Our family was no stranger of divorce from the get-go. When I met my husband, both of my parents were divorced and remarried while his parents were divorced. When I was pregnant with my twins, my husband’s father remarried and a few years later, my husband’s mother remarried.
Our kids were growing up with double the set of grandparents to love them, and we weren’t complaining. The kids never knew anything different – we referred (and still do) all grandmothers as “Grammy” and grandfathers as “Papa” with their last name attached to help sort out the difference.
Recently, though, one set of the grandparents got divorced.
That wasn’t something we were ready to explain to the kids. They knew what divorce meant as we explained why they were fortunate to have so many sets of grandparents, but this was something we weren’t expecting.
What we reminded our kids was that they were loved. That wasn’t going to change. They were loved by us, they were loved by their grandparents, other family members and friends.
In our case, with the grandparents who were getting divorced, we knew the non-biological grandparent wasn’t going to stay in the picture. So we prepared our kids for this. We explained to our kids that this set of grandparents was no longer going to be married, and we wouldn’t see the non-biological grandparent anymore because of this.
For my kids, this didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. However, over time, they began to ask questions about the non-biological grandparent, and we would remind them that their former “Grammy and Papa” were no longer married, but they still had one of the grandparents in the picture, on top of the several other grandparents who loved them.
My kids are still young enough to not take too much of this to heart, especially since they now see the biological grandparent who got divorced a lot more now. I also know that if this happened with a different set of grandparents, not having the non-biological grandparent in their life would crush them.
Every divorce is different, and the ripple effects from it are different, too. When it comes to grandparents getting a divorce, look at your situation and use your best judgment when talking with your kids. Explore factors such as:
- How close are your kids to the grandparents, whether they’re biological or not? That was the biggest factor in our approach to this divorce.
- After the divorce, what will your relationship be like with the grandparents? Again for us, we knew ahead of time we didn’t want to have a relationship with the non-biological grandparent and were excited to build up the relationship of their biological grandparent.
- Who else will be affected by the divorce? We knew our kids would be affected, but there was also another child related to the non-biological grandparent who my kids were also close to. Because of the divorce, they no longer get to see this child. It’s hard when the kids ask about this child, but we again want to be honest with them and not set up false hope of continuing a relationship with their friend.
From my experience, the best advice I can give is to take your children’s lead. My older kids are far more aware of the separation compared to my youngest, but we also decided we want to be an open book when it comes to all types of experiences. I fully believe every relationship happens for a reason, and I know our whole family has grown from this recent experience.
