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Everyone has told me over and over my kids will benefit from this split with the A and myself. I have told them that i hid it so well from my kids, my A didn't drink at home...he would disappear and be gone for long periods of time. My kids would think he was working out of town. Everyone says...including ppl on here that my kids new what was going on......well..they really didn't.
My oldest son knows because he saw a lot of it and remembers some of the chaos.. Only because he's the oldest and an adult now. I've really truly done a good job at hiding it from the other 3. I talked to my 15 year old yesterday and he said he truly had NO idea all of that about his dad. He never knew, he said he knew that dad drank a bit and that it upset me, but he didn't know the extent of it. So you see....are my kids really better off? They had no idea...their life was good...it was mine that was in turmoil....
I will be interested to hear what other people have to say. One thing I think is that if your kids weren't impacted much about your A's weirdness, you did a very good (if tiring) job of keeping things normal for them. That must have required a good deal of stalwartness on your part -- you did two people's jobs of protecting them, where you should only have had to do one -- but I would imagine your kids feel safer and better for your efforts.
The other thing I have to mention is that in a way kids aren't the best reporters of what they experience, while they're still growing. I didn't grow up in an alcoholic family, but there were some other dysfunctional family secrets. I've been an adult a long time now, and it's only lately that I've begun to understand what was going on. My dad was absent a lot too, and I took it for granted, along with various other things that seem odd in retrospect. And there was a price to be paid for keeping the secrets. I knew that some things made my mom uncomfortable, and shouldn't be brought up. I knew that our family did things a certain way, and we were different from other families, but I thought that was just an unquestionable fact. So the family secrets changed the dynamics of things, even though I took it all for granted. And if you had asked me, I would have said, "Everything is fine, what could be the problem?"
What we were lacking was authenticity. It took me a long time to be able to say something was wrong, because the secret law of my family was that "Nothing is Wrong." And so I lost the ability to recognize whether something was wrong. I don't mean "wrong" like "bad," I mean "wrong" like "not good for me." I've had to reclaim the ability to speak the truth -- and to recognize it. It's been a long hard road.
What I see you doing is reclaiming the truth -- saying that something is not healthy for your family, and acting on that. Your kids will certainly have to readjust their view of the world. But it will be a healthier, more authentic view, if your family is like mine. I wish my mother had had the courage to say it like it was. But her only defense against hard truths was denial. That was an unfortunate pattern. It's so good to learn other ways of approaching hard truths. Those are my thoughts -- take what you like if it fits.
Children dont make judgements like adults. Well if they didnt know before, now they know and if they asked, I would just tell them their Father is sick.
No need for them to know the details of whats going on between you and the AH, their relationship to their Father is totally different than yours. I have learned its best to only tell them what they ask.
Hope you and your family will find all the solutions that will be the best outcome for all of you. Wishing you strength hope and courage. Bettina
I know my kids knew. It wasn't well hidden and he used on the property even though I asked him many times not to.
Even though they saw all that they love him and miss him terribly.
What the kids have noticed is the changes in me. I am different. I am better off and in turn I am a much better mom for it.
I am not worried about money as much, I am not worried about him getting arressted while he has my car, I am not worried about coming home from a meeting and finding out he is using in our garage and I know that I made the right choice for me.
Do I wish things could have been different? Yes of course, but I really like where my life is going now and I am happy for the first time in years.
Yours in recovery, Mandy
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"We are not punished for our unforgiveness, we are punished by it" Jim Stovall
I thought my younger two kids were clueless. My older son was definately badly affected. I think that my next son just accepted what was happening as normal. He thought I was pretty crazy..... (still does) My youngest definately had no idea that her Dad even drank, but she knew she couldn't have him on her mobile phone because he would embarrass her. She knew he had a bad back and put all his antics down to pain and pain killers.
I think the sad thing is about Acoa's is that they don't possess a mental yard stick of what is normal. They accept and adapt. As mine are now into their 20's I can see more and more just how disfunctional they are. Their internal dialogue is a mixture of their parents just as mine is. I am as much to blame for the disfunction as their father.
I did a really good job of protecting them as best I could. I wish I could say they are unscathed but I really don't think thats possible. My sons have a weird take on what a Mum's role is. My daughter is very hard on anyone male she meets. She is fiercely protective of her independence I worry about how they will form normal relationships.
Whether they meet alcoholics or not their relationships WILL be holic....and so the ripples of this disease spread further.
BUT they all have their own Higher Power to meet and accept. Their journey is exactly what it was meant to be. They are who they are because of it all. Lessons have to be learned. They all know where to go to get help, when they accept they need it. I just hope and pray they don't have to hurt too much along the way
