Whilst every child's experience with family break ups will be unique, it can sometimes cause emotional distress. Our Coping with Divorce toolkit can help your children navigate a potentially unsettling time in their lives.

Why does divorce impact children's mental health?

Children can experience many emotions when parents and caregivers split up and can be faced with big changes ahead. They may have lots of questions and the future may seem uncertain - who will they live with? How will their time be split? Who will take them to school? Even if children feel relieved at a family break-up - for example, where violence or abuse is present - most children will still go through some loss and grief.

Our coping with divorce toolkit has over 15 activities to help children cope with change, manage their emotions and communicate their thoughts and feelings, including:

Resources to help children cope with change - Children thrive on routine and when families break up this can be a huge change to the routine they are used to. Some break ups may require a change of school or some family members may move further away. Children may also have to deal with not seeing either caregiver as much. It can be hard to cope with unknown change - our activities can help children to explore what is changing and how they feel about it.

Resources to help children manage unhelpful thoughts and worries - Studies show that children who experience parent separation can feel more insecure and have more self-critical thoughts. In our coping toolkit, we also have activities to help children explore what's on their mind and help them communicate their worries and unhelpful thoughts with an adult that they trust.

Resources to facilitate open communication and questions - As with all of our resources, our divorce resources for kids have a huge emphasis on helping your child communicate their emotions, thoughts and needs with you. You'll find resources to help them to explore their own thoughts and questions and write down things they want to ask/explore with you. We would always recommend finding time to sit with your child to go through any questions they have.

Children who are part of changing family dynamics will no doubt have lots and lots of questions. Some will have easy answers and some may not have answers at all. Particularly, children in emotional distress may have many 'why' questions - 'why is this happening to me?' for example. Even though we can't provide clear answers to these questions, we can help to alleviate some of the worry through discussion and coping tools.

Resources to explore emotions and coping tools - This moves us naturally on to the next part of our toolkit, where we explore the complex emotions of grief and change. Plus we have lots of activities to help your children learn vital coping skills that they can take with them throughout life's ups and downs, such as breathing exercises and more.

Encourage positive thinking and daily self care practises - Finally our toolkit finishes with helping children explore ways to look after themselves whilst your family finds a new routine. From introducing self care concepts to helping children to find the positives in each week.

Whether you’re a parent, caregiver or professional – helping children understand and navigate changing family dynamics can only have a positive impact on their wellbeing. Download this resource pack to help them explore and communicate how they feel and develop coping skills to face change with confidence.