Any parent who has ever had to tell their child that daddy - or mummy - is going to leave the family will know what a momentous and painful task this is. Picking up the pieces and looking after the children at this time puts a tremendous strain on the partner left behind.

But what if the absent parent returns and there is an attempt by the couple to ‘try again’ and to rebuild the family once more? How can the children be helped to understand this and to cope with the reappearance of a mum or dad?

The child will have been deeply affected by the stormy atmosphere and still be in shock at the departure of a parent who has left. The child may have heard in the heat of it all that ‘dad has a girlfriend’ or ‘mum has fallen in love with Brian’ and possibly that mum or dad ‘doesn’t love us any more and wants to live with someone else.’ So, while trying to adjust to the loss of a parent who seems to be out of love with the family, it is be tough for the child to hear that a parent is returning home again.

What about the ‘other’ person? What about all the shouting overheard, and the horrible and hurtful things that were said? How can there be such a turnaround that the parents seem to be making up? How about hearing them shout at each other that ‘I don’t love you anymore’? Why, even now, are there raised voices and overheard comments such as ‘Was she better than me in bed?’ or ‘How can I trust you to tell me the truth now after all those lies?’

What if a parent has told the children more details than perhaps they needed to know? How can a parent backtrack and explain that although very harsh words were said with accusations of betrayal, loss of trust, and lies, lies and more lies, Dad/Mum is back? Will it really all blow over and will they again be the family they once were? In other words, is it safe to accept that both parents are there to stay?

Depending on how much the children have been told (or overheard) they will need a great deal of help to settle. After all, their world was tipped upside down, and it will take more than the king’s horses and men to put it together again. Children in this situation may feel they now have the right to criticise their parents’ behaviour and getting-back-together couples need to work out a strategy about answering questions. Some questions may be quite inappropriate, especially if the children have been aware of a parent’s new sexual relationship. The older ones may reflect about occasions where a parent was ‘supposed’ to be at work or in a business meeting, only now to learn just where that parent was and who he was with!

Children will have been aware of the grief of the parent who was left behind, and may be extraordinarily protective and quite antagonistic to the parent who seems to have caused so much heart-ached and weeping in the home. Pamela asked me: ‘How can I be all loving towards my father now that he has decided to come home? It was me who sat up night after night when my mother was distraught and threatening to kill herself?’

It makes the possible reconciliation even harder to manage if the children have taken sides; their barbed remarks will keep the fires fiercely aflame. Janet: ‘I thought I did a good job helping the kids to accept that their dad had chosen a new life. But it was much harder to help them to accept he was coming back, and that was what I wanted too. I think they thought I was letting them down as well’.

Other family members are likely to have given their critical opinions freely, and so family gatherings may be quite strained for a while. Relatives need to be told that a reconciliation is on the cards and that is what you want, and that you would appreciate it if they just left you both to work it out. A grandparent refusing to welcome back a son- or daughter-in-law is not helping a family to mend.

© Jill Curtis 2003