Children's attitude to what is happening

When I divorced my first wife many years ago, I was left as a single father, with practically nothing. We with children lived in a rented house, where there was almost no furniture. One evening we talked to my son, sitting on boxes, and I felt a deep sense of guilt over the fact that the children had to go through all this. I said to him: "Boy, I'm really sorry that it happened. I'm worried because you had to go through this. "And do you know what he said?"Come on, Dad! This is wonderful! It's so interesting! "

Of course, he did not mean that his parents broke up. But I was worried because of the bad, from my point of view, conditions of our life, but it turned out that for the son it was like a prolonged vacation in the camping. I thought that he feels the same as I felt, but I was very wrong!

But it happens the other way round. Sometimes children experience much more than us. For example, you at school paid little attention to callousness, and your child can suffer very much from them. Or you can easily change your place of residence if your new job requires it, and for your teenage daughter it's just a disaster. At the same time, the emotional trauma the child suffers is quite real, and you must take it seriously. It is not enough just to advise you to be stronger, to tell your daughter that she will make new friends, or that you can communicate on the Internet.("But in our time we could not!")

If it concerns children's emotions, especially in a truly crisis situation, your own feelings should not define anything at all. The only thing that matters is the feelings of the children. One of my good acquaintances suddenly died a husband. The children reacted to the sad news with varying degrees of grief, but she noticed that later on the same day they could laugh and play. She told me that at first she was almost equally unpleasant to see children happy or, conversely, unhappy. But do not forget that children are otherwise experiencing grief, and you do not need to compare your and their reactions.