I AM A PARENT WHO NEEDS HELP SPEAKING WITH KIDS ABOUT INFIDELITY
You should start by giving yourself a huge gold star for considering your children right now. If you are here, I imagine that you have been cheated on, or have had an affair and are hoping to stay connected with your partner and children. Either way, you are managing a huge amount of emotion, so bravo for thinking of your kids when your plate is surely full.
I promise, you will be so glad that you did.
The research is clear. A parent’s affair effects the children in the family deeply, including the way that the children feel about themselves, their parents, and their own romantic relationships. From my own personal experience of growing up with a mom who cheated, I can tell you that communicating with your children about the affair is critical. Not just for your present, but for your future. Every parent I know (including myself!) wants a close relationship with their children into adulthood. Tackling the topic of your infidelity now will help to ensure that. Avoid it now, and you risk alienating your children in the future.
Of course, how you speak with your children about infidelity depends on many factors, including their age, the details of the affair, and the culture you live in. There is no cookie-cutter solution for everyone. Did you know that there had not been any scholarly research conducted on the best age or way to communicate with children about parent infidelity? As a social worker with 10 years of experience as a child and family therapist, I have some ideas about how to speak with kids about affairs. I can also recommend Dr. Ana Nogales’ book Parents Who Cheat, for additional information about how children cope with parent infidelity and how, as a parent, you can help them.
As parents hoping to speak with your children about infidelity, one of the best things you can do is to get together to support each other, and help each other to find the best answers for each of your unique families. I have set up a few options for this:
Follow me on Instagram @the.outgrow.infidelity.project
r/KidsofCheatingParents: My Reddit page where I post and comment. Reddit allows you to create an avatar that is completely anonymous.
Also, I have a blog about children and parental infidelity (read on!), which includes several summaries of the latest research on the effects of unfaithful parents on their children and even their communities.
HAVE A SPECIFIC QUESTION?
From the hundreds of messages I have received from teens and young adults about their parent’s cheating, here are three crucial but often-missed factors to consider when speaking with your kids about infidelity.