Appropriate Information

What exactly do you say to your child about the other parent following a difficult break up?

This question is perhaps most challenging when one parent has been abusive or violent to the other.

It is not easy to know exactly how to talk to your child about the other parent, but I hope I can offer some useful tips.

When you feel hurt, abused or threatened by your former partner, it is difficult to think of them in a balanced light.

But there is a clear difference between your feelings and those of your child's.

Despite how you feel, if you want your child to grow up to be secure and emotionally healthy it is important to consider what you share with them.

No child likes to hear about or observe one parent being abusive to the other.

In the same or similar way, children do not want to hear one parent talking negatively about the other parent.

Often it may feel as though you are justified to be critical of the other parent, but doing so in your child's presence will never be in their best interests.

If you put yourself in your child's position, you will recognise this yourself.

You and the other parent are your child's world.

So, you both are extremely important to them.

Even though they may be more attached to one parent, you cannot avoid harming them if you say unpleasant things about the other parent.

There is no way round this basic truth, since your child is part of both of you they cannot help but be emotionally harmed by such behaviour.

Maybe it will help to always remember an old saying: 'two wrongs never make a right.'

The information you share should have a positive, as opposed to a negative outcome.

Taking the time to think about what your words are likely to give rise to, is time very well spent.

In my book Family Court: Giving Evidence in the Family Court, I discuss these matters in greater depth, in the chapter on Parenting.

Family Court: Giving Evidence In Family Court: Amazon.co.uk: Watson, Michael: 9781527276642: Books

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