What do I tell my daughter?
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| Tue, 04-12-2005 - 9:29am |
As you all know, I have 4 year old twin daughters and a son. My daughters are very sensitive, especially Rosalie. She is so emotional and intuitive that it is almost frightening. I remember once, when I was married, I was stacking VCR tapes and she came up to me and put her hand on me and said, "It's okay mommy." I just started crying. I hadn't realized, myself, how upset I was until she said it. I thought I was alright. I didn't know how I felt , but she did. She was 18 months old at the time!
In the latter parts of my marriage her personality just disfigured. She became so sad all the time. She was always on the couch, saying she had a stomachache. After my ex left, she started tantruming so bad- just screaming. It broke my heart. Ex has been gone a year though and he sees the kids 3 times a week and he and I get along and do all the right "ex" things. She has stopped having stomachaches, no longer tantrums like that, and seems to be very much like her old self again.
Fast forward to the present. The other night I was putting her to bed and I told her to relax and think about fluffy clouds and nice things and she said, "And think about how I want you and daddy to live together and not in 2 houses?" I didnt know what to say. Her eyes filled with tears. She said the same thing 3 days before and I thought it was an isolated thought of her but I guess not. I just dont know what to say to her. It breaks my heart. Especially because she's right. Her parents should have lived in one house and she shouldnt have had the rug ripped out from beneath her little world. Times like that I really hate my ex for leaving our family a pile of broken ruins so that he could go off into the sunset with his flat screen image smiling porn girls. Now, Rosalie is happy as a clam when her father comes to get her. She jumps up and down and screams with happines when he comes to the door. She talks about going to his house. I see no indication that this has to do with anything unpleasant about going to his house. She just wants a whole family. And it feels like it has just come out of the blue. It's as is she knows the divorce is final. (It became final a week or 2 ago). She is usually a happy kid but you should see the pain in her little face when she tells me that she wants me to live with daddy.
What do i say to her?

You say you know she does but it cannot be that way. It is not her fault and is not anything that anyone can control. And that she has 2 parents that love her very much. That is all you can say. I think this is the dream of every child who has divorced parents.
My son brought this up recently, too. And I said all of the things I just put here. Plus I told him I understand and that it is normal for him to feel that way.
My kids STILL say that and my ex and I are both remarried and separated/divorced for over 6 yrs.
I personally believe every child of divorce feels this way. I was a child of divorce and I have nearly zero memories of my parents being together. Still, when I was about 7 or so I started asking my mom if she could get together with my dad so we could have a whole family. My mom always said that they loved each other but they couldn't live together. I kept asking for a while and always got a consistent answer from her, and eventually I gave up.
My dd is 4 and she talks a lot about wishing we all lived together again. I tell her we can't because her dad and I aren't married any more. Sometimes I feel bad for her and I know that having 2 homes is hard, but I also know that growing up with unhappy parents would have been worse, so she got the best deal she could get. Everyone has to deal with something, my dd having to deal with going back and forth all the time is not the worst thing she will have to face in her lifetime. At least she has a father and mother that both love her (I only had the mother, and my dd's dad might feed her candy bars, but he's way better than the drug addicted suicidal father I was stuck with).
Hi Amy
You just keep reinforcing the fact that you and her dad both love her and her sister and brother. Encourage her to talk about her feelings when she wants to and let her know you will always listen. Kids all handle grief differently just like adults. And that's what it is, grief. You all lost something here.
If it comes to the point where she's not playing, not eating, not sleeping, I would talk to her pediatrician. I had my kids in therapy for a little while after my ex and I split up. My ds had started going for other reasons before that (behavioral issues) but they both did get alot out of having a "third" party to talk to.
Hugs
Tara
Just hug her and love her a lot. If she feels her daddy loves her too, then all the better.
Of course she'd like a fairytale family...all of us divorced moms and dads wanted that too, right? I sure did...and sometimes I still think "why couldn't is just work?" Maybe you could say that to her. That you wish it was like that too...but real life isn't perfect. And let her know it's still good, even if it isn't perfect.
She'll be ok as long as you love her.
You give her lots of hugs and kisses and tell her it's ok that she feels that way, that it's NORMAL that she feels that way, that it makes you very sad to see her so sad, that Mommy and Daddy both love her very much, but this is the way it is. You ask her besides living with Daddy, is there anything that you could do to help her feel better.
One thing that we did (on the advice of a personal friend of mine who is a child psychologist) with my oldest in the early phases of the divorce and kept it up for an entire year was to help him do a weekly journal. Our custody situation is different, we have him every other week. So at the age of 3 and 4 years old - he would go an entire week without seeing me or vice versa, his daddy, and he wasn't that great at talking on the phone. So the week he was with his daddy, his daddy would help him write down in a standard 3 ring binder we made with a little calendar the "high/low" The best part of his day, and the worst part - and anything else he wanted to put in there. We would 3 hole punch anything he made in daycare and put it in there. We were REALLY good at taking pictures and sticking the pictures in there and writing "this is me and my friend Chanel" - I never met Chanel - but he talked about her all of the time, so it made him very happy to show me a picture of her. The book went back and forth, wherever he was the book was, and when I would get him back on Monday we would sit down and read what he had done during the week, he would remember things he wanted to tell me (or his dad, depending on who had him) from the little notations, he would talk to me about the pictures and about the stuff he did in daycare - it made him feel like we were both sharing his LIFE - vs. just sharing the moments he was with us. That book was VERY important to him - and it slowly tapered off when he was in kindergarten. He didn't need the security it provided anymore.
Also be aware that this will come up time and time again, in many different ways. My almost 7 year old told us a few weeks ago that he has a GREAT IDEA! Mommy and TT (my dh, his stepdad) and baby brother should buy a great big house and Daddy and his girlfriend and her two sons can move in and we CAN ALL LIVE TOGETHER!!!!!!! Doesn't that sound like ALOT of fun TO YOU!?!?!?!!? TT and I are just THRILLED at the thought of living with my ex and his girlfriend and her two boys! WHOO HOO! LOL! NOT!!!!! We once again had the "Mommy and Daddy and TT and daddy's girlfriend ALL love you very much, but we won't be moving in together, and I know that makes you unhappy, and I know you are jealous of your baby brother who has his mommy and daddy together, and you are right, it's not fair, but it's not his fault, it's not your fault. It's just the way it is. Sorry." conversation.
Mindy
http://cosmosandcranium.blogspot.com/