Last week, I talked about why you might want to tell your kids about your DID or OSDD. This week, I’m going to talk about how you might tell them if you decide you want them to know.
It’s important that you tell them in a developmentally appropriate way. It might be enough for younger kids to talk about the parts that everyone has. For example, a child might have had the experience having a part of themselves wanting to go to the park while at the same time a part of themselves also wanted to watch TV or go to a grandparent’s house. When a child understands this, that everyone has parts, you can explain that your parts are a little more pronounced than most people’s.
Another way to explain the concept of having a system of parts to kids is to talk about roles. A child has the role of your child, may have the role of being the big sister or the little brother, they may have the role of student, and they may play on a sports team or do dance or gymnastics or scouting or some such. The child is the same child in each of these roles, but they are also focused slightly differently in each of those roles. For instance, while they might climb into your lap for a hug in their role as your child, they probably wouldn’t do that with the coach of their team or activity. A student is focused on learning, a child in an activity like soccer or dance is focused on learning to do their sport well, and so on. Kids can understand that you have parts that focus on different tasks and needs, too. Only your parts may be more noticeable than some other people’s parts.
If you want some help having this discussion, here are two books that are appropriate for young children on up. And you can even use them to educate adults in your life who have only what they’ve seen on TV and the movies for their understanding of DID.
The two books are My Mommy has Multiple Parts: A childrens book about having a parent with Dissociative Identity Disorder by Joh Knyn,
and
The Patchwork Quilt: A book for children about Dissociative Identity Disorder by J.D. Clark
You may want to have a talk with your kids about the idea of privacy about your diagnosis if you are concerned they might tell classmates, teachers, or others. They can understand that some things are okay for family to know but not other people. You probably have examples of things like that. For instance, if your six year old is still wetting the bed at night, that’s something the family knows that classmates don’t need to know.
If this was helpful, I’d appreciate it if you would like the video so it’s more likely others will see it and get this information. Thank you!