Newport Beach Divorce Mediator Lani Baron discusses the difficult topic of telling people about divorce:
At Alternative Divorce Solutions, we have so many clients who are still living under the same roof with their minor children. Although they have been living in conflict for months or sometimes even years, they are having a hard time “breaking the news” to their children. I can only imagine what a difficult conversation it has to be when parents sit down with their children and tell them they are going to get a divorce. The children, no matter how much they have been exposed to conflict, will never be ready for this news. As a child of divorce, I can speak to this shock. You grow up thinking that your parents will be together forever. Their broken relationship is all you have grown to know and understand. Now, you are faced with the fact that this is about to end. Your world is falling apart. What does that mean for you?
Those are just some of the reasons that having the divorce talk with your children can be so hard. As divorce mediation attorneys, we can certainly empathize with our clients and their children. However, we cannot give the parents advice about how to approach the issue. Every parent and every child is going to handle the conversation differently. In these cases, we always refer out to experienced counselors and therapists who can guide our clients through this difficult time.
Having the divorce talk with your children is not going to be the only hard conversation you are going to have. You are going to have to tell family, friends, and yes – your parents. In a recent article, the author talks about the experience of telling her parents she is going to get a divorce. Although your parents are not as fragile as your children, this is still a difficult conversation. We all want our parents to view our lives from the outside as happy and content. We never want them to know that we are suffering. Sometimes, we even feel like our parents have certain expectations of us and that we will let them down. This article really goes into depth about what that conversation is like.
No matter the conversation, Newport Beach Divorce Mediator Lani Baron and her team at Alternative Divorce Solutions will be here to help you. Sometimes the hard conversations are the necessary conversations.