You might not feel like telling many people about your pending divorce. In general, divorce can be a difficult topic, and most people prefer not to enter into discussions about their situation with many people at once.
One set of people who typically do need to know what’s happening, however, are those who work at your child’s school. This can be important for a number of different reasons.
They need accurate and up-to-date contact details
While the school takes responsibility for your children during the day, they still need to be able to contact both parents in an emergency and for many other non-urgent reasons, too. When you are married, it is common for most or all of the communication to go to one parent. That works fine when the parents live together, as they can just pass on the message to the other parent in the evening. When parents separate, messages might not get passed on so reliably, and that can prejudice the child as well as make things more difficult for the school.
Background information can help them to better understand your child
Divorce can affect children in multiple ways, and the people who often see these effects more than most are the teachers who spend hours with the children every day. When teachers see a child who is not their usual self, they’ll spend time trying to work out why, or what they can do to help the child. For instance, if a normally outgoing child seems much quieter lately, they might wonder if the child is being bullied and waste time investigating that, when the only thing causing it is the parent’s divorce that no one has told them about.
Making the school office and your child’s teacher aware that you are divorcing is helpful for them and your child – and for you as parents, too. In some cases, where your child is against it, you might choose to refrain, but even then, you need to let the school know about any changed contact details. There’s a lot to think about when divorcing, so experienced legal guidance can be a great help.
