Should you confide in your children? Let them in on the secrets of your private life? Answer questions like "Mum, why did you two quarrel?", "Dad, why did you split up?", "How are the two of you getting along?", "What’s going on in your love life?" The answer:
YOU SHOULD NOT! At least not while they are children, teenagers or young adults. So when can you?
A horror story! In the series "Big Little Lies"
At the Freud’s Legacy club we regularly take films and series apart psychologically (do join us, by the way, and keep an eye out for new broadcasts). How not to do it is shown very vividly in the series "Big Little Lies».
In the series, the neurotic mother Madeline tells her 16-year-old daughter Abigail about cheating on her husband — either to warn the girl off making the same mistake, or to unburden her own conscience. Madeline’s husband Ed does exactly the same. And he answers Abigail’s questions about his run-in with her father.
Abby: "What was that between you and my dad? He says you threatened him."Stepfather: "Not at all. He was the aggressive one. He wanted your mother to be nicer to his new wife. And I think that’s nonsense."Abby: "What’s wrong with Mum? She’s got all jumpy lately."Stepfather: "Sweetheart, that’s her natural state."
Dialogue from the series
This is a good picture of why adult topics should not be discussed with children. A father should not drag a child into a men’s quarrel, just as he should not drag a teenager into a discussion of her mother’s state of mind. A child’s nerves are not ready to settle adult matters — even when the child is already a teenage girl. So what can you say instead? Something like this, for example:
And if the conversation turns to how Mum is doing, it is better to have it with Mum in the room.
But what about the child’s own request? He did not ask for nothing — something must have worried him. That is exactly why, in a situation like this, it is better to ask the child about himself: what is going on with him?
Or take another situation: the teenage daughter Abby asks her mother:
Abby: "Why are you ruining your life, Mum?"Mother: "I don’t know myself. I just don’t understand it! Maybe I cling to being perfect so hard that I can’t keep it up much longer. I’ve wanted to confess everything for so long, and I can’t find the courage."
the author
On the face of it, such frank talks have a noble aim: to open up the parents’ inner world, to become your daughter’s friend. Or is there another motive — to shift the burden of responsibility for your own actions onto your children, to tell at least somebody about the affair?
These pitiful attempts to gain some kind of closeness with your children may work in the short term, and may even nudge the children towards the right decision — a tactical victory for the parents. Strategically, though, the parents lose here.
A horror story! At the Austrian psychologists’ office
The trouble is that these simple truths are turned completely upside down by Austrian psychologists. In Austria, before a divorce involving children, the law requires you to see a child psychologist and to show the judge the confirmation. So I, a parent going through a divorce, went to the nearest woman on the register. And she was indignant when she learned that we, the parents, had not told our five-year-old daughter why we had separated.
It was an interesting conversation:
Me: "But we adults haven’t really worked out ourselves why we are separating!"
Psychologist: "Tell her that Mum and Dad have fallen out of love with each other."
Me: "That is not true. I am ready to tell my child what I believe to be true, but not to invent things."
Psychologist: "A child needs an explanation."
from a real consultation
Later on, a friend of mine went to a similar pre-divorce session with a child psychologist and heard the same "requirement": tell your child why you separated.
So when can you tell them?
At what age do such conversations become possible at all? Around 30 or 40, when children have reached a more or less equal footing with their parents, when they can sit down with them in a bar the way they would with anyone else. By that age, if a person keeps developing and does not stall at a youthful psychological age, children catch up with their parents in achievements and stop competing with them. The son already has a family, children, a house, a car — everything, in short, that his father had when the son was born. The daughter has what her mother had when the daughter was born. Now children and parents meet AS EQUALS, simply people of different ages, and share their experience. That is the first moment when it becomes possible to tell them about your past.
So how should it be done?
So, if your child comes to you with a "grown-up" question about your private life, here is the sequence to follow
- Send him back into the children’s world: "Sweetheart, this is our grown-up business, we’ll sort it out somehow! Everything is going to be fine!"
- If the child is asking about the other parent, offer to have the conversation with that parent present
- Ask the child about his own inner state — after all, he asked for a reason!
And so on until your offspring turns 40.
