Divorce and children: This is what children want now

When the family breaks up because of a divorce, children usually react with sad silence. The author Mrs. Dr. Karin Jäckel compiled a list of 20 requests that children make to their parents in a divorce to ease the difficult situation:

• Never forget: I am the child of both of you. I now have one parent who is my primary home and cares for me most of the time, but I need the other one as well.
• Don’t ask me which of you two I like better. I love you both equally. So don’t put others down in front of me. Because that hurts me.
• Help me keep in touch with the parent I’m not with all the time. Dial his phone number for me or write the address on an envelope. Help me to make or buy a nice gift for the other person for Christmas or a birthday. Always makes a copy of new photos of me for the other.
• Talk to each other like adults. But talk. And do not use me as a messenger between you – especially not for messages that make the other sad or angry.
• Don’t be sad if I go to the other. The one I’m leaving shouldn’t think that I’ll have a bad time in the next few days either. I wish I could always be with you both. But I can’t tear myself in two just because you tore our family apart.
• Never plan anything for the time that is mine with the other parent. Part of my time belongs to my mother and me, part to my father and me. Stick to it consistently.
• Don’t be disappointed or angry if I’m with the other person and don’t get in touch with you. I have two homes now. I have to distinguish them well – otherwise I wouldn’t know my way around in my life at all.
• Don’t leave me at someone else’s door like a package. Invite the other in for a moment and talk about how you can make my difficult life easier. When I’m picked up or dropped off, there are brief moments when I have you both. Don’t destroy that by ignoring each other or by fighting.
• Let me pick you up from kindergarten or at friends’ house if you can’t bear to look at each other.
• Don’t argue in front of me. At least be as polite to each other as you are to other people and as you ask me to be.
• Don’t tell me things I can’t understand yet. Talk about it with other adults, but not with me.
• Let me bring my friends to both of you. I wish that they know my mother and my father and think they are great.
• Agree fairly on the money. I don’t want one of you to have a lot of money and the other very little. You two should be doing so well that I’m comfortable with you both.
• Don’t try to spoil me in a race. I can’t eat as much chocolate as I love you both.
• Tell me frankly if you don’t get along with the money. For me, time is much more important than money anyway. I get much more from a fun game together than from a new toy.
• Don’t always do so much “action” with me. It doesn’t always have to be something great or new when you do something with me. For me it’s best when we’re just happy, playing and having a bit of rest.
• Leave as much of my life as it was before your breakup. It starts with my children’s room and ends with the little things that I did all by myself with my father or mother.
• Be nice to the other grandparents – even if they were more loyal to their own child when you separated. You would also stand by me if I was feeling bad! I don’t want to lose my grandparents too.
• Be fair to the new partner one of you finds or has already found. I also have to come to terms with this person. I can do better if you don’t jealously stalk each other. Anyway, it would be best for me if you two find someone to love soon. Then you won’t be so mad at each other anymore.
• Be optimistic. You didn’t manage your marriage – but let’s at least get the time after that right. Go through my requests to you. Maybe you can talk to each other about it. But don’t argue. Don’t use my requests to accuse the other of how bad they are to me. If you do that, you haven’t understood how I feel now and what I need to feel more comfortable.