The recent situation involving the children of a well-known, recently deceased female gospel singer and preacher has stirred intense emotions and public debate. Watching children openly react to their father and relate to their father’s side of the family, live on camera, has been painful and unsettling. This case should sober every parent, whether married, separated, or divorced. Not because it is extraordinary, but because it reveals a common and dangerous pattern: when unresolved adult pain is transferred into the hearts and mouths of children.
Too often, in the attempt to “win” children emotionally, parents poison their hearts against the other parent. What looks like loyalty-building is, in truth, future-destroying. Children dragged into adult bitterness do not come out stronger; they come out confused, wounded, and internally divided. In the process, their understanding of marriage, family, authority, and love is quietly damaged, sometimes permanently.
This conversation is not about taking sides, defending reputations, or condemning individuals. It is about drawing a clear, immovable boundary between marital failure and parental responsibility. Separation may end a marriage, but it must never recruit children into the war that followed it. Children are not soldiers. They are not witnesses. They are not judges. They are victims when adults fail to protect them.
One of the gravest errors in broken homes is allowing children to inherit hurts, wars, and bitterness that were never theirs to carry. There are parts of a failed marriage, private wounds, betrayals, disappointments, and unresolved conflicts, that children should never be told about their father or their mother. Poisoning a child’s mind against a parent is not protection; it is emotional violence and a subtle form of abuse. Children deserve the right to grow, mature, and eventually understand life with clarity, not with resentment planted in them before they have the emotional capacity to process it.
When children openly display hostility toward one side of their family, it should alarm every responsible adult. Such attitudes rarely develop in isolation. Children mirror what they hear repeatedly, what is tolerated around them, and what is emotionally rewarded. When a child is trained—directly or indirectly, to dishonor their father or mother, that child is being taught to reject half of their own identity. That rejection does not vanish with time; it often resurfaces later as anger, insecurity, identity confusion, broken relationships, and deep emotional instability.
Every separated home has more than one side to its story. Silence does not automatically mean guilt, and emotional outbursts do not automatically mean truth. Wisdom demands restraint, especially where children are involved. A father remains a father. A mother remains a mother. No matter how the marriage ended, that parental bond is permanent and irreplaceable. When children are denied the opportunity to eventually hear both sides, at the right time, in the right way, they are robbed of balance, perspective, and emotional fairness.
This responsibility becomes even heavier when faith is involved. When forgiveness, grace, love, and reconciliation are preached publicly, they must be modeled privately. Children are watching far more closely than adults realize. A message of forgiveness proclaimed on platforms but contradicted by bitterness at home confuses children and quietly trains them in hypocrisy. The strongest sermon children will ever hear is not what their parents preach, but how they handle pain, disagreement, and loss.
Parenting after separation requires deep emotional discipline. It demands refusing to use children as emotional allies or weapons. It means choosing dignity over drama, restraint over revenge, and healing over hostility. It means speaking respectfully about the other parent even when wounds are real and unresolved. It means allowing children to maintain healthy relationships with both sides of their family, except in cases of clear, proven danger, not exaggerated fear or unresolved resentment.
Healthy post-separation parenting rests on non-negotiable principles. Protect the child’s emotional safety at all costs. Never speak negatively about the other parent in their presence. Never force a child to “choose sides.” Allow children the freedom to love both parents without guilt, because love is not betrayal. And above all, allow truth to unfold with time. Children do not need full disclosures; they need stability, consistency, and peace.
Respect for the dead, respect for history, and respect for human complexity must walk hand in hand with honesty, but honesty must always be governed by wisdom. Not every truth needs to be spoken publicly, emotionally, or immediately. Some truths are better discovered later, through maturity, context, and grace.
The real question in every separated home is not who controls the narrative, who speaks first, or who appears right. The real question is: who is protecting the children? Broken marriages can still raise whole, emotionally healthy children, if adults choose maturity over ego, wisdom over vengeance, and love over control.
©️Bisi Adewale
Handling Parenting with Wisdom Despite Separation or Divorce – By bisi adewale
