August 19, 2026 · Bas, co-founder

A personalized children's book about divorce: helping your child feel at home in two houses

There is no good way to tell your child that you and their other parent are separating. But that conversation is rarely the hardest part. What comes after is: the weeks of adjusting to two houses, two beds and a calendar that suddenly has colours in it. Somewhere in that stretch, a lot of parents start looking for a personalized children's book about divorce. Not because a book fixes anything, but because a story sometimes reaches a child in a way that an explanation never quite does.

I am Bas, co-founder of Kids Chapters and a dad myself. In the messages we get from parents going through a separation, one line shows up again and again: I do not know how to say it. This is what we have learned about that.

Why divorce is so confusing for a child

Adults think in arrangements. Who lives where, whose week is whose, how school runs and what happens on birthdays. Children think in pictures and in feelings. For a four-year-old, the urgent question is not what the custody schedule looks like, it is whether the bear comes too. For an eight-year-old it is often something quieter: did I have something to do with this.

Those questions rarely get asked out loud. Children read a room better than we give them credit for, and most of them work out very quickly that their parents are already carrying a lot. So they go quiet, or they blow up over something tiny, or they suddenly want to sleep in your bed again. What you see on the outside is almost never what it is actually about.

On top of that, what a separation mostly takes away from a child is predictability. The house was fixed, the evenings were fixed, the order of things was fixed. When that falls away, it can take months before the new order genuinely feels like home. In the meantime, your child needs something that stays the same every single day.

What a personalized children's book about divorce actually does

A story creates distance, and distance is exactly why it helps. Ask a child directly how they are feeling and you will usually get fine, because fine is the safe answer. Read together about a child who sleeps in one bed on Monday and a different one on Thursday, and there is suddenly room to talk about something without it having to be about you.

What makes a personalized book different is that the distance is set just right. The main character shares your child's name and looks like your child, and yet it is still a story. Your child can step into it and step back out again, which means they stay in control of how close it gets. Parents often tell us the real conversation does not happen while reading at all. It happens three days later, in the back of the car, out of nowhere.

Two homes, two copies, one story

One practical thing makes a surprising difference: keep a copy of the book in both houses. Children who move between two addresses easily lose the sense that anything is properly theirs. Clothes end up in the wrong place, the good stuffed animal is always at the other house, and the painting from school only makes it onto one fridge. A book sitting on both bedside tables says something without saying it: your story travels with you, wherever you sleep tonight.

The same goes for the reading itself. When both parents read the same story, a small piece of overlap appears between two worlds that otherwise have nothing to do with each other. Children find that steadying, even if they would never put it that way.

How to read it together

Do not read with an agenda. That is the single most useful thing I can pass on. The moment you are reading in order to achieve something, your child feels it, and the door closes. Just read the way you always did and let the story do the work.

Ask open questions when something comes up, and let silences sit. What do you think he is feeling right now lands far better than do you feel like that too. And resist correcting your child when they say something that is not true, like hoping the two of you might get back together. You do not have to confirm that hope, but you do not have to dismantle it on the spot either. In that moment, listening is worth more than being right.

Let them repeat it, too. Children will ask for the same book twenty nights running, and that is not random. Repetition is how they break something enormous into pieces they can actually manage.

A book is not a substitute for support

To be clear: a story does not make a divorce less of an upheaval. If your child is sleeping badly for weeks, slipping back into behaviour you thought was long behind you, or struggling more and more at school, it is worth talking to your doctor or a family counsellor. A book is an opening, not a treatment.

But openings matter a great deal when you have no idea where to start. And that is exactly where a lot of parents find themselves in the year after a separation.

At Kids Chapters we make books in which your child is the main character, with their own name and their own appearance. You can choose a story that stays close to home, or an adventure that takes them somewhere completely different for a while. Both work, and sometimes the second one is exactly what is needed. Curious what that looks like? Have a look around at kidschapters.com.