My (ex)husband and I are divorcing, it was our last resort after he has repeatedly cheated and lied to me and damn near assaulted me when I called him out. My ex is staying with his parents. Even though our son loves his grandparents and he loves being there so much the separate housing situation is leading to so many tears. He cries before he has to go, is very upset and confused and says he doesn’t want two houses and two rooms.
I can’t tell him that I don’t want that for our family either. He keeps asking why daddy cant be with us and why I can’t be with daddy. Even when we try to make his week fun he always misses the other parent and is very sulky and sad about it.
He heard about divorce at school from another kid and even though we’ve tried explaining to him what it means whatever he heard first at school really affected him. We reassured him that it isn’t fault, that we love him, that he won’t be stopped from seeing either of us.
I am doing my best to be as amicable and possible for his sake but he’s struggling so much with it. How do I make him understand?
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You’re doing the right things, and hopefully your ex is as well. Your son may benefit from a visit or two with a therapist to help get his feelings out and deal with them.
For the sake of your child you cannot lie about this. The husband and father should be the protector of the family and he failed at that task. Letting your son admire him is cruel.
Preface: am a social worker with much focus on grief and loss, especially when it comes to separation and death. It’s my jam. Ontop of this, I’m currently navigating the same situation, in a different font (she is 6 and still in the process of grieving her grandfathers abandonment shortly before she turned 5. Grief is not linear, it comes in waves).
FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT:
You can tell him that it makes you sad too. You can tell him that this isn’t what you wanted either. in fact you should tell him. It’s actually really important to be (appropriately) emotionally honest and model emotional intelligence for your kids. It helps them learn to process big feelings without shame or confusion. This will also strengthen his relationship with you and his comfort and understanding that he can 1. Come to you in the future to share in his feelings and experiences and 2. Know that he has a safe and supportive space to process and feel his emotions.
Play therapy can be a really effective place to start for this kind of situation. A good child therapist can help your son make sense of the changes through play, which is often how kids express what they don’t have words for. And that therapist can also guide you on what’s developmentally appropriate to say, and what emotional tools you can use at home to help him feel safe and connected.
Also, just something to consider—your son’s emotional responses may be very different depending on which household he’s in. That doesn’t necessarily mean one environment is bad or unsafe, but it does mean he’s getting different emotional messages and cues, even unintentionally. For example, if emotions aren’t talked about much at dad’s or if everyone acts like everything’s “fine” all the time, your son might be saving up all his big feelings and letting them out with you—because you’re the safe, emotionally available parent. That’s exhausting, but it’s actually a sign that he trusts you to help him carry those feelings.
One way to support him at home is to make emotional check-ins part of your daily rhythm—storybooks about family change, drawing out feelings, naming emotions out loud (“It’s okay to miss daddy while we’re having fun too”), and creating rituals for transitions between homes. Play therapy can also help bridge those differences between households and give you more tools to support him where you have control: in your own space, your own tone, your own steadiness.
Obviously, you don’t want to tell him the full story of why the relationship broke down—he’s not at an age where that kind of information would help him, and it’s wise of you to protect his relationship with his dad regardless of what’s happened between the two of you. That takes a lot of maturity, especially when you’re hurting too.
You’re already doing the right things—reassuring him, staying consistent, trying to keep things amicable. But the hard truth is that this is just hard. It’s normal for kids to grieve the family they thought they had. Let him have that sadness without rushing to fix it. Just stay present and loving through it. That’s what he’ll remember.
Edit: I do sound like chat GPT because I am an academic and chat writes like academics. Please forgive me 🙁 😂
Edit 2: if you are unhappy that I suggested she was wise for keeping visits with dad kosher, please see my response below. It’s for legal reasons, not emotional ones. OP is in the PROCESS of divorce, not post divorce, not post custody arrangement, but actively in the pit of the process.
I don’t think you can make him understand. You have to make him feel safe, secure and loved while he navigates through this new lifestyle until it becomes normal. He’s too old to not fear change and too young to understand the reasons it. All you can do is patiently get through this period until he’s a little older and things settle, which they will. The biggest mistake I made, and would change, is holding my kids responsible for managing the complexities (to them) of having 2 homes. For example leaving stuff at one house that needed to go to the other or missing out on something at one house because they were at the other. In a heartbeat I’d go back and remove that stress somehow even if it meant dragging myself out at midnight to deliver said item or giving up my own plans to allow him to make choices rather than be forced to spend time with the parent whose turn it was. Your son is going to go through some awful experiences, in his view. Listen to him, love him and care for him – together. You may no longer be family to each other but you are each his family.
Always remind him that you and his dad love him. At the heart of his worries is the fear that his dad left because he doesn’t love him.
It’s heartbreaking to see how much your child is hurting and it makes sense that you’re struggling to explain something so complex without causing more pain… I think it’s important to keep the conversation open and honest while reassuring him that both parents love him deeply, and maybe consider involving a counselor who can help him process his feelings in a safe space, it might give him someone else to talk to and make things feel less overwhelming.
Sweetheart, you don’t make him understand. He’s five. His job isn’t to understand. It’s to feel safe.
Right now, his whole little world is cracking open. He doesn’t care about your reasons, even if they’re good ones. He just wants everything back the way it was. That’s not because he’s naive. It’s because he’s a child. Stability is everything at that age.
So here’s what you do. You keep your voice soft. You keep the routines steady. You let him cry without trying to fix it. You say things like, “It’s okay to feel sad. I feel sad too sometimes.” You hold space, not court. This isn’t the time to explain adult mistakes. It’s the time to show him what love looks like when things are hard.
When he asks why you and daddy aren’t together, give him a truth his heart can carry. Say,
“Sometimes grownups stop being good teammates. But we both love you, and we’re still your team.”
Don’t trash his father. But don’t sugarcoat him either. Let his dad’s behavior do the talking. Kids see more than we think. They remember how things felt, not how they were explained.
And you? You’re already doing the hardest part. Staying kind when you’ve been hurt. That’s real strength. That’s what he’ll grow up remembering.
Let him grieve. Let him be mad. Let him miss what was.
Stop trying to make it okay too soon. He has to go through it. You both do.
You’re teaching him how to survive heartbreak. That’s part of parenting too.
I was 5 when my parents separated and it was really hard. The good news is that once custody and dad’s living situation is settled and this becomes routine this will be the norm for him. It was really hard for me at first (I always missed the other parent) but once we got into a groove it was fine. But he’s in a transition that came out of nowhere (to him) and he’s going to struggle a little. He’s 5!
All you can do is reassure him he’s loved, try to keep routines in place as much as possible, maintain normalcy as much as possible, and listen to him.
Can his pediatrician offer a referral for a therapist who specializes in young kids/divorce? Maybe play therapy to get his feelings out will help.
A child therapist that specializes in separation and divorce would help. In the meantime what you do is focus on how much he is loved by everyone in his life. When he asks why daddy can’t be with you, redirect the conversation. “I know you want daddy to come home with us, but its going to be so much fun when you see him on (whatever day).”Get him a calendar for both places. Have him mark down the days until he sees dad and when with dad have him mark the days until he returns to you.
Try implementing routine with a fun activity or meal that only happens the day of the switch. Like the morning he goes to daddy is the day he gets to eat his favorite cereal or you have smiley pancakes together. And the night he returns to you have special mommy nuggets or mac & cheese. Or its the night you 2 watch a favorite movie together so he can cuddle and reconnect after missing you. (This is not a suggestion to bribe him with toys or sweets. This is about making something not fun associated with something he does enjoy.)
Family therapy with a therapist specializing in divorce and dealing with children.
I am going to be blunt here. You and your soon to be ex are not the right people for this. You are hurting and you are the causes of your child’s hurt.
Your child needs a safe person to help process this and without worrying about how Mommy and Daddy are going to react to his pain, anger and hurt.
Next you need to find a child-appropriate way for both of you to tell your son the truth about the breakup. Look around reddit, other forums. Hiding the truth from your child is more harmful over the long run. A good therapist can help your child process this and help you find appropriate ways to explain it.
So three things. First, you need to get your son into therapy. He is struggling with the explosion of his life and he needs a trained professional to help him navigate those emotions. Second, you should invest in age appropriate books that talk about different types of families and books about divorce. The books can help him visualize what your family can look like, even though you and daddy are no longer together. Third, you need to find a single parent support group and plan some playdates, you’d be surprised at what kids talk about amongst themselves. For example me and my ex separated when our daughter was 3 months old. So she spent her entire life with us not being together. When she was about 6, she had a friend whose parents were apparently going through a divorce. The friend asked her about what it was like for her dad to live not at home. Her answer must have been helpful because she ended up being like the go to person in her class for when kids were going through a divorce. I spent the whole year contacting parents like, “Hey, so sorry to be contacting you like this, but just so you are aware your kid came up to my kid to ask about parents, not living together. I just wanted to let you know that this happened” Definitely the oddest school year of her life, but it’s happened continuously all year long. It made me realize kids talk amongst themselves so much about emotional things they cannot understand and they seek out others who might understand to help them make sense of things. So your son having another kid that has experienced the same thing who he can talk with about what it looks like on the other side, might be so much more beneficial than you know.
There are age appropriate ways to address this like “mommy’s and daddies aren’t allowed to have boyfriends and girlfriends. Daddy had a girlfriend”. Please check out the Chump Lady website. There are many moms there who have navigated this with young kids.