In this episode, host Krista Nash sits down with parenting expert, author, and coach Christina McGhee to tackle one of the most difficult moments in divorce: telling your children. Christina, who has spent over two decades helping families navigate separation, shares compassionate, practical guidance for parents who want to put their children first during this life-altering conversation.
Together, Krista and Christina explore the emotional weight parents carry and the common mistakes that can undermine a child’s sense of security. Christina emphasizes the importance of clarity, preparation, and unified messaging, reminding parents that while the marriage may be ending, parenting is not. She introduces strategies such as framing divorce as a change rather than an ending, using age-appropriate language, and avoiding over-sharing or placing emotional burdens on children.
Listeners will also hear insights into how children of different ages process divorce, the dangers of using children as confidants, and the long-term impact of blurred boundaries. Christina offers practical tools for ensuring children feel a sense of belonging in both homes and encourages ongoing dialogue rather than a “one and done” conversation.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Divorce doesn’t end parenting—it changes how you parent.
- Always use clear, age-appropriate language, including the word “divorce.”
- Never make your child a confidant or emotional caretaker.
- Prepare and plan the conversation instead of “winging it.”
- Make it an ongoing dialogue, not a one-time event.
Resources from this Episode
Christina McGhee, Divorce Parenting Expert, Trainer, Coach, Author, Education & Training Director: SPLIT Films – Divorce and Children, LLC
https://coparentingspecialist.com/
https://divorceandchildren.com/
Book: Parenting Apart: How Separated and Divorced Parents Can Raise Happy and Secure Kids
https://divorceandchildren.com/about-christina-mcghee/
www.childrenfirstfamilylaw.com
All states have different laws; be sure you are checking out your state laws specifically surrounding divorce. Krista is a licensed attorney in Colorado and Wyoming but is not providing through this podcast legal advice. Please be sure to seek independent legal counsel in your area for your specific situation.
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How to Tell Kids about Divorce: with Parenting Expert Christina McGhee Podcast Transcript
0:00:00 – Intro/Outro
Welcome to the Children First Family Law podcast. Our host, Krista Nash, is an attorney, mediator, a parenting coordinator, and child advocate with a heart to facilitate conversations about how to help children flourish amidst the broken area of family law. As a child advocate in demand for her expertise throughout Colorado and as a speaker on these issues at a national level, Krista is passionate about facilitating and creatively finding solutions to approach family law matters in a way that truly focuses on the best interests of kids. Please remember this podcast is provided to you for information purposes only. No one on this podcast is representing you or giving you legal advice. As always, please enjoy this episode and be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.
0:00:51 – Krista Nash
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Children First Family Law Podcast. I’m your host, Krista Nash. Today kicks off the first of what will be many conversations with parenting expert, author and coach, Christina McGee. For more than two decades, Christina has worked with parents across the United States and internationally, has trained family lawyers, mediators, coaches and financial neutrals on how to make child-centered decisions during family change. She created the Co-Parenting Specialist Program to help professionals truly represent the voice of children and equip parents with real world skills and strategies.
Our focus today is one of the hardest moments in divorce – telling your kids what to say, what to avoid, how to manage the heavy guilt and feelings that can cloud good parenting, and delivering this news in a child-centric way. As Christina puts it, divorce doesn’t make you a bad parent, it makes you a parent going through a bad time. If you want clear, compassionate, practical steps for protecting your children through this important conversation, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in.
Welcome everybody back to the Children First Family Law Podcast. I am really excited today to have with us Christina McGee, who is really widely known, and kind of a little bit of a star, and she’ll probably laugh at that, but she is a parenting expert. We will have already explained and put on our show notes a lot of the things that she’s done, but I’m excited because I’m hoping this will be a recurring event for us to have you on, Christina, because you just have so much real world advice to give people about how to do this messy thing called divorce better, and so welcome. Thank you for being here with us.
0:02:31 – Christina McGhee
Oh well, it’s a pleasure, Thanks for having me.
0:02:34 – Krista Nash
So tell us a little about your highlights in your own mind, of your background. I know you’re an author. You’ve done tons of podcasts and interviews. Tell us a little about your path.
0:02:42 – Christina McGhee
Well, it certainly wasn’t a straight one. I never anticipated working in this field. Actually, when I was working on my master’s I was pretty sure, actually, I would say I was crystal clear, that I was going to be a trauma specialist, and that was really what I had my sights set on. What I didn’t realize at the time is that the trauma I would dedicate my career to was divorce. And so I came into this work when my professional ambitions and my personal life kind of hit a crossroads. When I got married, in addition to being a blushing bride, I also became a bonus mom to two very young children, and that kind of set me on a path. I’m also a child of divorce, but to be honest, like a lot of kids from divorce, I never really thought about how it had impacted me or shaped my life. The messaging was we’re going to put it behind us and we’re going to move forward, and so I really hadn’t ever really reflected on it.
0:03:41 – Krista Nash
How old were your kids when you got divorced? How old were you when your parents got divorced?
0:03:47 – Christina McGhee
Well, so I never got divorced. I’m kind of a unicorn that way.
0:03:48 – Krista Nash
I’m sorry.
0:03:49 – Christina McGhee
When I became a bonus mom gosh, they were three and five. So, it’s been a minute. They’re all adult-ish now.
0:04:02 – Krista Nash
Yeah, adult-ish. I like that. That’s what my kids are. Adult-ish. It’s like a generational term. And then how old were you when your parents got divorced?
0:04:10 – Christina McGhee
Things started kind of unraveling when I was about 13, and then I think they became official by the time I was 14.
0:04:17 – Krista Nash
Okay, and when you look back at your own experience then, did your parents do co -parenting well, and did your husband and his ex do co-parenting well?
0:04:31 – Christina McGhee
Not at all. Our early days were pretty difficult. There was a lot of tension and conflict between the households. I am happy to say that over the years we have gotten to a much better place and I think each household has worked really hard on that because now we share grandchildren and big occasions like weddings and graduations, and so we were fortunate, I think, to get to a better place.
0:04:59 – Krista Nash
So, all right, give us a little more then. Tell us a little more about how you went from that training that you’ve done with a masters to therapeutic work in trying to work on trauma? Tell us a little more about that.
0:05:09 – Christina McGhee
So my background is masters in social work and, like many social workers, I came to problems or dynamics from how we can find resources and skills and provide educational support? So actually what happened is when my husband and his former wife were going through a bout of difficulty, they were going to court. Both were ordered to take a four-hour parenting course, and so he went, took the four-hour parenting course that was all about kids and divorce, and he came home with a business card. He handed it to me and he goes you should be teaching this, and that’s kind of where my journey began.
It became kind of a side hustle. We were new to the area. I decided, oh yeah, I know I can teach, I’m a social worker, I’m resource oriented, so I’ll jump in. I got the privilege of standing in front of thousands and thousands of parents over the span of 12 years, really listening to the challenges, the struggles, the worries about their kids, sharing information, and I can tell you it taught me more than anything I ever learned in graduate school. Once I started teaching, it became very clear to me that four hours was only scratching the surface and there needed to be more. And so that’s when my journey kind of expanded, and I’ve done things like write a book, participate in media projects, and become involved in a documentary about divorce. Then I moved on to training professionals as a result.
0:06:47 – Krista Nash
What’s the documentary called?
0:06:48 – Christina McGhee
Well, the first thing that I did was a children’s video about divorce a very long time ago, called “Lemons to Lemonade”, and then, later, I met Ellen Bruno, who is the creative genius behind the SPLIT films.
0:07:09 – Krista Nash
Ellen has been a guest on the show, so listeners should go back and listen to that. She’s amazing, she is, so did you help with that documentary then?
0:07:13 – Christina McGhee
That’s actually where Ellen and I first met. She was putting the first film together and in the very early stages of cutting up clips and deciding what stays in, what stays out, how do we put it all together. I was on her email list. She happened to find me and I was instantly intrigued. Back in the day we didn’t have Zoom. I just picked up the good old fashioned telephone and I said hey, I want to have a conversation, I want to know more about this. It seemed like such a compelling idea to me that kids be able to talk unfiltered about their own experience. I just wanted to know more about it, and so from that point forward we have continued to work together. I became a subject matter expert and then moved on to be the educational director and training director for the SPLIT outreach project.
0:08:02 – Krista Nash
Okay, okay, I didn’t realize how that synergy works, so I appreciate that, and for those who have not listened to it, I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode that we did with Ellen because she’s just incredible. She tells her own personal journey of why she made the film. She’s just such a credentialed international filmmaker and I love it.
0:08:19 – Christina McGhee
It’s all about the voice of the children in “SPLIT, The Early Years” and then “SPLIT Up, the Teen Years”.
0:08:24 – Krista Nash
Yeah, and it’s basically 11 of the same kids in the second film who were in the first film. I was encouraging her, and maybe you are encouraging her to do this too, and I’ll encourage you to do it together. I was like you should go do that with the parents now of those kids.
0:08:37 – Christina McGhee
We would love to. We’d love to do a parent project. We just haven’t figured out quite how to do that, but I think it would be enormously valuable because when you look at what we see as a society, it tends to really operate extremes. You have parents that are really pushing out on social media, how they’re like best buddies, they go on vacations together, they do everything together, look, we’re still family together. And then you have the other extreme where it’s an absolute train wreck and you have lots of high conflict and it’s the worst situation it could possibly be. And I think that there’s a much larger group that’s somewhere in the middle and that we need to have some better role models, some real role models, because even under the best of circumstances, this is still a big change in a family and it’s hard and it takes a lot of work, and I think communicating that message to people out there is so important.
0:09:34 – Krista Nash
Yeah, I absolutely agree. Well, I commend you because I think all of your books, which we’ll also link to so that people can go find those – give us the name of it so people listening can hear that.
0:09:44 – Christina McGhee
It’s “Parenting Apart, How Separated and Divorced Parents Can Raise Happy and Secure Kids”.
0:09:49 – Krista Nash
I love that. We need a lot more of that problem solving. I actually like what you said about social work, because I don’t think most people understand that social work is heavily about getting resources to people that they need to. I don’t know the cliff note version of it, but they like to empower their own lives to solve problems, and I think that’s what my mission and the work I’m doing is, which is similar, I just phrase it a little differently. It’s the idea of stained glass. Your life is different than you expected when your family breaks down, but it doesn’t have to stay that way, and it doesn’t have to stay crushed. In that way it can be remade and everybody can still flourish. I do think it’s just such an important point that there is this vast center of people who really can do this well without getting into those especially negative extremes that really do injure children very long-term and intergenerationally.
You hear that in the SPLIT film and, I’m sure, in your book and in a lot of different places. I think it’s interesting because the media highlighted so much, I mean right now today, I think the day we’re recording this, the Donald Adelson’s trial is starting in Florida, where the grandma’s accused of murdering or conspiring to murder the son-in-law, and the entire family has been after a relocation situation in a divorce case. We have that going on. We have lots of stories in the news. There’s the new remake of War of the Roses, the movie that just launched, I think this week or soon, which is a remake of that old classic where I think they both die in the end. Not to be a spoiler, but, I’m not sure if the new movie has it, but Kirk Douglas and Kathleen Turner hang from a chandelier and they die.
How far are we going to burn this thing down? So, it doesn’t have to be that way and I just commend you, as I introduced you to my audience, that that’s your mission and your heart too, because more of us need to be doing that. So let’s go to our main topic we’re going to do today, because Christina has so many wonderful topics that I do plan to bring you back on, and we’re actually got a couple in mind already.
One thing we haven’t really talked about on my show is how do you tell kids about getting divorced, that you’re about to get divorced, or that you’re separated? What is the best way to do that? There’s all kinds of advice out there. Really, Google is not necessarily your friend because you get on there and you get all this weaponized stuff about how to do this.
They say that your friends don’t always give you the best advice. Your family and people tend to take sides. I had somebody, I think it was Dr. Ben Garber, who’s also been on the show and has diffused divorce, said, what happens is people get up in front of a bunch of people and get married and they make these vows to each other. Usually this is how that works. And so when they break up, there’s this alignment that occurs where you have to kind of make the other person sound bad because you made this commitment. It really can’t be you, it’s got to be them. And so it becomes this weaponization right from the start, where everybody’s sort of entrenched. Start wherever you want to start, like this is a big topic, but what is your first impulse or insight back to us as to what we think about when we’re talking about this topic. ?
0:12:52 – Christina McGhee
One of the things I want to touch on is what you just said, which I think is really important, especially for parents to pay attention to, that everybody’s going to have opinions and ideas about how you should manage your divorce, how you should handle it with your kids, and it’s not always helpful advice.
You’re absolutely right. It’s not just the immediate family that’s impacted by divorce, but it’s the neighbors, the friends at work, the extended family, the grandparents, and a lot of times, one of the pitfalls of the culture, the way it is currently is, is that we do feel like we need to take sides, that in order to be supportive of you, I need to really trash the other parent, and I don’t believe divorce has to equal devastation for kids. The biggest factors in how your children are going to manage this process has to do with how you relate to one another and how you navigate it, and so I really want to reinforce this idea that you know two good people don’t always make a good couple. That doesn’t mean that you can’t be good co-parents. The relationship changes to no longer partners, but always parents, and when we can shift our focus on that, I think that yields better outcomes for kids.
0:14:09 – Krista Nash
Absolutely, and those are really important principles that I just love. The mathematical equation there, that just because you have to uncouple doesn’t mean you unparent. As parents, and actually one of the problems in co-parenting, a totally different topic, is failure to uncouple, but that’s another discussion.
0:14:27 – Intro/Outro
Another discussion entirely.
0:14:31 – Krista Nash
This is your co-parent. It is the person who may have hurt you, but you need a new hat to wear. So, given that, then you know this big talk of you know, either the parents decide together we’re going to get divorced, or one drops it on the other person. Sometimes the kids know in advance, sometimes they don’t. What do you think about or advise people on when they’re talking about? How do I tell them, how do I set the stage for this?
0:14:57 – Christina McGhee
Well, I think, number one, you have to make sure you are sure, being 99.9% sure. There’s a very high percentage of couples that reconcile once, twice, three times and that’s super confusing for kids. Today we’re getting divorced, tomorrow we’re not. There’s the series of separations and it’s really confusing for kids. So I think you need to get clear about is this our future? And if so, then I think the next step is making a plan, and this is the part that lots of parents skip over.
I strongly advise against winging it. It doesn’t work well, you don’t want to have a reactive conversation. You want to have a thoughtful conversation with kids, and that requires the two of you if you’re going to have a joint conversation finding a way to unpack that frame, that conversation right the where and the when. What are we going to say? How are we going to answer the question why? How are we going to manage our emotional conversation?
It’s not just hard for kids to hear the news, it’s going to be hard for you to say it, and I think parents underestimate just how emotional of a conversation it may be, even if you’re the one initiating the divorce, it’s still really hard to tell your kids that you’re splitting up, and so really shoring yourself up and getting prepared for that, and one of the ways to do that is by thinking it through, and this is where an experienced child centered professional can be so helpful. I have parents that come to me all the time and say, okay, we don’t know what to do, when to say it, how to say it. Can you walk us through it? And so that’s what we do. We start formulating a plan. What’s the timeframe? How old are your kids?
0:16:46 – Krista Nash
Yeah, that’s a very good point. How old are they? I want to make one other sort of comment about things that I see happen that I think, before you even got to the conversation, I really liked that you started with. Are you sure? Also, your kid is not the person to try to figure out with, if you’re sure, because a lot of parents, especially with teenagers, particularly with mothers and daughters, that sounds very genderized, but it’s just very true. This is like your buddy, who is like your in-home therapist who you start talking to about dad being a jerk and maybe I should end marriage and these sorts of things. Can you just speak to that kind of backing up a little how damaging that is.
0:17:26 – Christina McGhee
Incredibly so. When parents utilize kids as confidants for their sounding boards right, that puts a huge burden on children’s shoulders. Kids, no matter how old they are, should never feel emotionally responsible for a parent, and kids innately do. When they see parents stressed or in distress or feeling vulnerable or overwhelmed, kids tend to internalize that and look at it as their responsibility to make the situation better, not to rock the boat. If you want to show up for your kids, you can’t do that if they feel emotionally responsible for you. So to be fully present for them, parents need to make sure that they have their own circle of support, that they have an adult sounding board where they can process and think things through or get professional help. But a lot of times that is a huge pitfall. Older kids fall into the trap of being communicators like messengers back and forth between parents, of peacemakers, of confidant, of becoming the other adult in the household when they’re younger, siblings, right, and those are roles that kids should never have to fill.
0:18:39 – Krista Nash
I’m making a list here of future topics because it’s such a huge problem, and it’s worthy of its own episode because it truly is, especially so we’re talking about how you tell your kids about divorce. Obviously, we don’t want you to process should I or shouldn’t I get divorced with your kids. But stay tuned to some future episodes of Christina because we definitely need to talk about that.
One of the most common problems in divorce is this idea of a child taking on that burden and the parent feeling good about it. They might not say they feel good about it, but there’s this alignment that occurs where the parent might feel like, oh, we’re so close now because we can talk. The child’s helping me through all this stuff and emotionally tied to me in this way and maybe getting some bad feelings about the other parent. I had one kid once say I said, well, what led to the divorce? And she said, well, she’s maybe 16, 17, and she wouldn’t see her dad. She said, well, even from the first week of marriage, my dad never knew my mom’s love language.
It’s like, okay, I get, you love your mom. I mean there’s a lot of dynamics in that case, and it’s complicated, but that’s an example. You’re telling this to the child advocate. That is so harmful to the child and it doesn’t help them understand the other parent. It’s just so important and so hard. You must be in that seat sometimes where you’re helping that damaged mom figure out what to do.
0:20:07 – Christina McGhee
I think the crux of that problem is well, there’s a couple, but one of them is that we forget how devastating divorce is and that parents are going through one of the worst times in their lives. The expectation is that they will be at their best during the worst. Our culture is very isolating. A lot of families are navigating this on their own, in isolation, and it’s like gathering the wagons. We’re going to throw everybody on the inside and we’re going to get through this together, and I think that’s where those emotional boundaries get very blurry.
I don’t think that parents intend to burden their children, but they are so emotionally distraught themselves that they don’t recognize that. They don’t see it and kids aren’t talking about it. Kids are not going to tell their parents. Kids often filter what they say to their parents and there’s so many things that they navigate behind the scenes. That is why parents need to get the support they need to be that stable, sturdy, grounded parent. How do we move closer to being the best version of ourselves while we’re going through the worst time? That doesn’t mean that you’re going to say everything perfectly and that you’re not going to make mistakes, because guess what, all parents, whether married or divorced, mess up. Being able to recognize it and not repeat it is really critical, and that’s the piece that’s often missing. Parents are reeling, kids are reeling, and those boundaries just get very blurry.
0:21:50 – Krista Nash
I love it because you’re making me think about social work in a different way. I think that the fact that you’ve morphed your career from that training into resourcing, training more people to do the co-parent work, I see what you’re doing and why. We need to teach more people how to do this better, because I’m telling you, I’m a lawyer. The lawyers aren’t going to help them with this. They just don’t. Some of them do, I try when I get a parent, and certainly as a child advocate. I’m sometimes sitting there begging parents to get those resources and things like that.
The divorce culture doesn’t do that. The divorce culture takes sides. I love your point about isolation. I think that’s really insightful and I haven’t really heard it said that way before. That is true. I’m sometimes talking to people who are involved in churches or neighborhoods or whatever, and it’s like I’ve experienced this myself with friends. It’s like, yeah, we’re in crisis, we’re not coming to those things anymore, we are retreating.
0:22:48 – Christina McGhee
Who gets the church, who gets the friends right? We’re going through an uncoupling and this is like brand new territory and sometimes friends fade into the woodwork, right? Because they don’t want to take sides, or it’s really uncomfortable and nobody’s showing up at the door with a casserole going hey, I’m really sorry, yeah there’s no meal trains for divorce
0:23:08 – Krista Nash
There should be. I mean, dads these days are getting four months paternity leave. I’m like why do we need these meal trains anymore? Why can’t dad just make dinner, right? He’s home all the time, right, but no that’s when we need it.
0:23:28 – Christina McGhee
It is not just when someone dies or when you have a new baby, but in divorce you’re going through a hard time.
0:23:35 – Krista Nash
So I think it’s just an interesting framework to really give our sort of you know prologue to all this, because the idea of setting up the narrative of how you’re going to tell your kids, it sort of has, in the law we called it a condition precedent. If you’re not in a place where you’re thinking about this rationally, or you’ve got people who are not getting aligned and entrenched, or you’re going to see a lawyer who’s like we need to go file this without anybody knowing about it, or we need to file something, it’s different if they’re domestic violence and you need to restrict or file a protection order. There’s a lot of sneaky stuff going on, prepping stuff going on where the last thing you’re thinking about is how am I going to tell my children. So a lot of this that we’re talking about today depends on being able to have a reasonable ramp up where you don’t just blurt it out in a fight, which is what often happens in front of the kids.
I’m getting divorced. I’m leaving. Get out of the house. The police are getting involved. I had one case recently where one of the parents went to the other and said we need to go talk upstairs. And they go talk upstairs. The kids hear this kind of vague yelling going on and crying. Then they come down together and they say we’ve decided we’re getting divorced, and the mom is a mess in tears. The kids know that’s not what just went down. The kids go together and say we’re going to take care of each other now and not be involved in the lies that are being told us by our parents. So how do we not have that happen? So if you have a good parenting coach or you’re reading the right books or you’re prepping with your therapist, there’s a lot of ways.
0:25:08 – Christina McGhee
Yes, there are a lot of ways. So look for resources, and it could be a good book. Now, shameless plug, my book, Parenting Apart, was written to be user-friendly, and so I tell parents go to the table of contents, look at it and pick one chapter, just one chapter that really speaks to what your most pressing concern is right now, in this moment, and only read that one chapter. That’s doable.
A lot of times, the pitfall that parents fall into is that the idea of seeking help is just as overwhelming as the problem that they’re dealing with, and so we avoid it. When it comes to talking with kids, I think most parents want to handle it skillfully. But there’s so much fear around this conversation. They are scared to death that they’re going to say the wrong thing. They don’t know what to say, when to say it, how to say it, and so either they say too much or they say too little, and neither is helpful for kids. So we want to strike a balance somewhere in the middle, which means thinking it through, taking a beat, thinking about things like okay, so what do we want this transition to look like? Are we going to stay in the same house? Are we going to have two separate places? What’s the timeframe for that? How old are our kids?
So that may affect the timing, because you don’t want to tell your littles that this is happening six months out. That’s like way too long, too much information for them. So you might need to have a step up plan. If the goal is six months, maybe the first conversation is just providing kids a context for understanding what they’re feeling and experiencing, and that may be, you probably notice that mom and dad aren’t getting along very well. There’s been some fighting and for that reason we’ve decided to separate for a period of time. We have some things we need to figure out and so for now, this is what life is going to look like. So that’s stepping it up, especially if you’re not sure. But you’re deciding to have space instead of just not saying anything to kids or making up an excuse like oh, mom had to go on a work trip, or she’ll be back in a couple of months..
0:27:25 – Krista Nash
I find a lot of times kids tell me that, and I think this is just so common and natural that this starts, the kids are aware of fighting or sadness. Parents seem to think they’re hiding stuff from their kids and they’re not. The kids are so in tune, even little kids, with whether a parent is stressed or sad or holding tension or acts a certain way when somebody comes in the room or they overhear phone calls all the time. They hear you in the car. Be careful of Bluetooth. Sometimes things connect, and that happened too. Your phone connects and you’re talking to grandma about how mad you are about something. So kids are more aware. Some of them are little snoops too, which is another point, like older kids. Some of them are actually like Nancy Drew, and probably for good reason. They want to know what’s going on. I find a lot of people are splitting up bedrooms first, so it’s like, get out of my room. I’m going to have the master, I can’t stand it. You go to the basement. So, for a long period of time sometimes we have that kind of division going on. Do you recommend that parents talk to their kids? At what point are you supposed to say it’s not just a bad night? And they’re like oh, dad snores, that’s why he’s in the basement. And everyone’s like yeah, we’re not stupid, even little kids, so even when it’s like how far along this path are we supposed to be before we actually let the kids into this conversation. What do you recommend about that?
0:28:51 – Christina McGhee
Well, I think if you’re sleeping in separate bedrooms, you need to be thinking about giving kids a context for understanding this, because they’re seeing it and I’ve even had parents, and this is such a common situation. I’ve had parents that come to me and they’re like that’s one of my first questions. What’s the sleeping situation in the house? And they say, oh yeah, we’ve been sleeping in different bedrooms for years. The kids are used to it. They know I have back issues or blah, blah, blah. And I said you’re not giving your kids enough credit. Kids pick up not just on the words that we say, but body language speaks volumes, right, our tone, of voice. The fact that we stop embracing each other or holding hands or looking at each other in a way that communicates love.
0:29:41 – Krista Nash
Exactly yeah, and they see it right away. I mean, I’m speaking more now on the side where I represent parents when I’m doing consultation and they’re like, oh yeah, we haven’t been intimate for five years and he’s been in the basement for X amount of time. They’re functionally separated, but they haven’t told their kids. I think Ellen, in the film, is good about this too, just sort of like this questioning of what they don’t know. They fill the gaps.
0:30:11 – Christina McGhee
Right, absolutely. When kids sense something’s off if parents aren’t talking, if they’re not communicating, then kids start coming up with their own reality, their own story, their own way to explain it to themselves, which is often not based on logic or reason, and a lot of times kids feel a significant responsibility for parent problems. So if things are off with parents, sometimes the narrative is gosh, if only I had gotten better grades, or if only I was a better kid, or, some kids get the memo that, hey, I need to completely fall apart because the only time my parents come together is when things go off the rails. So there’s a lot of different ways that kids may try to kind of manage the dynamics in the family. So if parents are sleeping separately and making the choice to stay in the same home, you’ve really got one of two options. Either you go and figure out how to make this marriage work and what needs to happen so that you can have the best relationship possible to bring these children up in, or you decide to divorce with dignity. That means framing a conversation, letting kids know, and it doesn’t have to be anything complicated. We often think our kids, oh, they can’t handle it or they won’t understand it. I think kids can. They might not always like what they hear, but you can say to your kids you know what, when we started out, more than anything we wanted to be a family, and somewhere along the way, things changed for us. We’re not agreeing on things, there’s been some differences, and we’ve decided that we need some time to figure that out. And so for now, one of us is going to sleep in this room and one of us is going to sleep in the basement. We need some space and this is how life is going to look for us until we get some things figured out. If you have any questions, you can ask either one of us, and this is where the planning comes into place, right? So parents can get on the same page about the messaging for kids.
There’s some big benefits to going through this process and living in one home, and that really can be, it gives you an opportunity to slow roll it. You try on new roles, you can play around with time sharing arrangements. You give kids an opportunity to get used to spending time with parents differently. You can map it out and work on what I call an on-duty off-duty parenting dynamic, where the person that is with the kids that’s taking the lead, that’s making sure the homework’s done and they get to bed on time and they’re off to school in the morning, that’s the on-duty parent. The off-duty parent is still playing a vital role in terms of supporting the kids and maintaining contact, and can be called in at a moment’s notice. However, you know the roles. Instead of looking at them as static like I’m this parent, I’m that parent. The roles are interchangeable depending on how the time sharing arrangement is. So each parent fulfills the role of being on duty. Each parent fulfills the role of being off duty.
0:33:23 – Krista Nash
This is great because you’re previewing. I’m figuring I continue to throw different ideas at you. We’re going to have a separate episode where we’re going to talk more about this, that we’re going to actually roll into here and kind of record all together just to give a pro tip of how we’re doing this today. So go find that other episode and stay tuned for Christina’s second episode, because we’re going to talk more about those early days of parenting plans and what that looks like, and that we’ll have more tips on that. So let me quit diverting you, let’s go back to telling them. Okay, so you have to be sure and you really need a plan.
I think that this forecasting is important. You have to think about this early on. Think about what you’re telling the kids early on, not when you’re already in separate rooms. It’s time to start thinking about this. And with your co-parent having this conversation about how we’re going to do this, I say all the time to parents I wish you were thinking about this as a team Insert kid’s name, right. So from the very get go, if you need co-parenting help and coaching to go get it. How do we change the roles? So give us some tips about how they go about doing this. I know you’ve talked about wanting to use, or you’ve mentioned to me before, using clear language and asking or framing it that the family is changing, not that it’s ending. So let’s go through some of those ideas.
0:34:43 – Christina McGhee
Well, I think that that is right at the top of the list. Use clear language, and give your kids an age appropriate explanation. A lot of parents, it’s surprising, and not really, try to dodge using the word divorce. They want to frame it as, oh, we’re breaking up, or we’re just not going to be married anymore, we’re going to be permanently separated, you know all these other words and while their intention is honorable like they’re looking to soften the blow, just not being clear with kids confuses them.
I encourage parents to use the word divorce and again to frame it as a change in a family, not the end of the family, and then to explain what divorce is. And quite simply, it’s one way some families change. Instead of being a family in one home, there’s going to be two homes and both homes are going to be a place for you. A divorce is when parents decide not to be partners anymore, but we will always be your parents. That will never change. So we make that distinction early on. No longer partners, always parents.
0:35:51 – Krista Nash
I love that. I had another guest on the show. I think you know her too, Susan Guthrie, from Texas. She said it’s really important to talk about the homes as like not mom’s home and dad’s home, but instead like the cherry house, you know, whatever some descriptor the blue house, the house on cherry street, the house on Adams or whatever, because she says she hears kids and therapeutic sessions, saying like, well, I don’t even have a house anymore because it’s mom’s house and dad’s house.
0:36:22 – Christina McGhee
So we need to create that sense of belonging and connection, that, even though the family’s changing, kids will still continue to share a life with each of their parents. That’s what we want to underscore and that’s where the two-home concept comes into play. A two-home concept is really regardless of how time is spent between households, kids feel a part and a sense of belonging and connection with each parent in each home.
0:36:50 – Krista Nash
So what about kids? I’m sure they almost always say why, why are you getting divorced? What are parents supposed to say to that?
0:36:59 – Christina McGhee
Well, I think that’s part of the planning stage and, again, it’s one that I think a lot of parents skip over, but it is important for you to craft, in my opinion, a non-blaming reason that you’re making this choice. It doesn’t mean giving kids the intimate details, it doesn’t mean you need to talk about dynamics in your relationship, but it does mean that you give them something they can hang their hat on. I had a client just yesterday. She shared what her child said, even though they had a very thoughtful conversation. Her child said to her look, I don’t know why my parents are getting divorced and until I get an answer, I’m not going to move on. And so it’s important to realize that having that why is a part of healing, a part of acceptance for kids.
So one of the things I talked with her about is that sometimes we might say things like how we feel about each other has changed over time. We’ve decided that we are better parents than we are partners. The things we wanted weren’t the same anymore. We grew apart. There’s a lot of different ways to frame it. Sometimes that may not be enough, like with this child who said I’m not moving on, and so we talked about what were some other things that he might need to hear, and I think the first thing we need to do is step in with validation and maybe say something like, I bet it’s got to be pretty confusing trying to wrap your head around the idea how two people that you love most in the world no longer love each other. That makes sense, and the truth is this wasn’t an easy decision to make and it wasn’t just one big thing. It was a lot of things over time. And I also want you to know that even though you think having more information is going to make it easier, it’s not. Sometimes kids think if they can just understand what it was, they can fix it. This isn’t your responsibility to change or fix what’s happened, and I just want you to know that I’m willing to answer questions. You can always ask me, but there are some things that are private about a marriage and those aren’t things we’re going to share with you. Our problems are not your problems.
0:39:21 – Krista Nash
Yeah, I have that a lot too. I get kids all the time. I mean I recall, though I’m getting the worst cases, I’m getting them when I’m appointed as the child’s legal representative or the best interest attorney for kids. I mean I’m getting appointed to the ones where they really need a trauma doctor. I’m coming into a mess.
I wish, and part of my mission work in this is that I really on the other side of this, why I’m doing the podcast, I want to provide those resources so that we don’t need somebody like me in these cases or that more cases don’t turn out that way, because they don’t have to turn out that way. I cannot even tell you, it’s part of my practice that, I think it is, I think it’s malpractice to not meet with kids in person in their homes and see how they’re living. When you’re in my shoes, like a lot of this, like just talking to kids on zoom, I am sorry, but it does not compare, but it is very important to meet them where they are and see their lives and sit on their floors and let them cry, and I mean I wish always that parents could watch these meetings because they know the kids know what’s going on.
The kids, they often start with I’m fine, I’m fine, nothing to see here. I just don’t want to see so-and-so. And often it’s like I’m 10 years old, when do I get to choose? Why don’t I get to choose? Why do I ever have to go see my dad? But these kids, often they just know so much. They’re like well, my parents got divorced because my dad doesn’t love my mommy anymore. I questioned the parent on that and like, oh no, this is just a friend. I’m like that’s just not, that’s not how this works. Like what do you think your kid thinks of that? So I think it just emphasizes that I, you know you’re talking to parents, I’m talking to the kids and we see this so, so much that the kids, just, they, I love your language, like your, our problems aren’t your problems, your parents both love you.
You can ask us questions, but having the answers determined together is such a better way to do this than getting different messaging, because it can’t help but make a child that becomes aligned. They don’t feel like they can just freely love both their parents. It creates all these loyalty bonds. Like sure I’m just loyal to mom if I want to see dad, because I know dad hurt mom.
0:41:53 – Christina McGhee
Yeah, but there’s one other point that I think you raised that’s really important, that I want to touch on, and that is what happens when parents can’t get an alignment about the why or the conversation, because those situations happen frequently.
0:42:10 – Krista Nash
Right, where they don’t agree, there isn’t a unified message.
0:42:12 – Christina McGhee
Right, and I think that the temptation is pretty strong that when there are big differences about the why or certain aspects of the divorce, parents feel compelled to set the record straight. Tell kids their side of the story because they deserve to hear the truth, and the truth is a very slippery slope. Is this the truth? And one of the things that I have learned over the years is that kids will come to know who parents are all on their own. They don’t need our help. They’ll figure out what’s great about a parent and what’s not so great. They will come to terms and make peace with the fact that their parents decided to divorce. They don’t need us to guide them.
The other thing is that when we get into setting the record straight and telling our truth, we put kids in a no-win situation, because when kids hear our version, this is a real story, what are they going to do with that? They make a beeline straight for the other parent to say, hey, mom said, dad said, and then that parent feels compelled to set the record straight, to give kids a whole laundry list of new facts, new information. Kids are holding all this and they shouldn’t have to. So if there’s a big difference and kids come to you and they say, oh yeah, mom said, dad said, you can simply say gosh, that’s not the way I see it. I have a different opinion. That may be what they believe. I’m looking at it differently, and it ends there. You don’t need to contradict the other parent. You don’t need to set the record straight, but hold fast to your truth. Even though kids might say yeah, but hold the line, I can’t tell you how many adult children of divorce have said you know, the one thing I commend my parents for is I never spoke badly about the other one. They never exposed me to the details. Measured conversation with kids gives them a context for understanding all the things that we talked about in a thoughtful way, and I really recommend that parents actually script out what they want to say, not because they need to sit there and read it to kids, but by writing it out. It allows us to process the words we want to use, the thoughts we want to convey. It gives us the space to really think it through versus just kind of pulling it out of our heads in the moment, and so we have an opportunity to have again that more measured, balanced conversation.
0:44:46 – Krista Nash
So do you tell parents, and how often are you working with both parents, or is it usually just one?
0:44:53 – Christina McGhee
So historically I’ve probably worked more with individual parents because the cases I tend to deal with operate in those really complicated extreme situations where you’ve got alienation, child rejection, a parent who’s an addict or has mental health issues, or there’s a tremendous amount of conflict. But, I am, and I find this very interesting, having more parents come to me as a pair saying we want to engage in co-parenting coaching, and it’s not because they’re in total alignment, but it’s just they want to do right for their kids.
0:45:29 – Krista Nash
Yeah, and I will tell you that from my seat and now working on, just, I can’t even tell you how many cases, as both representing an individual parent and representing hundreds and hundreds of children, I only have a couple of tools in my toolbox. One of them is therapy and the other is coaching. I mean, that’s really it, and just being a rational person. Coming to parents and being that person that can sit in that pilot seat and help them do what we’re doing here, talking about how to solve it, how to get on the same page, how to do this in a way that doesn’t ruin your children and can help them continue to flourish. But you know, people will hire me for these cases and, I’m sure, hire you and your, I mean, even if we’re both brilliant. It’s like there’s only so many solutions to this.
And it does involve, just like there isn’t a magic wand. You do have to be taught, which is, I think, a big part why I love your social work background and what you’re doing to empower more people to do the teaching of these people right like leading a horse to water. You want to make sure that they can do it themselves and there really are ways to do it right. I think it is something that people that are going through early phases of divorce or who are finding themselves like to quit spending so much money on lawyers. I’m a lawyer, and it’s way more expensive than a good co-parent coach to go to court with three different lawyers with me, with you know, all these different evaluators. Why are we investing so much in that?
0:46:55 – Christina McGhee
Well, here’s what I’ll say to that point. That’s exactly why I train professionals, because you’re training lawyers too.
I’m training family lawyers, mediators, collaborative lawyers, divorce coaches, co parenting counselors, therapists. My goal is to reach as many early stage professionals what I consider to be first responders to divorce, because, you’re right, there is no magic wand. However, the more information that all of those professionals have, the more positive touch points we can create within this system, the better the outcome. And so, while you may not be able to solve the problem, you can plant a seed, you can explore possibilities, you can provide educational support that you know parents might not have had access to otherwise, because, while you may be a lawyer, you may also be the only professional they come into contact with in this process. There might not be.
0:47:59 – Krista Nash
Yeah, I call them first responders too, and I do think you know it’s interesting because, as I encourage people to listen to the podcast, I’m like you do need to. I want the attorneys to be listening to the same thing that the parents are listening to, because it’s like you do need to listen to this full conversation about how people are actually affected, because as lawyers, we can go do all these CLE you know, continuing legal education and have sessions and do the trainings. That it’s super important and I hope it affects people, but they, the more they hear that, the better I think right?
0:48:30 – Christina McGhee
Yes, because they need to take that really seriously.
0:48:32 – Krista Nash
I see attorneys so often do one thing and say one thing and do another. Right, we just got off a big conference where the theme was problem solving. I get to speak and you didn’t happen to be at this one, but you’ve talked to a lot of these attorneys. You could speak, I, you could speak, I could speak, Ellen could speak. We’ve actually had to watch the SPLIT films before at these events and then everybody goes back to their corners and they just go back to war.
They assassinate each other in email and we have several hundred thousand dollars of attorney’s fees being spent and they just don’t embrace it. So part of my plea with parents is to expect more from the bar. There’s rare cases that need that honestly, and so it’s like why I have low confidence in the attorneys because they’re so money motivated and they’re litigation motivated usually, and so it takes a special turn to it’s like a whole other topic. I’m just going to put it on our list. Okay, let’s move back.
We could write books about this, all right. So let’s talk a little about the differences. You talked about the littles versus the bigs and the age differences. Let’s talk a little bit. We only have a few more minutes, but give me your thoughts, if there are any more on that, especially, I think, with teenagers. I think it’s easier to protect kids. How do you not get sucked into it?
0:50:01 – Christina McGhee
I think parents pay less attention to filtering, to the tone of their voice, to their body language when they make exchanges, to how they’re managing their stress levels, which littles soak up like a sponge.
Yeah, that’s true, and they can’t tell you, and I have heard many parents say, oh yeah, but they’re so young, it’s not really affecting them. Oh, yes, it is. It can affect their brain development, it can affect their bonding. It can affect so many things, like I don’t know why my child is so cranky. Have you checked in with yourself? What’s the emotional tone of your home? Where are you at that moment? So I think you know on both ends there are ways that parents can dismiss or overlook some of these very, to me, obvious ways that kids are impacted.
So, with littles, you want to provide the structure, the consistency, the predictability, the more tangible ways of tracking time between households? Really walking them through what’s going to stay the same and what’s going to change when you get to the older kids, then it’s more about still needing to protect them from the adult details, even though they may be standing right in front of you asking for them. You still need to be able to set limits. You still need to show up as a parent in those circumstances and don’t put your teen in the driver’s seat. Don’t ask who do you want to be with for Christmas? How do you want to celebrate your birthday? When do you want to be spending time at each household? That really puts kids in a no-win situation, because they have to say yes to one and no to another. Kids innately worry about keeping things fair, especially older ones. They’re always balancing the scales in the background. If I do this, then how’s that going to affect that parent? How’s that going to affect that parent?
At the school play, parents aren’t sitting together in the auditorium and the child is angsting over it. Am I looking at each parent enough? Is it equal? Which parent do I walk up to at the end of the program? If I walk up to mom, am I gonna hurt dad’s feelings? If I walk up to dad, is mom gonna get upset? Kids are weighing all these things. So with teens, you want to stay in charge of decisions. You want to be really clear with your messaging, and I think the name of the game with teens is they’re going to really want to know how this decision is going to affect my life? Am I going to be able to still play soccer? Am I going to get to go to college? Will I still have the same friends? Will there be a family home?
0:52:56 – Krista Nash
Yeah, are we selling the house? That’s about what I was just going to say. Do I get to go to the same school?
0:52:59 – Christina McGhee
Yeah, you know how is this going to impact me? And the other thing with older kids that parents often get tripped up by is that they forget, developmentally, teens are supposed to be moving away from the family, not closer in, and so you have parents that maintain these expectations that they’re going to have this very rigid, structured schedule where every other weekend, their child’s going to be with them Friday and Saturday night and newsflash, your teen doesn’t want to be with either one of you Friday or Saturday night, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be with either one of you Friday or Saturday night, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. But we forget about the developmental needs of our kids. They get overshadowed by us missing them, not having as much time with them, or wanting to keep things fair in terms of how we spend time, and so I encourage parents to just be sensitive to the developmental needs of your child and how your co-parenting is impacting that.
0:53:59 – Krista Nash
Yeah, kids will tell me how suffocated they are. They’ll say I’m okay spending some time with my dad, but man, I’m only seeing him for like six hours and he just will not leave me alone.
And so dad’s like white on rice during those six hours. I’ve had various psychologists on the show who talked about this too, about these resist, refuse dynamics where we have these parent-child contact problems and a lot of it is a smothering parent that has very little time. I’ve got teenagers who are like what do you mean I can’t be on my phone?
0:54:34 – Christina McGhee
That comes back to that thing that we talked about earlier, where you, if you nurture a two home concept, it becomes a place. We’re sharing a life together. What kids need to know is we’re going to continue to be a family, and one way we communicate that is by acting like a family in each home. It’s not just about entertaining or spending every waking moment together. It’s about having space and quiet moments and taking out the garbage and cooking dinner together on Saturday, or going to the soccer game, or taking a walk around the block, having friends over, being able to hang out with friends. Those are, and a lot of times that time becomes so precious that we start treating it differently.
0:55:22 – Krista Nash
Yes, that’s a really good point. Well, as we wrap this up, what would you tell parents about whether they need to have ongoing communication with kids after this like the idea of, let’s say, they have a big talk or they separately either together or separately have a big talk, is that it?
0:55:40 – Christina McGhee
Absolutely not. I say that tongue in cheek.
0:55:41 – Krista Nash
But yeah, it’s definitely not.
0:55:43 – Christina McGhee
Right, it’s never a one and done. What I want parents to hear loud and clear is divorce is not a single moment event. It’s an experience that becomes a part of children’s lives for the rest of their lives.
I don’t mean to depress parents, but the truth is, as your children continue to evolve and grow and change, different things are going to come up for them. You are going, as a family, going to be going through a lot of changes and transitions. Parents repartner, sometimes birth of new children, dating…etc. Your children are going to have life events, and all of it in some way may be connected to this change. How will we navigate this change in the family? And so I think it needs to be an ongoing conversation.
I had a parent once, a coaching client, so distressed she said Christina, my kids are still talking about divorce. They are still like saying gosh, mom, do you remember when you know you and dad first split up and you know the going back and forth? That was kind of difficult for us and we were a little bit sad, but now it feels better and we are okay with it. And I said so it’s sounding like to me your kids are just talking about how life has changed. Were they distressed? Were they upset? And she said no, not at all. It’s like they’re talking about the weather. And I said good job, mom, that’s what we’re aiming for, right? We want kids to be able to talk about it as a part of their life. But it’s not the first thing they’re thinking of when they wake up in the morning, and it’s not the last thing they’re thinking of when they go to bed at night.
0:57:22 – Krista Nash
I love that. One other final thing I think we should mention is just you. I know you talked about how, if you’ve messed something up, circle back.
0:57:33 – Christina McGhee
Yeah, if you mess up, fess up because no parent is going to get it right 100% of the time. And so you may be listening to this right now going, ooh God, I should have handled that very differently. Oh, I should have said this, I’ve really messed up. It’s never too late to start making a better choice, and you can always circle back to your kids and say, hey, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I heard a podcast, I talked to somebody and it made me think about the time when this happened and I didn’t show up for you the way I really wanted to. And here’s what I want you to know about moving forward.
0:58:11 – Krista Nash
One word I think that’s true, even if it’s been years of bad, even if they’re adults. One of the things that is powerful about divorce is it is an opportunity to teach kids about conflict, how we handle conflict, how we address problems with people, how we come back and repair things. Maybe not, obviously not the marriage usually but you know, you can go back and say it’s very powerful for a parent to go to a kid and say I think I did this in a way that wasn’t great for you, you know, and and that is so restorative, even if it’s years later.
0:58:44 – Christina McGhee
I think that’s absolutely true, incredibly meaningful to kids, and you are role modeling. Yes, when you don’t get it right, you own it. You step in to repair it, to right the wrong, and I think that’s a really powerful life lesson for kids.
0:59:01 – Krista Nash
That’s incredible. Well, I’ve got about 15 things listed that we’re going to talk about some other time in the next coming months. I appreciate you being with us to talk about this interesting and very important topic of how to talk to kids about this, and we’ve sprinkled all sorts of other topics in it, but I hope it’s really helpful to anybody who’s listening, including all those first responders and also, of course, parents. So I thank you for being here with us and if you want to hang out a minute, I will talk to you on the other side of this. Okay, great, great, thank you.
0:59:33 – Intro/Outro
Krista is licensed in Colorado and Wyoming. So if you are in those states and seek legal services, please feel free to reach out via ChildrenFirstFamilylaw.com that is our website where everyone can find additional resources to help navigate family law as always, be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.