Say "I love you" a lot. They need it now more than ever. Make sure they know you are going to always be in their lives. Be upfront about the changes that are coming. The children need to realize and recognize that things are indeed going to change. Make sure they know that you will be there to help them deal with new and different scenarios as they arise. Avoid the blame game. As far as your kids are concerned, this is a mutual, amicable split. They don't need to hear stuff like "Daddy left us" or "Mommy doesn't love daddy anymore". Remember the united front mentioned earlier.
There will also come those times where your kids need to talk, or just vent pent-up emotions. Let them. Even if it doesn't make sense to you (which I all likelihood it won't), listen. Their needs and feelings are very real to them and need to be validated. If they have a hard time expressing what they are feeling, help them find the words or the way to express it. Sometimes they may be reluctant to say things out of a fear of hurting you, so encourage them to go ahead and express what they are feeling.
Often, children have the misconception that they were somehow the cause of what has happened. Gently remind them why you and your spouse arrived at this decision to separate. There are days that they will appear to grasp the concept and others where they will appear to be starting over at square one. One could almost say that anger is contagious. If you ever have had the opportunity to observe a couple where one of the individuals has become angry and raised their voice, it's not long before you would have seen the other party involved raise their voice in an angry tone.
Becoming angry back is like a defense mechanism. Individuals handle anger at different levels, but when it happens between a man and a wife it is most common to see the wife's level of anger match or supersede the husband's, in the heat of the moment. Then something else that is just as ironic, is the man's anger often seems to subside much quicker than the wife's. Even after the shouting match has come to an end, the wife still feels angry inside along with a bunch of other pent-up emotions. This could very well be because the husband is the one with the anger management problem, and the wife's anger is retaliatory. Even though she can control her anger, she cannot control her husbands.
There will also come those times where your kids need to talk, or just vent pent-up emotions. Let them. Even if it doesn't make sense to you (which I all likelihood it won't), listen. Their needs and feelings are very real to them and need to be validated. If they have a hard time expressing what they are feeling, help them find the words or the way to express it. Sometimes they may be reluctant to say things out of a fear of hurting you, so encourage them to go ahead and express what they are feeling.
Often, children have the misconception that they were somehow the cause of what has happened. Gently remind them why you and your spouse arrived at this decision to separate. There are days that they will appear to grasp the concept and others where they will appear to be starting over at square one. One could almost say that anger is contagious. If you ever have had the opportunity to observe a couple where one of the individuals has become angry and raised their voice, it's not long before you would have seen the other party involved raise their voice in an angry tone.
Becoming angry back is like a defense mechanism. Individuals handle anger at different levels, but when it happens between a man and a wife it is most common to see the wife's level of anger match or supersede the husband's, in the heat of the moment. Then something else that is just as ironic, is the man's anger often seems to subside much quicker than the wife's. Even after the shouting match has come to an end, the wife still feels angry inside along with a bunch of other pent-up emotions. This could very well be because the husband is the one with the anger management problem, and the wife's anger is retaliatory. Even though she can control her anger, she cannot control her husbands.
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