Talking to children about homelessness

This fact sheet is part of a series we created with families who have been through homelessness to share ideas for how to get through as a family – and spark some hope.

We hope these resources have something to offer all families, but recognise they are a simply a snapshot reflecting the lived experiences of the families who helped us create them – other families will have different experiences and stories.

We also intentionally create resources that reflect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing with guidance from our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander National Consultancy Group and partners.

See more about how Emerging Minds collaborates with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners, families and Community.

We know that families come in many forms and appreciate that every child is unique, with different strengths, vulnerabilities and experiences that shape their health and development. For the purposes of easy reading, these resources use the term ‘parent’ to cover the biological, adoptive, foster and kinship carers of a child, as well as individuals who have chosen to take up primary or shared responsibility in raising that child.

‘The conversation started when my kids started to see me stressed. They’re pretty tuned in when I’m stressed or worried about something. They started asking a lot of questions before we became homeless. And as the time drew closer [to losing our accommodation], I talked them through it. Obviously I kept it quite positive with them: “We’re just gonna stay with a friend for a couple of weeks and mum’s gonna keep looking for a house.”’

‘[When we became homeless] I was very open with them. They’re all quite inquisitive children, so there was a lot of questions that I had to answer and I found it quite exhausting. We’d have little team meetings so that I could talk to everybody and we wouldn’t dwell so much on things. Like: “We’re gonna talk about what’s happening today and where things are at; and what Mum’s doing to try to get us a house; and different things that we might have to consider, like moving out of the area and starting new schools.” We kind of made those decisions together. There was some tough decisions, like moving away, which wasn’t really what the kids wanted, but it was something we had to do to be housed, so I had to make that really hard decision. But I think it was a journey together.’

‘I always brought it back to we’d been through difficult things. I’ve always got through to the other side and there was always a positive outcome at the end of it all. And if I could do that again, then I just had to take it day by day. I started to really focus on taking care of myself through it; making sure I got a walk in and the kids got exercise, being in nature and connecting in with some normality of our lives. We didn’t have a house to go home to every night, but we did have our friends and we did have people that loved us around us.’

‘I started to teach the kids about recognising the world that they live in is not always an easy one. I started to teach them to be compassionate for others. I used it [homelessness] as a learning experience for them to lessen the blow on themselves: “We are not the only people that are doing this. There’s other families.” My kids will reach out to anybody that is on the street now if they can see or recognise homelessness, which they do. They have a little radar; they’ll say, “Mum, that person – it’s raining and they’re trying to get some sleep”, and “Can we give them something to make sure that they’re warm?” I’ve taught them that we are housed now – we’re safe and secure – but there’s still people out there that are dealing with this.’

‘There’d be a lot of supporting one another. If somebody got upset and someone else was OK, they would comfort that person. We’d often all end up sleeping in the same bed. I don’t know how, but they would all squish in there. We’d have movie nights in the motel. We did try to make fun out of the situation. They would tell ghost stories in the house that we squatted in – it had no electricity so I got fairy lights from Bunnings cause there was no lights at night and it was an old house, kind of cold and spooky.

‘We would still have family meals together. There was a lot of togetherness that happened during that period of time. And I think we grew closer as a family because they started to say things like, “We’re OK because we have each other and that’s the most important thing.” Now if we come across a little hurdle, everybody kind of rallies in and they’re like, “You know, we got through that. We got through that together and we can do anything together.’’’

Please note: This reflection contains references to domestic violence. If reading about this brings up any difficult feelings for you, please skip ahead to the following story Turning bad experiences into a family ‘inside joke’. And if you need, seek help from your networks, or one of these crisis or support services.

Sometimes conversations need to be practical and about routines and what to expect…

‘At the start we didn’t have any kind of reflection conversations. This experience of homelessness came about from an incredibly, incredibly violent episode. I was really so deep in trauma that I was a hairs breath away from just falling apart in general. I wasn’t able to really function and have a lot of capacity for that kind of more complex thinking. It was more, “This is happening today…” or “This is what we’re doing” or “We’re going here to do this…” or “Next week we’ve got an appointment about this…” Functional conversations. School was just out of the picture and we never had any money. Our lives were structured around appointments with services, going to food places, etc. I wasn’t in the state to be able to reflect and they [the children] wouldn’t have been in the state to be able to reflect.’

‘I remember once, we were getting on a bus going from one refuge to the next – which was a 10-hour bus trip – and one of my kids at the time who was going through a lot of trauma responses wouldn’t wear shoes. I believe that was the way that they grounded themselves. The bus driver wouldn’t let them get on the bus without shoes. He started to talk to my child and say, “Put your shoes on, blah, blah, blah.” And they got really upset and angry about that.

‘I got really angry at the bus driver. I’d lost so much, including myself, but I thought, “F***, I’m still a parent. How dare he tell me how to raise my child, and then tell my child to the things that he thinks that I should be saying that I’m not?!” Then I tried to have a conversation with the kids that it was unreasonable for the bus driver to say this. That was the one and only time I tried to frame things in a wider context with them ’cause they just weren’t able to do it. So even though I was quite impaired, I was still able to pull things together and do meaning making of this really upsetting situation. We actually ended up making a whole joke about it later on, a whole story that turned into something funny for the family.’