remember?

I'm not sure if he does remember anything - he's never said he remembers. He was 17 months old when we left. I hope he was young enough to have forgotten it all.

I don't have any contact with his dads side of the family - they blame me for his suicide.

Good idea about contacting womens aid, i'll certainly look into that.

They blame you for his suicide?!

When I was around your kids age, I used to fantasise in a rose-tinted glasses kind of way about my father (he died when I was very young). This evidently annoyed my gran, who took it upon herself to tell me the truth. I can say it was a massive shock to me - he was an abuser as well.

I think left to image him to be a good man could lead to them wanting contact and being angry with you for keeping them away from him and all sorts of problems, but at the same time coming to terms with the fact that half of what went into making you could be this horrible isn't easy.

I think you will need to tell your children something of it, but very carefully and probably with support from counselling services.

Oh sorry, missed the bit about his suicide. Scrub the sentence about contact.

Definitely a good idea to ask Women's Aid for advice, because sadly the situation is not that uncommon. At least in this case the horrible man is dead and cannot harm you or DC ever again.
I think the truth is something they need and deserve to hear, but it is probably better to spin it as their father was ill, that there was something broken inside his head that made him behave in such an awful way. Because, as other posters said, half their genes come from him and so they need to be able to believe that he was not a total monster, because what would that make them?

He wasn't "half of what went into making them", and I think you need to be very clear about that.

They can have the genes of a total monster but have been brought up well by a courageous woman and turn out to be fine young men.

I'm just saying how I felt, spidookly.

We've spoken a little this bedtime. I've told him that i will tell him a little bit about his biological dad, but i need a little time to think about what i want to say. I've said i'll show him some photos and he seemed quite happy with that.

I've still no clue as to what to say, but it's bought me a little time to think about it, i guess.

just to say ive just read your post and am so moved by it , you are a brillliantly strong woman to have come through all of this and im sure you will handle this situation with your own mothers intuition , youre children are very lucky to have such a great mum x

I am sure that WA or a child bereavement charity could give you some help about how to talk about this.

Your ds is asking about his 'dad' - he will be thinking about it from a child's perspective, he may want to know that he had a 'dad', so showing him some photos is a great idea, it makes the person real. Maybe at this stage that's all he needs to hear.

You are thinking about it from an adult's perspective, and obviously from your own horrific experience.

At some point you will need to tell him that your ex was angry, hurt and ill, and that he hurt you and that he hurt himself. Again, that is maybe all your ds needs to hear.

The care and love you give your dcs can overcome past experiences. I am so glad that you are now in a good relationship. Well done you.

Winstons Wish is an excellent website for advice about talking to children bereaved thro' suicide.

Also, very moved by your post and your amazing strength and resilience.

Just a quick update.

I spoke to a lovely woman at Womes Aid and she advised coming at it from te 'sick' or 'ill' angle. I think that may well be best as hopefully it's less likely to impact on DC as much. I've decided to say that their dad wasn't well and he had a sickness that made him do things he wuldn't normally have done had he been well. That his illness sometimes made him hurt other people and that in the end it made him hurt himself too. Does that sound alright?

I've managed to get a couple of photos taken on our wedding day, from my father. He looks so normal. Nothing that would show the monster he really was.

And to all those who say i'm brave and a great mum - no, no i'm not. If i had been i would have never brought any child into that relationship, let alone two. And i would have gotten away sooner.

It is never that easy to leave an abusive relationship, I was in one for ten years, nowhere near as bad as yours, another time I married a man who beat me so bad I looked like a car crash, still not as severe as you.

You stay because you are conditioned to.

You have two lovely children, and are happy now, try not to look back on the past as it being your fault, it isn't.

What you are going to tell your son is the right way to go about it. Good luck with it. x

I have no experience of this kind of situation but I think that sounds like a very good explaination for your DC along with the photos.

I can't imagine what you've been through but I think you sound like an incredibly strong person and your children are very lucky to have you, I hope it all goes well talking to them and for you all in the future x

You can pathologise the biodad,but if you simply say," he wasn't a nice man and he wasn't a kind man, I had to look after you. This is a photo...he had had (hay fever, musical, same height, same colour eyes as you etc etc). You not like him in any other way.
Your dad is the one who loves you and values you. You can argue,play with and who you are not scared of. You are kind, friendly and brave .Our wonderful son.
i know this sounds a bit airey fairy, but he might be lookinfg for a role model, so without lying,or scaring him , you can truthfully refer him to bio and you for specific info, and to you and your partner for his psych developement.

be careful with sick and ill -as you probably use these words to describe your DCs illnesses. so they might worry when they get sick or ill or when someone else get sick or ill.

make sure it is "very ill with mental illness" "very sick in his head" - without stigmatising mental illness either - speak to winstons wish etc

eveil people dont necessarily look like monsters.

evil people look like you or me.

people who commit suicide dont look like monsters.

when my exP ahd his latest severe depression my dd asked me "what is commit suicide" - she heard it somewhere....i just said "sometimes people get so sick and depressed in their heads they decide to kill themselves, tehy make that deicsion". she was happy with that....

so along lines of - sometimes some people get so sick in their heads that they do very bad things ....it is not like being sick with a cold like you had. it is very different.

you might if they ask also point out that if people feel that way they can go and get help from doctors but sadly this man didnt get the help he needed to stop doing the things he did.

I should have asked this before, what sort of questions are you being asked? And what does your son already know about his biological father?

Good points from both previous posters, thank you.

I think perhaps i'll have to give this some more thought. I'm really not very good at this, am i?

siobahnagain - DC know that their biological dad died when they were both quite small. They don't know how. I always sort of deflected any questions they've asked about him as they were growing up. Perhaps i should have disclosed more. DS, especially, is asking about what he was like. Does he look like him, is he like him, what did he do, that kind of thing.

nevertoldanyone, yes - give it some more thought, but please, please don't think that you're not any good at this. There is not much in life that can prepare us from such tough situations, and you are doing the very best thing: you are listening to your dcs, and you are doing what you can to find out how best to answer them. You're doing fab.

It sounds as though your ds is asking practical questions - so give him some practical answers: does he look like him? maybe (for example) his eyebrows are similar, but also show him that his chin is like yours, or your dads, and show him photos of that too. Can you copy photos so that he can keep them if he wants to (alongside other photos that show how he resembles you / your family).

You are doing the right thing to prepare yourself emotionally to answer any questions they might ask in the future about more emotional aspects of the relationship. My ex was contolling and abusive. Even when my dds were older and grown up I never disclosed any of the detail of what happened, I simply told them that he shouted at me and that me made me feel frightened.

Very much agree with venus who has put it more eloquently than I ever could. Your son is of an age when he might also be seeking clues to his own identity 'who am I, in relation to this man?' 'how does his story fit in with mine' as well as natural curiosity.

Probably, you will only need to show him the photos and then let him ask the questions he wants answered, in his own time and paced for you. I think that you need to aim for the simplest most straightforward explanations as a basis for further questions.

I found it helpful to talk about the alcohol abuse as 'the illness'

My guess is that dcs are trying to fit the pieces of the jigsaw left out by you. They accepted a simple explanation before but now they probably need more details.

All you can do is be honest (without traumatising them of course). When they ask you stuff, you give them answers. You gauge how much detail you want to give according to their response. You are their Mum, you will know how to do this.

I think you are doing very well already and it's a good idea to respond to their questioning rather than pushing them aside and you are already doing that. Continue as you are, give them snippets and bits that will make sense to them and that they can cope with according to what you feel is appropriate to their age.

I don't know the answer and hope that the Women's Aid can help guide you on this matter.

I'm so pleased that you are now in a loving relationship an happy, good for you.

Your story was difficult to read OP - very difficult for you to talk about I should imagine. So much harder when you have to come up with some semblence of a 'normal' version for your dc. I agree that it sounds as though your dc want some practical answers eg physical attributes that they may share - what did he look like, what was his job, what was he good at, what did he like. You can answer those truthfully, from what you remember. You can possibly also start drip-feeding, if it is appropriate, that he wasn't well - though this may not come up this time, they may simply want some factual information for now.

As it happens, I told my boy when he was 11 some truths about his (abusive) dad. It had come to the point where I couldn't lie anymore, I had run out of things to say to cover it up (we were divorced by this stage but ex continued to be very abusive). It was very hard, we went to the park (with my other kids, ds the youngest) because I actually couldn't bear to talk about it in an enclosed space. It was a form of 'sitting them down' to tell them ie we weren't generally having a good time and I dropped the info into the conversation: we specifically went to the park and sat on the grass to talk about it. They, and ds, took it well. ds was clearly shocked but it was the truth and, this may sound like mumbo jumbo but imo the truth has a ring to it, it sits well, even if it's difficult to hear. I didn't go into detail at all, just said that daddy wasn't well and that he couldn't help the way he behaved sometimes, ways that made me unhappy and made things difficult. I can't remember the exact words but I made a few statements of fact if you like, just facts that I carefully conveyed with no emotion. I did say that it was sad, as I remember.

Please don't forget to look after yourself though, this could touch some old wounds for you. So glad to hear you're now in a happy relationship and that dc have a good father figure who has taken them on as his own. That's wonderful.

you really do sound like an amazing woman. I agree it might be better to approach the "sick" angle. If you say he was bad your boys might always wonder if they will turn out bad like him.

There are no manuals for these things! and luckily it sounds like they don't remember what went on. I think maybe you could drop feed little bits of info at a time. I can imagine that age i would find it easiest to know that he was a very ill man (non heriditary!) and he did some bad things and eventually he got so ill that he didnt want to live anymore. I don't know if he was abusive towards them but it might comfort them to know that he loved them, was proud when they were born etc? I think there needs to a lot of reassurance that he is not like them. Im glad you're in a happy relationship now, this will show your boys what a normal loving relationship looks like! Good luck