Version anglaise · traduction en cours
Cet article est encore en anglais. La traduction en française est en cours.
'Is it because of me?'
Module 05 · Talking to children · Article 03 · Wave 1 cornerstone · 4–7, 8–12
Wednesday morning, 7:22 am. The school bag is packed. The shoes are by the door. Your six-year-old is at the kitchen table, half a piece of toast on his plate, not eating. He hasn't looked at you since he came downstairs. You finally ask him what's wrong. He says it without raising his eyes. Did you and Mama break up because I was being bad?
You stop. The toast is still on his plate. You sit down. The school bus is in fifteen minutes.
This article is about that sentence. It is, clinically, one of the most important conversations you will have in the first year. It is also one of the most common. Almost every separating family has at least one version of this conversation. Many have several. The shape of the answer matters enormously, and the moment is often badly chosen, and the parent is often unready, and the child waits months sometimes to ask, having held the question in their body the whole time.
The article walks through what's happening underneath the question, how to answer it in the moment, how to keep answering it over time, and how to recognise when it's still there even when it isn't being asked.
Why this question matters more than the others
There's a developmental pattern called magical thinking. It runs strongly in children roughly aged 3 to 8, with a long tail past 8. Magical thinking is the cognitive style in which the child believes their thoughts, wishes, and actions have causal power they don't actually have. I wished Daddy would go away and now Daddy is gone. I was naughty yesterday and now Mama is sad. I didn't eat my dinner three times and now my parents are getting divorced.
This isn't a flaw in the child's thinking. It's a normal developmental stage. The architecture for distinguishing I caused this from this happened around me is still being built. The child sees themselves at the centre of their world, because for the first years of their life, they were. The transition out of that takes years and isn't complete until well into school age.
In a separating family, magical thinking lands hard. The child has access to enormous evidence that something has gone wrong. Their parents are tense. One parent is leaving. The house is being divided up. The atmosphere is heavy. The child casts around for an explanation. Their cognitive style hands them themselves. It must be me.
This is why this question matters more than the others. Why can have a hundred different answers and the child can hold any of them. Is it because of me has one acceptable answer, and the answer has to land cleanly, and it has to be repeated over time, because the child will keep coming back to it.
There's also a quieter pattern that runs alongside magical thinking. Even if it wasn't my fault that this happened, maybe I can fix it. If I'm extra good. If I never row with my sister. If I get all good marks at school. If I stop asking for things. This is the child trying to earn the parents back together. They won't say this out loud. They will just become a smaller, more careful, less demanding version of themselves. The parent who notices the child becoming quieter and more compliant in the months after separation should consider whether the child is trying to fix things they cannot fix.
The answer, when it lands
The right answer to is it because of me has a specific shape. It cannot be paraphrased. The shape matters.
Sit down. Make eye contact. Don't answer this question over your shoulder. Don't answer it while doing the dishes. If the question lands and you can't sit down with the child right then, you say that is a really important question and I want to answer it properly. Can we sit down together for a minute before school? And then you do. The child has just risked something to ask the question. They need to feel that the question landed.
Say it directly. No. Nothing you did caused this. You did not cause this in any way. Not no, sweetheart, of course not, you've been such a good boy. That sentence carries the implication that being good is the test, and that the child could fail the test in the future. The answer is structural, not behavioural. You did not cause this.
Explain who is responsible. This is something Mama and I decided together as the grown-ups. It is a grown-up decision. It is not about anything you did or didn't do. The child needs to know that the decision belongs somewhere clearly identifiable, and that it does not belong to them.
Anticipate the second worry. Nothing you do now can change it either. You don't have to be extra good. You don't have to be quiet. You don't have to fix anything. We are not separating because of how you behave, and we are not going to come back together because of how you behave. This is the hardest sentence in the answer, and it is also the one most often missed. The child is not just asking did I cause this. They are also asking can I undo this. The answer to both is no, and the answer must include both.
Close with love. We both love you exactly the same. We are both still your parents. That is not going to change.
The whole answer is five or six sentences. It is not a long speech. It is direct, calm, and complete. The child needs the whole shape, not pieces of it.
When and how to bring it up if they haven't asked
Some children won't ask. They will hold the question silently for weeks or months. They are still working on it whether they ask or not.
The right move, with these children, is to bring it up yourself, gently, at a calm moment, without making it dramatic. Not on the day of telling them. About two to three days later, when the dust has begun to settle.
Hey. I wanted to mention something. Sometimes when grown-ups separate, children think it might be their fault. I want to make sure you know it's not. Nothing you did caused this. This was a grown-up decision. You did not make this happen, and you cannot change it by being extra good. We both love you. Okay?
That's the script. You don't need them to respond. Some children will say okay and move on. Some will start to cry. Some will ask follow-up questions. Some will say I know in a way that means they didn't know. All of these responses are acceptable. What matters is that you have named it. The child now knows that this is a thing that can be discussed, and that you are not asking them to hide the question.
Bring it up again two or three weeks later, more briefly. I just want to check in. Sometimes children think their parents separated because of them. I want you to know again that nothing you did caused this. Okay? This may feel repetitive to you. It is not repetitive to the child. They are processing. They need the reassurance laid down in layers.
After the first six months, the question retreats but doesn't disappear. Watch for it at moments of change. A new partner. A move. A new school. A sibling. These can re-activate the did I cause it question, even years later.
How to recognise when the question is there but not being asked
Many children won't ask directly. The question shows up in behaviour instead.
Becoming a smaller version of themselves. The child who was loud and expressive becomes quieter. The one who asked for things stops asking. The one who got into normal sibling scraps becomes the peacekeeper. This is the child trying to be more lovable, in case being lovable can fix things.
Apologising for things that don't need an apology. Sorry I'm hungry. Sorry I dropped this. Sorry I asked. The frequency of sorry in the first months after separation is a useful diagnostic. If it's gone up, something is being absorbed.
Behaviour deteriorating sharply. The other pattern, sometimes in the same child at different moments. Acting out, getting in trouble, defiance. The child is testing whether their behaviour can make things worse, or whether bad behaviour will bring the parents back together (since some children associate the parents' attention with negative behaviour). Both versions of this, extreme good and extreme bad, are signs that the child is trying to use their behaviour to control something they cannot control.
Hypervigilance about the parents' moods. The child watching you closely. Asking are you okay more than usual. Wanting to know whether the other parent is okay. Checking your face when they enter a room. The child is reading the temperature of the adults to figure out whether they are responsible for any drops.
Somatic complaints. Stomach aches. Headaches. Trouble sleeping. Reluctance to go to school. The body holds what the mind doesn't yet have words for. (Module 13 covers somatic patterns in detail.) Especially worth attending to when these appear in clusters with the behavioural signals above.
When you see any of these, don't wait for the child to ask. Bring it up. I've noticed you've been quieter lately. I want to remind you that nothing about this is your fault. You don't have to fix anything. We both love you. Then leave space. Don't push for a response. The child will absorb it over time.
Age by age
The shape of the answer doesn't change much by age. The texture does.
Ages 3 to 5. Magical thinking is at full power. The child may not have the language for the question, but the question is there. Use very simple language. You didn't make this happen. You did not do anything wrong. Mummy and Daddy love you the same. Repeat often, in simple words, over weeks.
Ages 5 to 8. This is the peak risk zone. Magical thinking is still strong, the child has the language to ask, and they have the developing awareness that something happened but not yet the cognitive architecture to understand adult causality. This is the age at which the answer must be most carefully held. Did I cause this and can I fix it are both asked, sometimes in the same conversation.
Ages 8 to 12. Magical thinking declines, but doesn't disappear. The child can now hold causality more accurately, but they may also hold guilt in a more sophisticated form. Maybe if I'd been better at school, Mama wouldn't have been so stressed. Maybe if we hadn't had so much tension about screen time, Daddy wouldn't have got tired of being a parent. The form of guilt becomes more nuanced. The reassurance must match. Nothing about school or screen time or our family life caused this. This was about Mama and Daddy as adults, not about anything you did or how you behaved.
Ages 13 to 17. The teenager is unlikely to ask the question in this form. The underlying worry, if it's there, shows up differently. As did I make you guys unhappy by being so much work as a teenager, or did the rows about my behaviour push you apart. Address it the same way. This was not about you. This was Mama and Daddy as adults. Even when our parenting decisions felt hard, that is not the reason we separated. You did not cause this.
The version where the child is partly right
There's a hard version of this question. The version where the child names something that is, technically, related.
Did you separate because you were always having tension about whether to send me to private school. Did Daddy leave because I told him I hated him last summer. Did Mama get tired because my anxiety made everything harder.
In each case, the child is naming something that may have been present in the marriage. The honest answer is the same answer. No. Whatever disagreements we had about you were our disagreements as parents. Even when we didn't see eye to eye on how to handle things, that is not why we separated. Our separation is about us as adults. Your behaviour, our parenting disagreements, the things that happened, none of those things caused this. The reason we separated is not your job to know.
The temptation, when a parent feels the child is half-onto something true, is to acknowledge it partly. Well, we did disagree a lot about that, but it wasn't really the reason. Don't do this. The child will hear the first half (we did disagree a lot about that) and lose the second half. They will file it as a yes.
The answer stays clean. No. You did not cause this. The complications can come later, in a different conversation, often years later, as part of a much broader reflection on family life. Not at six. Not at nine. Not in answer to is it because of me.
The thing the child is still carrying, years later
For most children, the did I cause it question fades within the first eighteen months of consistent reassurance and stable two-home life. The body lets it go.
For some children, it stays. Often invisibly. The teenager who is excessively well-behaved. The young adult who never says no. The pattern of taking responsibility for things they did not cause. These are sometimes the long tail of the unanswered did I cause this. The child grew up believing, in a layer they could not articulate, that family stability depended on their behaviour, and that they had failed in some way.
If you suspect this is your child, even years later, you can name it. I want to say something to you. Sometimes I worry that you carry too much responsibility for things that aren't yours. The separation between Mama and me was never about you. I don't know if anyone has said that clearly enough for you to believe it. I want to say it now. You didn't cause it. You couldn't have prevented it. You don't have to make up for it. You never did.
This conversation can happen at fifteen. Or at twenty-five. The child can receive it at any age. It still works.
Closing
Is it because of me is the most important sentence your child will say in the first year, and it might not be said out loud.
The answer is specific. No. Nothing you did caused this. This is a grown-up decision. You cannot make it happen and you cannot make it un-happen. You don't have to be extra good. We both love you exactly the same.
Say it when they ask. Say it before they ask. Say it again two weeks later. Say it when you notice them becoming smaller. Say it when you notice them acting out. Say it on the third birthday after the separation. Say it again when they're twenty and engaged to be married.
The body remembers being told this. The body also remembers not being told. Choose which one your child carries forward.
Wednesday morning. The toast is on the plate. The school bus is in fifteen minutes. You sit down. You make eye contact. You say it. No. None of this is because of you. Mama and I decided. You didn't do anything wrong, and there's nothing you can do to fix it. We love you exactly the same. The bus will be here soon. Can I make you something else for breakfast?