When Kids Choose Sides After Divorce

When kids choose sides after a divorce, my heart goes out to everyone in that picture, including the kids. Because here’s the thing, and I want you to really hear this: a child choosing a side is not a child making a rational judgment about who is the better parent. It’s a child doing the only thing a child knows how to do when they’re terrified and overwhelmed and the two people they love most in the world are in pain.

They’re trying to make the pain stop. And picking a side feels like a way to do that.

Now, what I know from working with couples, and I see this pattern so clearly, is that the same dynamic that destroyed the relationship doesn’t just disappear when the divorce papers are signed. Both of you are still hurting. You’re both still, in some ways, throwing those same boomerangs at each other, just through different channels now. And one of those channels, tragically, can become your kids.

Think of it like this: imagine your child is standing between two people they love, and every time they show affection or loyalty to one person, they can feel the other person’s pain radiating toward them. What’s a kid going to do? They’re going to try to solve it the only way they know how. By eliminating the conflict. By choosing.

The child who picks your side is not a trophy. And the child who picks the other side is not lost to you. What both of those children are telling you is that nobody has made it safe enough for them to love both of you at the same time without it costing them something.

That is the wound worth focusing on.

I’ve watched this play out in so many families. The parent who gets “chosen” often feels validated, like they were right all along. The other parent feels devastated, sometimes retaliates, sometimes withdraws completely. But here’s what neither parent realizes in that moment: the child who chose is carrying a massive burden of responsibility that no child should carry.

The work, if you’re willing, is to do whatever you can to make it genuinely okay for your child to love the other parent. Even when that’s hard. Even when it costs you something emotionally. That’s not weakness. That’s the most loving thing you can do for your kid.

This means biting your tongue when they come back from the other parent’s house talking about fun they had. It means not fishing for information or asking them to carry messages. It means not letting your face change when they mention the other parent’s name.

Your child didn’t ask to be caught in the middle of your adult pain. The kindest thing you can do is take them out of it, even when every fiber of your being wants to prove you’re the better choice.