Episode 27 - Advice From A Child Of Divorce

Today, I will be having a conversation with my son Max to discuss how divorce can shape children's lives. His insights as an experienced observer could provide some powerful perspectives and understanding on this sensitive topic.

Audio Transcript

Becca 

Welcome to the do divorce right podcast. I'm your host, Becca Maxwell. And I'm here to help you transition through your divorce with ease and integrity, to not only survive the challenges of your divorce, but to thrive as you come out the other side of it with a much better life than you ever hoped possible. On this show, we talk about many different aspects of divorce, interview women who have their own incredible divorce stories, or those who can offer some great advice as you go through yours. The focus here is to help you find the strength and support to help you feel lighter, happier, more positive, and then a better frame of mind to face the inevitable challenges of your current journey.

Becca

Today, I'm delighted to bring you a very special guest. Today, I will be talking to my gorgeous son Max, who is obviously a child of divorce. And I thought this might be an interesting perspective for some of you to hear. What is the what is his thoughts on the way in which divorce affects children? So it's just going to be a short chat. I'm going to ask him a couple of questions. And let's see, how do we go from there? Okay. Max, as a child of divorce, why don't you tell our audience? How old were you? When, when your parents separated?

Max 

I believe I was six years old. But I could be wrong. It was around the age of five

Becca 

or six. Okay, and you have a sister? How old? Was she? Two or three? Okay. So you both quite little at the time. What do you remember about the separation? We're not going to go into a lot of detail about our specifics. I just think this will provide some context to begin with.

Max 

I just remember in the beginning, there was a lot of this is actually like, this is good. Where you get double Christmases, you get to have two things. And in the beginning, yeah, it was pretty good. But I also remember that it was a lot of, I guess, lying like this was this is only short term, don't worry, we're just having a look at different houses, seeing which one we like, and then they normally back together. There was that as well.

Becca 

That's interesting. That's really interesting, because I don't remember using that language. So you know, we may be seeing that, but yeah, I'm sorry. Okay, so what would you want people to know, before they separate about the impact that it might have? I mentioned,

Max 

it doesn't do that much. As long as they vote, they get to see both parents. But even if they don't, as long as they're able to talk to them once or twice a week. That's

Becca 

fine. Yeah. Do you think it's still still possible to have a nice family unit? Even if you're not all living under the same roof? Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, yeah. And so you don't think that you're a broken human because of your experience? Okay, so what should the separating parents do to make it easier for kids that are going to have to live in two separate homes from now on? Now, you know, you're not an expert in this space. But just from your point of view, what do you think people could do? I guess,

Max 

if you're doing like, a two days at one house two days in another type for him, to community, try to remember on that first day that they're back, that they have to get used to shifting rules quite a bit, because you're not going to both have the exact same rules. So try and feel a little flexible on the first day that they're back about the rules, because it's difficult to just constantly know, like, okay, at that house, I have to do the dishes, but at this house, I need to do the laundry. Yeah, but um, it can it just it takes it takes like, an hour or two maybe a bit longer just to like, Okay, I'm now into this whole set.

Becca 

I think that's spectacular advice. Actually, I want to create a whole session about how do you make it easier to transition from one home to another? Because as parents like Max just told you from his perspective, as a child, it takes time, right to remember what the new rules are, what's it what the expectations are, but it actually has a huge impact on the parent to I remember I would wait and wait for them to come home. And I'd be expecting them to run to me and be so excited to be home again. But they didn't, you know, they would just kind of slither back into their rooms and take some quiet time. And you know, it's really, there is an adjustment period of at least you mentioned an hour, I would say at least a couple of hours. And there's certainly work that we can do as parents to minimize the impact of that minimize the hard feelings of that. Thank you for raising that. I think that's an excellent piece of advice. And what should the parents separating parents never do?

Max 

Um That's a tough one, because it's good to, like, especially if they're really young, it's good to make them hopeful. Because if you take away all the whole, right at the beginning, hope of what? Hopefully, that things will turn out. All right, okay, even though you know, it won't, or it might not, they don't, but you don't really have the right to just take that from one name. They've grown up their entire life up to that point with the upset with the parents together. And suddenly, they have to get used to them apart, they're obviously going to hope that it goes back to how it was in the beginning. And you can't just say, not, we're not doing this ever again, let them come to that conclusion on by themselves. I wonder because at the same time, just don't quote it. Because that will make them feel betrayed when they do come to a close.

Becca 

So I think maybe there's degrees of sharing the truth. Rather than saying it's over. It's never been a We're never getting back together. Again. It might be instead saying, hopefully, in the future, we'll be able to have dinners together, we'll be able to celebrate things together as a family. So it's not lying. It's not saying we will live in the same home. But it is giving them hope that as a family unit, there's still opportunity for us to be together. We had a nice way to bridge it

Max 

perhaps. Yeah. And that's yeah, that's normally.

Becca 

And language is really important. Because obviously, anybody who's going through this knows that it's not an offer on switch, you know, it really takes time to figure out what is it? What is it going to look like, we're all kind of going through it together, the parents are trying to figure out what is our new normal at the same time as the children are trying to figure it out. So the new normal is also very temporary. It could be the new normal for a year, and then things change again, when when somebody new comes into our lives, you know, Max has been lucky enough or blessed enough, or, or the opposite end of that scale to have met partners on both sides. Right, his mom and his dad have gone on to have other relationships. So you've got to meet other people, too. All right, let's go into my next question. Which is, have you seen a version of good divorced parents? Either in your friendship group on television and movies that can be seen? What? What would that look like a good version of it?

Max 

I am not entirely sure how to answer that. Because each person's experience is different. No two are the same.

Becca 

This is my kid papers in a third conference.

Max 

But I think for me, it will probably be a even split between the houses, the parents, because if you're stuck at one house for a long period of time and another for a short period of time, you will obviously want to be at the parent that you see less often. Because you see less of them. And that makes them in your eyes. Or in the kids eyes. The better parent because they actually do the less parenting meaning and to be the fun one.

Becca 

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I can understand that. There's a scarcity mindset. It's a bit like you know, something's going to be on sale. I'm going to miss out if I don't get it. So the thing that you don't have, and you're not sure you're going to get enough off, is quite appealing. There's a psychological attraction to that. But what I'm, you mentioned about ideally, it would be the same amount of time at each parents house. I would say that's not practical for all families because people work in different care. evinces and we've got people who travel a lot for work. So, you know, they might not be able to spend week on week off. You know, honestly, co parenting is something that needs to be created for your specific family circumstances. But you're hearing now from a child who's saying, it's nice to have as much access to both as possible. Yeah. What does? No, I was gonna say, what does that look like to you? I think you've described them. Is there anything else that you would want people who are either about to separate or who are in the middle of separation? Who have children? So anything that you'd want them to know or think about? As they're going through it? We know it takes years, right? It's not the one I've

Max 

just

Max 

never known. Okay. Okay.

Becca 

Do you think it's important to be able to be open with your parents and be able to tell them about how you're feeling? Or is it important to have other people that you can talk to? or what have you found out?

Max 

It's not entirely sure. Like, over the long time, it's, I've talked to you, I've talked to therapists and talk to a whole variety of good friends. But yeah, I can't really tell which one made the biggest impact,

Becca 

okay. But it's nice to know that you had access to lots of different resources to talk to people. And if you felt things were really tough right now, just do you still feel like you've got people you can talk to about it?

Max 

Um, yeah, I do. But at the same time, it depends. Like, if you're being taught, I'm not going to talk to

Becca 

you, you know, you got to tell your friends. You can tell me I'm getting tough. Yeah. All right. So I think this has been a really interesting chat, you know, a little bit bias because I enjoy the company of my child. But you know, he's a guest star that lives in my home. So if you had any specific questions for Max, I don't mind doing a little bit of a follow up in future. Max, thanks so much for joining us. Is there anything you want to say relative?

Max 

Congrats on the divorce.

Becca 

All right, thanks. I hope that you took something of value, please do reach out and DM me on Instagram. Or, you know, contact me through the website at do divorce rate.com. And send me your questions. If you thought this was an interesting episode. Please like and share it with friends and don't forget to follow us.

Becca 

Thanks for listening. I hope you took something of value out of this episode. I'm your host, Becca Maxwell. And you can find me on the web at dodivorceright.com or on Instagram at dodivorceright. I look forward to connecting with you there.