I'm impressed by your D and her ability to express her emotions. NOt to mention her problem solving skills. Did you catch that she wanted to punish both you and H?
Keep her talking and sharing. Don't let your discomfort with how she's feeling tempt you into making it all better for her. You certainly did a beautiful job in this instance.
You have a great opportunity here.
Yes, Maybell, I absolutely did notice she wants to punish both of us. It's interesting because she is very fair in her trying to care for both of our feelings and fair in her efforts to punish us.
Labug, I am VERY grateful that she's verbally communicative of her feelings. I am also very grateful that her vocabulary is so strong because she's very precise with her words.
I notice that H, whenever D talks about the separation and how she's afraid we'll get a divorce, he always just says, "but you know we love you very much, right?" As if that's her point. He's not so aware of the level of her conversation skills and doesn't quite understand fully that she doesn't feel unloved, she simply doesn't want us separated.
I think he read something that said to reassure the kids that you love them while going through this process. He's always doing that when she talks about the separation. Now she brings up the separation and the first thing she says is, "I know you love me, dad, I get that, I just want you two to work it out!"
It makes me laugh inside because he's addressing what he THINKS is the problem but he's not listening to her. A very familiar predicament.
