My wife walked out on me and our children

First off, I'm sorry that this has happened. It cannot be easy.

That having been said, your children need medical treatment, just as surely as if they all had contracted the measles. They are hurting and they need help from a therapist, an objective person who can help them. It does not have to be drugging them up, it can just be talking.

I urge you to get professional help for your children and, frankly, I'm surprised that the school has apparently not suggested this already.

Hey Tank

Yep, ditto Jes' thoughts there...

you need to get the kids into some sort of counselling, and fast - I believe they would be experiencing something similar to a bereavement - however, their mother is still around and the shock, anger and frustration inside them must be huge. How can they possibly understand? They can't. It's difficult for an adult to understand - so they can't possibly comprehend right now why their mother has left.

Go and talk to the school SENCO - there will be a Special Needs Coordinator in your school - they can make a referral to a counsellor (internal or external) from the school. The other route is going to your GP (doctor) and insisting the children are referred to some family counselling. You need to be honest and open with whom you are talking to - that can be very hard because it's admitting that your wife has left - but it's the only way for the schooldoctor/friends/family to know how badly your kids are hurting.

You need to make this a priority - however, saying that, I can completely understand that during this time, where you have not been able to get a grip on the situation, that you needed to take care of yourself and get yourself in a better place in your head. Now that you are more able to cope with everything, please do talk to the school/GP as soon as possible.


Do continue to take care of yourself Tank - try and get some normality into the kids lives - seeing their friends, inviting people over, routines.... I dunno... the activities that your kids usually do. They need to see that you are strong too and need your reassurance every day.

Please believe me tho, kids can be incredibly resilient - please don't think that it will always be this hard - of course, I can't say for sure about anything because I don't know your kids, but I work with kids and they are resilient little creatures. Get them into some kind of counselling asap.

Keep talking if you wish to - there's a lot of parents on the A2Kboard who can give you advice, keep talking, and you'll get some different perspectives.

May I ask what you are telling your children about why their mother left?

And also, how is their mother behaving towards them? How does she talk to them, how often, does she visit them, what is she saying to them, etc? And do you tell them anything about her behaviour towards them?

There are plenty of children who are children of divorce, that don't end up so angry or traumatised - and there must be reasons that all of yours are so disturbed.

Some above suggested that your children need to see a counsellor, and there's nothing wrong with that (other than the obvious statement that it makes 'there's something wrong with you'). Have you been to see one on how to deal with the situation?

Also, I'd be ordering a few books in from amazon or something like that if I were you - you can't allow this to go on without gaining more information on how to handle it (the whole reason I suggest you personally see a counsellor for this specific issue)

The thing is - you can't control what other people do, but are you unintentially contributing to the situation by what you are doing, or perhaps more importantly, by what you are not doing?

Well, I tell them that mommy has some feelings to figure out. They are not stupid, mommy has told them that she is living with a friend Sam. My 14 yr old figured it out right away. The 2 oldest (14 and 12) our my step children, they have been left when their father walked out on their mom and now their mom has walked out on me and them as well. Their mom visits 4hrs on tuesday and 4hours on thursday and alternate weekends. She visits in my home and takes the kids to my sisters for her weekend visits. all she tells them is she doesnt know what she wants and she doesnt know what she is doing. I do have the kids in counsilling, she has been away for 2 weeks but they go back on friday. They are just having a tough time. The uncertanty is extremely hard for them. they are all trying to play match maker and get mommy and daddy back together. i am a lost parent here, i havent always been around, i was a workaholic and worked 12-15hrs a day 6 days a week, now i am home all the time, and work is suffering. I am trying to find the proper balance but my children need me more now then ever before. So i came on here to ask others advice. if you have any please share.

You are the parent, so it is up to you to set the tone. The counselling is, of course, wonderful, but they are not in counselling 24/7. What's really important is that you maintain an upbeat, positive home environment for them. It's not the end of the world - she hasn't died, and she does visit. It the big scheme of things, it's not that big a deal. I think everyone's taking this too hard. That may sound harsh, but I've been through what they're going through, so I'm talking from my own experience.

You just can't focus on the negative, and you can't allow them to do that, either. Find some fun, happy stuff to do, inject a little levity into their lives. Do something completely different - take them bowling at 10 p.m., serve dessert first at dinner once in a while, rent some comedies for them to watch (Uncle Buck's a good one), allow one at a time to decide what's for dinner (and it could be anything)...things like that.

This may sound very simplistic, but I hope you get what I'm saying. Don't let it all be doom and gloom and don't analyze everything to death. Find something positive about the situation and just go with that. It is what it is, so make the best of it.

It really is not the end of the world and it doesn't need to be so depressing.

If I may (and this is only my opinion) I disagree with Mame.

One of the things about children is - while their reasoning faculty may not be fully developed - they aren't stupid - they just lack experience and knowledge (and a fully developed reasoning section of their brain). Children often know when somethings wrong, and it's not uncommon for them (or for us as adults if you think about it) when they don't know the reasons that someone does something - it's not uncommon for them to make up the reason as to why someone does something. Sometimes (not always) the only reason they can think of, is that they must have done something wrong.

Children can put two and two together and know when something is wrong. They can (that's can, not necessarily 'will') intuit that something is wrong with an explanation.

At a young age, what they don't understand is that their parents are human - many kids grow up believing everything their parents tell them, being inspired by everything they do, and using how their parents react as a model for how they interact with the world etc.

So for these reasons I disagree with Mame - her walking out on them is a very big deal.

The thing is - I don't think you should hide the fact that their mother is human (and may as well throw yourself in there for good measure). Nor do I think you should avoid the topic of whether or not their mother loves them (they certainly won't avoid it in their head). But I do think that whenever you broach either topic, you do so with respect to their mother (whether she deserves it or not), and respect to the children (it's possible when treating one party with respect, to unintentially treat the other party with disrespect). The reason for the respect is that, once again, it shows that you understand that people are human. Showing respect by the way, does not mean excusing behaviour - it means understanding it and finding the validity in it that (in this case) their mother found in it (the decision she made).

It may sound difficult, but boil it down and it equals this - understand and respect the validity of the reasons (from her perspective) that their mother had, understand and respect the childrens reactions, and explain the truth of it to them - letting them know their parents are human.

Hope it helps.

There's nothing wrong with being confused. That's what mom is feeling right now. And it's not about being a mom, it's about being a wife to YOU.

So take the pressure off the kids and tell them this is an adult issue, not a mom/kid thing and she is and will forever be their mom. She IS seeing them.

Then man-up and get into marriage counseling - alone or with her to figure out how both of you are going to continue to be good parents until you can decide what to do about the marriage.

You admit you were a neglectful husband and probably didn't have much to do with the kids, too. They miss the person who WAS there for them. You've got a lot of make-up work to do, kiddo.