I believe in telling kids the age-appropriate truth about why the divorce is happening. But I have something else that I struggle with. My ex did NOT want to have kids. I now know I should never have had kids with him, and I'll always regret it (having them with HIM, not regret my children!). However, I did have the children.
As children naturally do, they ask about their origins. What I've never told them is that Daddy did not want to have them. In fact, Daddy wanted me to abort them. Daddy would not to go prenatal appointments. He would not help me when I was on strict bedrest. Would not get me food, would not get me drinks. He told me when I was in the hospital with a threatened miscarriage that he hoped the baby would die and nature would take its course (baby did not die, thank God). He grew angry with me when I had Braxton-Hicks and would moan a bit from the pain (I tried so hard to be quiet!). When I fell & hurt myself, he would not take me to the hospital, I had to call around to the neighbors and finally found someone who's dad would come over at 9:30 at night to drive me to the ER.
I almost died during delivery, almost bleeding to death as well as seizing from a reaction to the anesthesia. He abandoned me in the hospital after birth, leaving me completely alone. He even told my parents not to come to the hospital, that I didn't want visitors, leaving me even more alone than I could have imagined. I was alone for almost 48 hours. The hospital assigned a social worker to me as a result. He refused to take a single moment of paternal leave. He would not drive me home from the hospital.
When the church ladies brought food over, he would not let me eat it until he'd eaten his fill. At that point the food would be cold. A few times he ate it all. I got nothing. Even though I was trying to nurse, he'd secretly put a finger in the baby's mouth or sneak a bottle, totally confusing the baby and making nursing even harder. One time I was nursing my son, my ex thought that he'd nursed long enough, so he actually grabbed my infant and yanked him off my breast, even though he was still drinking and firmly latched on. To this day I don't know how my nippled stayed on. When my baby was three weeks old he told me to choose, baby or him, and reminded me that a Good Christian Wife would always choose her husband.
He would view porn & masturbate while holding one of the girls.
On one of the baby's first birthday he told me that he would never forgive me for forcing fatherhood on him. That he would NEVER love the baby, would never accept children at all, that I'd ruined his life. He told me he would always hate me because of what I'd done to him.
SO, I don't know how to answer my children when they ask me questions about their infancy and wonder about their Dad's involvement. I try to evade without lying. They have occasionally asked questions which make it clear they have romantic ideas of their father staying up nights to care for them, or that their father made special trips to the store to get me food I was craving during the pregnancy. They've ruminated about him changing their diapers or rocking them to sleep. In truth I did it all as a single mom.
How do I approach these kind of conversations & questions? Their father wanted them dead. He hated me for bringing them into the world. He did everything in his power to make me miscarry and suffer. He was too dangerous to be around them when they were infants. Even up to the point that I kicked him out of the house he was still telling the neighbors how he resented being a father because of the financial burden. The kids seem to be forgetting how horrible & evil he was to live with. One time we were talking about how they used to sleep in my room. They didn't remember how they used to BEG to sleep in my room because they were so afraid of Daddy. Don't worry, I didn't hammer that point, I simply mentioned something about it and they didn't recall. So they don't remember barricading the door to keep Daddy from coming in & killing us in our sleep. The memory is fading about his rages and how he would terrorize us all with screams & threats. They forgot that it was Daddy who got rid of our cat a few years ago because he was mad.
Are they compartmentalizing everything? I don't know how to have conversations when my reality is so crystal clear, but they don't remember anything. I don't know what to say when they want to know about the tender loving care their father lavished upon them as babies, when in reality I was afraid he would bash their brains in if they cried. They don't know that one of the church ladies confided in me that he has been asking her to take the children & give them to other families in the church because he didn't want to be woken up at night anymore.
Yes, of course this is something to talk about with the family counselor. I value the advice I get on SI, too, though.
