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``Parent-partners": A rational plan for nurturing your child after your marriage ends
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``…my mother turned slowly around, and said, `Do you girls know what divorce means?' At six, I had never heard the word. `Divorce is when two people can't live together anymore,' she said looking straight at me. `Two people who are married. It means Daddy won't be living with us anymore, though he'll always be your father.' Her voice made the room tilt sideways…She might as well have said `Divorce means you are going to turn blue today. Your skin will always be blue. You will never return to your normal color, you will just have to get used to being blue." From Daughter of the Queen of Shebaby Jacki Lyden.
Too often divorce wrecks havoc on children. During therapy, in front of his 9-year old son, Sam said, ``He's having trouble with his mother. She a slut." His mother is not a slut.
Mary brings her daughter to therapy. She urges the therapist to support her in convincing the judge to grant her full custody. Her dad is obviously ``unfit", she insists. But that's not the case. Her father is loving and caring.
Aaron never cleaned his room. His parents told him how he made their lives miserable. Then they told him they were divorcing. He was convinced it was his fault.
Jennifer witnessed the most vicious fights between her parents. She would observe the bruises on her mom or the fingernail marks on her dad. Those memories were to haunt her throughout her life.
After the divorce John never saw his children. He moved thousands of miles away. He didn't want to have to face the guilt and ongoing battles. His children felt deeply abandoned. How can a dad play softball with you for two years, and then just walk out of your life?
These are just a sampling of the ravages of divorce. Is the solution simply to stay together and pretend things are hunky-dory until the kids leave home? At least give them the experience of having two parents under one roof? There was a time when I would have believed this. But this method is inherently dishonest and I have seen the damage done to children whose parents chose it.
With all good intentions, some parents decide that they will hide any personal conflicts and animosities behind closed doors. They will pretend that they are in love. They will divorce when the children leave home. Imagine being a child in this family. You grow up thinking that you live in a loving intact family. Then, just as you are about to leave the nest, or get married, mom and dad deliver the news that they are getting divorced and that they have not loved each other for the past decade. They stayed together just for your sake.
What's your gut reaction? My guess is that you'd be in shock. You would think, ``I've lived a lie. I was sure that we were a loving secure family. How could I have missed the signs that they didn't love each other? Am I that dense? Now I will never trust my own mind. Just when I thought things were going smoothly, they crashed. I'm afraid to believe that anything can go smoothly anymore. I never want to experience another crash like that one."
You might also think, ``Why did they stay together if they were so unhappy all those years. I didn't ask them to do that for me! Now I feel guilty and there is nothing I can do about it." As James Friedman puts it in his book, The Divorce Handbook (1984), ``Too much self-sacrifice can be intolerable to your child…". A policy of self-sacrifice always leaves a wake of emotional destruction.
So is it hopeless? Does divorce have to shatter a child's self-esteem, his view of others and his view of the world, his view of romance and marriage? Does divorce have to mangle children? Yes, if the process is irrational.
But imagine the following scenario: Marie's parents divorced. They had prepared her for their separation by letting her know, in general terms and in an age appropriate context, why they would be separating. They helped her understand why they were no longer going to live together. They let her know, in a sentence, what it would mean for her (e.g., she would be living with mom in her home and visiting with dad in his new apartment). They assured her in words and in actions that it had nothing whatsoever to do with her. They also let her know that parents don't divorce children and that they both love her dearly.
They went to a counselor/mediator with Marie. Marie was able to discuss all her concerns and questions openly with the counselor. Her parents were then brought in and Marie was able to share her feelings with her parents and ask them questions pressing on her mind. Marie continued this newly discovered openness with parents. It helped her understand that the divorce was not based on irrational whims but was a well thought out, rational solution to her parent's problems. Knowing, in age-appropriate detail, the reasons for the divorce helped her avoid catastrophizing and strengthened her ability to deal with the divorce. (Kids often get shuffled aside when parents are in crisis. This method allows her to be visible with both parents in a constructive manner.)
With the assistance of a mediator, her parents agreed to come up with a specific plan to make a smoother transition from marriage-partners to parent-partners. Dad made plans to move out and set up a special room for Marie in his apartment. He made it a priority to be an ongoing part of her life, hence, not an infrequent visitor, which often leaves children feeling unlovable, abandoned, powerless and angry. Marie would have her own phone in her mom's home so that she could call dad and talk with him anytime. Her parents handled their divorce with honesty and tact.
Is this scenario unrealistic? Absolutely if either partner seeks revenge or takes an adversarial stance armed with the ``best" divorce lawyer in town. But more and more, parents are working relatively cooperatively and rationally with a mediator.
Is it possible to come up with a specific plan to make a smooth, relatively hostile-free transition from being married parents to divorced parents while remaining reasonable with the shared parenting of your child? Yes, if you have the proper focus during the divorce process, the focus on the mental health of your child and your own ongoing mental stability. Nobody wins from the alternative, a revenge focus. Although you cease to be marriage-partners, you remain parent-partners for the rest of your divorced lives. It is so much gentler on yourself and your child if you and your no-longer-beloved-ex clearly, civilly and specifically deal with parenting issues apart from other fiery issues.
This will not protect your child from feeling shattered or surprised when you first break the news to her. But you can help it to be a temporary shock, not an enduring one.
This will also not protect you, as spouse, from going through the grief of losing your dream of being happily married, forever. It also won't solve the problem of feeling overwhelmed in your new role as a single parent. And it won't help you deal with the injustices you feel from your spouse. Since you will likely have those issues to deal with, I recommend you treat yourself to counseling. You and your child will benefit.
How do you rationally divorce your partner, especially if you are leaving your partner because he or she has been irrational? If you communicated poorly during the marriage, isn't it just wishful thinking that you would be able to communicate well in the heat of a divorce? This is often the case and explains why so many divorces are messy. If your wife was sabotaging you while your were married, why would you expect anything else but sabotage from her when you tell her you plan to leave? It is rare that couples separate their lives civilly. That is why I highly recommend a good counselor or mediator. Someone else can help you keep your child's best interest (and hence yours!) in the forefront.
Dr. Bienenfield offers the following perspective in her book, Helping Your Child Through Your Divorce. ``When you treat the other parent with respect, you are doing it for your child and for yourself, not for the other parent".
Another excellent resource for understanding how divorce affects children and how to minimize harm done to them is The Divorce Book by McKay Blades, Rogers and Gosse (1984).
So how do you avoid the typical psychological costs to your child of a mismanaged divorce, e.g., nightmares, poor school performance, bedwetting, drug use, clinging behavior, tantrums and non-stop tears?
Here are some suggestions:
1. Acknowledge his feelings. Don't tell him he shouldn't be having the feelings he is having. Summarize what he tells you so that he knows you have heard him.
2. Help him deal with any feelings of guilt ASAP. It is crucial to give your child the solid knowledge that the divorce is not his fault.
3. Help him identify any loses he is experiencing. It is important not to catastrophize such loses (e.g., things will never be the same). Accurately help him understand the specific causes of his sadness (e.g., no longer having the holidays with mom and dad together).
4. Instead of emphasizing loses, emphasize your new lives together (e.g., create new holiday traditions that are fun; have a blast decorating his new room in dad's home).
5. Do not try to douse your child with gifts or special privileges to reduce your own guilt or to buy your child's affection. Many children have told me something similar to the following ``Dad lets me have whatever I want now because he feels so guilty." ``Mom is afraid to set any limits with me since she wants to be my `best friend'." She feels wicked guilty about the divorce." Kids know when your actions stem from attempts to reduce your own guilt or to win them over to ``your side". What are they implicitly learning from your actions? They prefer you to treat them normally.
6. Don't turn your child into your confidante. It's tempting to let your 8-year be your sounding board for your hurts and gripes against your ex. But many kids have told me, ``I just wish my mom wouldn't tell me all her problems. I want to be her kid. I want to tell her about my problems."
7. Kids know when they are being used as the middleman in the underground war between you and your spouse. Don't make your child deliver notes or the child support payments. Your child is not your secret weapon of revenge.
8. Avoid fights in front of your child. Such fights leave your child feeling powerless in an irrational adult world.
9. Avoid bickering over small stuff (e.g., ``You were a half-hour late in picking up Marie so I'm not letting her go with you!"). Cooperation by you over small stuff usually breeds cooperation from your ex. Revenge breeds never-ending cycles of revenge, counter-revenge, counter-counter- revenge…and so on for years.
10. Be honest with yourself as to your role in the dissolution of the conflict. Don't inflate it and assume more responsibility for the problems than you own. Kids suffer when you are chronically depressed and guilt-ridden. Similarly, don't whitewash yourself and blame your soon-to-be-ex for all the problems. Deep down you will know that you are lying to yourself. Unless it is actually the case, don't rush to portray yourself as the helpless victim. If you play this role too well, you may have it for life. You may habitualize the policy of ``Oh poor me. Look at what my ex did to me. He stepped on me; people always step on me. What's the use of trying." This is hardly an admirable trait to carry through life. It's often said that the best ``revenge" is to get on with your life. Pick up the pieces and after a period of understanding what happened, accelerate yourself forward into discovering or re-discovering the pleasurable values that make your life vibrant – your child will benefit.
11. Help your child deal with his anger. Although there are cases in which children long for their parents to divorce, most children feel that the divorce is unfair, not what they want. Let them talk about this with you or with a counselor. It is important that their assessment of the situation be recognized. If their assessment is off base, get them help ASAP.
12. Most importantly, help your child rationally understand the divorce. The global distorted conclusions that children draw from the experience often do the most damage. For example:
- a child might overgeneralize (e.g., ``Marriages are all doomed for failure – I will never marry.")
- he may conclude he's a failure (e.g., ``I should have been able to bring mom and dad back together. I'm a failure .")
- he may wrongly think he is unlovable (e.g., ``Dad left and never visits me. I'm obviously unlovable").
It's crucially important to help your child accurately evaluate the situation and help him maintain his hopes for his own future happiness.
If you are dissolving a marriage, don't do so blindly. The fallout is too painful. The choices you make will make a difference as the children in Dr. Bienenfeld's book illustrate. Eileen, age 10, drew a globe cut in half and wrote ``Divorce is what makes the world fall apart."
Contrast this to the following: ``My parents divorced when I was 7. I had a good childhood. I got along with both mom and her boyfriend and dad and my stepmom. Mom and dad both loved me and they got along as friends."
As a therapist, I have heard this said on occasion. I know such outcomes are possible, but only when both partners are rational, only when both partners recognize that the marriage is over but that they are parent-partners for life.
Some books to help you with parenting issues regarding divorce and other aspects of the divorce process are:
The Divorce Handbook: Your basic guide to divorce by James Friedman (1984), Random House. He offers an easy-to-read question and answer format.
The Divorce Book: by Matthew McKay, Peter Rogers, Joan Blades and Richard Gosse (1984), New Harbinger Publications. This is a comprehensive book covering divorce to remarriage.
Helping Your Child Through Your Divorce/ Florence Bienenfeld, Ph.D. It's not often that I read a book cover to cover and come away saying that I can recommend this without commenting that there are some parts I don't agree with. I really loved this book. She keeps the focus on your long range happiness
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Beware of Forced Kindness - A Lethal Destroyer of Your Happiness
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When my children were quite young, grade school age, I took them to a Burger King playground they enjoyed. My son voluntarily got off the swings to let another boy have a turn. My daughter was respectful to a different child when the child wanted a turn on another playground activity. It was a non-eventful, mildly enjoyable lunch with my children. However, it was remarkable to another parent whose son was benefiting from my children's graciousness. The dad came over and said, ``Your children are so respectful and fair. How did you get them to share so comfortably?" My gut response was ``I taught them they never had to share." He looked at me puzzled.
In homes across America, you will hear frustrated parents at wits' end, pleading with their children: ``Why can't you be a good boy (or girl) and share with your sister!" I heard it from my parents and you probably heard it from yours. Why, as a child, did I resent being told to share? Why did I often think ``No! It's mine! I don't want to share it with her. Why should I have to?"
The simple answer is that I was a stubborn, mean, bratty kid. That's the answer that parents want to believe; their child is the problem, not their ``reasonable" demand that their child share. But what if the child is not the problem? What if there is something fundamentally wrong with the parent's request? What if parents for centuries have been mistaken about ``sharing"? What if this whole issue is not simply a ``how to get your kids to be kind in the playground" issue, but one that affects every one of us everyday – whether we are 7 years old or 70? And what if this is an issue that affects your happiness, your child's happiness, your relations with your child and with everyone you meet?
Let's take a closer look at sharing. You work very hard during the year. You hold down two jobs, work overtime and take responsibility for your life. You live within your means. You save for the future. Your paychecks for the first few months of the year go to pay taxes. Your neighbor, who is not ambitious and has less money, has an apartment that she got with your tax money. In the grocery store, she uses your tax money (``food stamps"). In the doctor's office she uses your tax money (government health insurance). When it comes to tax time she relaxes; she doesn't make enough to pay taxes. She never thanks you. You have been told it's important to share with her. You are seen as stingy or selfish if you object. You would go to jail if you refused to pay the taxes that support her. You take it for granted that it is your duty, your moral obligation. You try to silence that voice inside you that says, ``But it's not fair. I earned the money she's enjoying.'' You tell yourself what you've heard your whole childhood from your parents: you must share. You try to deaden any feelings of injustice that rise up in you. And you don't think to question the idea of ``sharing" and in what ways it feels wrong.
But why not ask those questions? Are kids, or all of us, so corrupt that we need a morality cop to monitor us? Does your parent have the right to play ``benevolent dictator" – telling you what you must do to be a ``kind" person? Do the politicians have this ``right"? When your parents forced you, did you graciously think ``Gee thanks mom for forcing me to share my favorite toy with my bratty sister"? Does forced sharing achieve the goal of you respecting your sister or do you end up resenting your parents and sister more? Do you try to hide your favorite toys so that your sister can't arbitrarily lay claim to them by demanding you share? As an adult, do you hire an accountant to minimize the amount of taxes due to the bureaucrats who demand you ``share" and who then proceed to use your money to promote themselves as do-gooders? Does forced sharing encourage lying and deceit?
Let's look at another set of questions: If you force your children to share, do your kids learn that since others can muscle in on their toys, it must be ``fair" for them to muscle in on the toys of others? Do they learn to use the ``sharing" gimmick to force their friends or older brother to ``share"? If toys and belongings are community property to be shared, can your younger son use, without permission, your older son's computer? Can your older son ``share" your car – taking it for a joyride against your will? Does forced sharing encourage demanding, entitled kids?
Let's look at the forced sharing principle on the romantic level. If you have a loving passionate relationship with your husband, does your sexy neighbor who is struggling to find a similar love of her life have the right to ``borrow" your husband for an occasional evening of passion? If this were the case, wouldn't you want to hide from view the fact that your husband is as loving and passionate as he is, even spread false rumors about what a louse he is so that you can keep him to yourself? And, as has happened in too many cases of affairs, the hurt partner sometimes wants to borrow someone else's husband to repair the injustice done to herself, feeling entitled to this. She perpetuates the ``sharing" philosophy.
If you still think that there is some good to come out of forced kindness, you've fallen into a trap that will puzzle you for a lifetime, or until you untangle it. And most of us don't know how to untangle it because it seems plausible. Let's look at a children's story to help find an answer. In The Little Red Hen, the mother hen is industrious and responsible. She works hard and invites her chicks and farm yard animals to help her plant the wheat, tend the wheat, harvest the wheat, mill the wheat and mix the wheat to make the bread. All those she asks to help her, refuse. They prefer doing other things or they are too lazy. The Little Red Hen does not use force. She does not mandate that they must help her or go to jail. She leaves them free to make their own decisions. However when the bread is piping hot with a mouth-watering smell, she asks, ``Who will help me eat the bread." She gets a unanimous chorus of ``me! me!" Then there is that tense moment. How will mother hen respond? Will she take care of these hungry, lazy folk in the name of the good of the family or of the community? Her answer is a resounding ``no." She will eat the bread she made, with her effort alone, unapolegetically all by herself. She owns that bread -- not the freeloaders. Her ``NO" is one of the healthiest ``no's" Mother Hen can give. It is the respect for her own effort, her own industry, her own reward for her effort, i.e., respect for her own mind and life.
The alternative? Mother Hen works and everyone else lazes around and eats what Mother Hen produces. They tell her she is selfish if she doesn't ``share". She doesn't want to feel stingy, even though she has an inkling that something is awry here. She becomes her own enemy, forcing herself to act against her own sense of right and wrong and to appease her unworthy neighbors.
Consider another ending: Mother hen refuses to give up her bread but a ``caring, kind" politician steps forward and mandates that she ``voluntarily" give her bread away to those more needy (e.g., less productive) – a bread tax. How will that affect her motivation to make bread in the future?
What's at stake in these examples? Self-respect -- respecting yourself as an individual: your values, your property and your own choice making. Whether it's the parent forcing a child to share his bike, or the government forcing you to share the fruits of your efforts, the pattern is the same. They all want you to act against your own judgement (e.g., you don't want to share your bike with your brother) and they want to take away your values (e.g., your bike, your money).
How do they ``accomplish" this? They use methods to make you feel guilty, an undeserved guilt. They may say that your hard work is a gift of God, or of luck, or that your belongings are to be shared with the family. The latest rage in forced benevolence is that children must be taught to share, not only with their family, but with complete strangers – often of the irresponsible variety, such as soup kitchen spongers and drug addicts. I'm referring to the mandatory co``mmunity service movement. Colin Powell would like to see kids go through many hours of the ironically termed Volunteer Service. In the fall of this year, he praised the State of Maryland, which now has 75 hours of mandatory volunteer ``community service". This is from a man who, in the same talk, expressed delight that he lived to see the cold war end. He did not like Communistic State Control, but Maryland State Control is fine. When told that mandatory community service is against the 13th amendment, that it violates the rights of the parents and students, he uttered a telling ``boo!" How embarrassing to watching a genuinely engaging speaker, who knows that ``ideas are more important than an army," who cheers at the demise of the Soviet Union, say ``boo!" to individual rights - and then spearhead a ``crusade" for mandatory community service.
The puzzle remains: How did my children turn out benevolent, self-responsible individuals without the ``benefit" of forced sharing or community service? I did many things to preserve their sense of self-worth, protect them from unearned guilt and encourage them to be just. For example, when my children were expecting company, I told them they had a problem to solve. They could leave all their toys out, but if they didn't want little Joey or Sara to play with their new Tonka truck or Barbie doll, it would cause problems to leave them in clear sight of the their enthusiastic young friends. It would be teasing them in a bad sense. But they could put these toys away and leave out only toys they wanted to enjoy with their friends, which they did. Forced sharing was not needed and would have backfired. I stated the problem to my children openly and suggested a solution that was respectful of their property and their choices.
When we visited Joey's or Sara's home, we came loaded with toys my kids wanted to let their friends play with. My children choose the toys to put in a colorful net bag. When we got to Joey's or Sara's home, Joey and Sara treated us like Santa with a sack full of novel toys. They were very generous with their own toys. My kids, along with Joey and Sara were learning a concept infinitely more valuable than forced sharing; they were learning the value of a healthy unforced exchange. Joey chose to trade his toys with my son, Sara chose to trade with my daughter. They did this eagerly, without any adult intervention. From years of showing my children the value of mutual fairness, of unforced trading (not forced sharing) across many situations and in many creative ways, they did not come to experience others as potential threats to their property or choice. They learned that others are a potential benefit to their own happiness. They learned that no one has a right to their productive effort or to their belongings. They also learned that they don't have a right to other's productive effort – they can't demand that others give up their toys, or husbands. Even though my now grown children pay taxes, they understand the principle behind the Boston Tea Party. To force kindness is to assume that it is not in human nature and that you have to beat it into people. To force kindness is to destroy it.
Let's return to the playground. Why do I think forced sharing is so disastrous? Because I want my children to value their own lives and their own minds, to learn the proper principles of self-respect and to genuinely value others. How will they learn this by my forcing them to share the swing with a little boy on the playground? If I were to say ``Get off that swing now and let this little boy have a turn. Don't be selfish!" my daughter would probably be thinking under her breath ``I hate this boy who's forcing me to give up my fun. I hate my mother when she makes me feel like I'm a bad kid." Forced kindness breeds resentment of others.
How did my children turn out to be truly generous? It comes, not from feeling that they owe the other child time on the swing, or that they are good if they sacrifice for others. Rather it comes from an exquisite fairness principle, the type that Mother Hen grasped. If the chicks had helped mother hen, they would have enjoyed the piping hot bread. My children have never been coerced into sharing and thus don't see people as a threat; they view people, strangers as potentially benefits to their own happiness.
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