When parents separate Lesson 15 of the adult life course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Sometimes parents are so unhappy together for so long that they decide to stop living as a couple; this is called separating, and later it may become a divorce, the legal end of a marriage. 1 A separation ends the marriage, not the family: both parents still love their children, and children never cause a split and cannot undo it. 2 Picture a kitchen in Toronto: Mum and Dad sit you down together, Dad says "Mum and I have decided to separate", and Mum hugs you tight and says "It's not your fault" — and it is true. 3 Afterwards life has new shapes: a second home with a room for you, a colour-coded calendar on the fridge, Sunday handovers in a car park, two toothbrushes, and lawyers and courts sorting out the grown-up paperwork. 4 Hurt grown-ups sometimes say unkind things about each other and regret it; you never have to choose a side or carry their words. 5 "We have something to tell you" means important news, good or hard, and parents plan such talks so they can tell children carefully and together. 6 Separating means parents stop living together as a couple; it may lead to a divorce, but not always straight away. 8 Parents say "It's not your fault" because many children secretly think they caused the split, and it is true: children's behaviour does not end a marriage. 9 After a separation one parent often moves to a new home and sets up a room for the children so they feel at home in both. 10 A solicitor is a kind of lawyer who helps with legal things like a divorce; seeing one does not mean anyone is in trouble with the police. 11 A divorce is the official legal end of a marriage, and "the divorce came through" means the court has finished it. 12 A divorce can feel sad and also a relief, because a long, hard process is over. 13 Custody, or "arrangements", means deciding where children live and when they see each parent; if parents cannot agree, a mediator (a trained helper who helps them agree) or a family court helps decide what is best for the children. 14 A shared calendar with "Dad's weekend" and "Mum's weekend" shows which home a child is at on which days, so everyone can plan. 15 A handover is when one parent brings the child to the other; meeting in a neutral place like a car park keeps it calm and quick. 16 Children with two homes often have two toothbrushes, two sets of pyjamas and two bedrooms, so they do not carry everything back and forth. 18 A parent who says something unkind about the other and then "Forget I said that" has slipped; children do not have to agree or pass it on. ← previous Grown-ups who argue and make upnext → New partners and step-families↑ back to Adult life This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/15-when-parents-separate/