OK, so Dads are important. We got to this funky situation by arranging things so that Moms stayed home and Dad's earned the money and so when separations and divorces got more common, Dads started disappearing from kids' lives. We need to fix it.
I suggest three things. The first is something that many states' laws already require. First, we need to treat Moms and Dads the same in divorce. We cannot give Moms a preference for custody just because they are female. Most states' laws require this, but in practice, what is happening is that judges looking for what to do with the kids, will bring in psychologists to interview and evaluate the custody situation.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned in Daddies are important Part 2, the current theory of psychology is that children should have as little change as possible. They rely upon studies of foster and adopted children to say that children should not be moved, as much as possible. They forget that the loss of the father from the household constitutes a huge change, and they don't seek to minimize this part of the change in their lives (for example, via trying to organize a significant post-separation role for the father in the child's lives). Instead of working to find a way to resolve the issues that arise from that change, they advocate that the mothers should be the primary parent (especially if the Mom says she is already), and that the children should stay in the same school district (as if keeping the same friends is more important than keeping the connection with the father), and then the father can become a frequent visitor in the child's life (often, under these circumstances, a visitor whose presence annoys Mom, which the kids know about, so it's a setup for the relationship to deteriorate).
If we start with a law that says Moms & Dads need to be considered equally, and that custody should be whatever is in the best interests of the child, but we give the custody decision to a person who is not trained to evaluate the facts of various accusations that are flying this way & that, and who just tries to find some happy medium where the kids have one primary household and do not have to move too much, we will often end up with Mom being primary parent and Dad being a visitor.
In some states (Arizona is the one I'm most familiar with), the lawmakers have tried to fix this. For example, they specifically changed the law reads, to say "parenting time", instead of "visitation". From now on, any time a parent has with a child is called "parenting time", NOT "visitation". Unfortunately, a change of terminology does not solve the problem if the parenting time the kids spend with Dad is only 10% of their lives, and does not constitute the serious times when they need to learn to work, study, and organize themselves. It may feel expedient to give primary parenting to one parent and split the rest of the time, but as the kids get older, the fact is that REAL parenting takes place in the snippets of time between when they wake up and when they are at school... between the end of their football or cheer practice and the end of dinner. because otherwise, they are on the phone, visiting friends, at school and activities, texting and e-mailing and facebooking... and so our only opportunity to influence them is in these moments of time we can catch from them... and this happens on the weekdays... when we have to tell them that they don't get to turn on the computer until they're finished with their Math assignment... they can't answer their texts at dinner time, and that they need to be part of the household and help with the dinner dishes. If we don't let dads have the kids during this time, we're making a big mistake for the kids.
You can call it parenting time, but if you do not give them a significant amount of time, it will always be vacation, NOT the same kind of parenting that the kids need.
Another positive change in Arizona is that parents who intentionally manipulate the situation to make it appear that they are primary parent when they are not, who make false or exaggerated accusations against the other parent, will not be able to profit from these manipulations or accusations. This law does not go far enough. When judges rely upon counselors and counselors have a bias towards mothers being the primary parent, there will not be a change in their recommendations that reflects the reality that most families have daddies who are very much more involved than the daddies of previous generations.
The legal change we need is a rebuttable presumption of equal parenting time. 50-50. There are a few different schedules that can accomplish this, either week on-week off, or 5-2-2-5, but whatever plan is used, 50-50 is appropriate.
I can hear some of my friends groaning. They insist that they, the mommies, know better what is best for their families and there should never be any presumption. They don't understand the concept of a rebuttable presumption. And this one can and should be rebuttable.
In this option, parents who cannot come to an agreement, but who still live near enough to each other to maintain the continuity of the children's current schedules in each household, will get 50-50 time, unless one of several things happens. First, parents should not have equal parenting time if they live too far away from each other to maintain their regular school & extracurricular schedule in each parent's house. Another way to rebut the presumption can and should be if the parents choose a different schedule for themselves. Perhaps Mom is in the military and can only promise 4 weeks a year in the children's hometown. Maybe Dad is a firefighter and works 72 hours on, 48 off, which makes his schedule rotate every week. I've also had flight attendant parents who needed parenting schedules that matched their work travel needs. These parents might find their own solutions to parenting time that are not equal, but that needs to be something they can cooperate about.
And of course, if either parent is unfit to have the children overnight, then they should not have 50-50 time with the children. But in that situation, we have to hope that the parent claiming that the other is unfit, would have been acting as though the other parent was unfit well before the disintegration of the romantic relationship between the two parents, and that this is not just an accusation born of anger over the separation.
I have an acquaintance who, every time I mention this idea that 50-50 needs to be the presumption, gets very angry at me. She says "it's up to whatever the CHILD can handle". I agree. But children can NOT handle having either parent marginalized in their lives EVEN if it's ONLY the daddy who is being marginalized. So we need to START with the presumption that, if the parents can come to an agreement otherwise, it will be a 50-50. And then if there is cause for it to be something other than 50-50, let each parent have the opportunity to explain to the judge why it should not be 50-50...
Certain things need to stop being considered... if the kids LIKE either parent more than the other, that needs to not be a reason to change parenting time... kids will like or be angry at a parent for not giving them enough STUFF, for being disciplined, or because the other parent wants them to show anger. Sometimes kids will align with the parent they perceive as being victimized by the romantic breakup, other times they will align with the parent they perceive as being stronger. Another thing that should not be considered... if either parent has a nicer house or more family or more money... it's not a good thing to let the kids move to live with Mom if she has married into money, or to live with Dad just because he is a higher earner. If Dad has lots of family in the area who can help him with daycare, hooray! This is a good thing, not a bad thing, but it should not mean that Dad gets more time with the children than Mom... just that she will have to either stay amicable with his family so she can get daycare from them, or she needs to find a different solution for when the kids are with her.
And we shouldn't try to equalize income in the child's two households, just let the children learn how the different households manage. Let one parent provide expensive toys, and the other parent provide inexpensive togetherness. If they do it right, the kids will learn that both places have advantages, and both have disadvantages. It is not fair or right to make one parent pay part of their income to increase the lifestyle that the other parent can afford (this is above & beyond support, food & basics, for the child), and it is not fair or right to make one parent give up time with the child because they don't live an expensive lifestyle. We also need to give parents a dis-incentive for bribing the children with expensive toys. If we enforce parenting time equally with the poorer parent, then the richer parent who plays the "who is your favorite parent?" game, will not benefit from it. The incentive to playing this game is greatly reduced if it will not result in the ability to cut the other parent out.
I'm not saying the children's interests should not be heard, just that you should give them as much weight as you give, say, their interest in choosing not to go to school. Unless someone at the school is abusing them, you make them go. They need to learn the things that are available to learn at school, and they need to learn to deal with it. If it becomes detrimental for them to go to school, then bring in the therapists and create a plan to make it work, or find another placement, but you don't let the kid say, "I don't like school" and honor that decision. You listen to the complaint, and try to figure out how to fix it. This is how things should progress in custody determinations. If the child wants to say "I like Dad better than I like Mom", then fine, but don't let it change the 50-50 schedule unless there is a significant reason behind the preference that would require stripping Mom of her parenting duties.
So what is the custody evaluator's role in this 50-50 rebuttable presumption? First, the evaluator needs to check to see if there are credible reasons that either parent should be removed from the child's life or restricted to supervised visits only. If they do not see credible evidence that requires such removal, they need to be more pro-active in recommending specific remedies to help the family in it's new, separated status. They need to make suggestions for helping the parties learn to co-parent equally and properly. Sometimes, the parents will need to learn to come to some basic agreements about things like bedtime and diet and hairstyle for their children. Sometimes, they will need ongoing support in handling these kinds of rules (particularly for parents who have very different parenting styles). Sometimes, the evaluators need to address a process for the children to learn to stop playing favorites, or to help the parents come to some agreement on how to split the children's toys between the two houses.
Under this theory, sometimes the parent who is busily trying to tear down the co-parent, will lose parenting time until they can moderate their behavior, and the custody evaluator will need to recommend specific limits to this temporary separation so that the parent who loses custody temporarily can get appropriate intensive counseling to help return to full participation in their children's lives.
Under this proposal, we come from a "make it work" theory. We are no longer looking for ways to decide which house should be primary and who should therefore "lose", but rather we are looking for ways to make everyone a winner.
If we did this, and enforced it, then ultimately, the incentive for nastiness during a custody battle would be minimized, and the ultimate winners in that solution would be the children. And isn't this who it's all about in the first place?
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Daddies are important, Part 2
A few years ago, I wrote Part 1 of this topic, and I fully intended to get to work on Part 2 right away, but we were called on to provide Foster care to some children in our county, and things got in the way. I'm back on the topic now, and ready to think through Part 2.
Daddies are important.
Unfortunately, though the world has changed such that Dads expect to be involved in their kids' lives, we pretend that change doesn't exist the minute the parents decide to separate. Upon separation, the working mother who saw their children NO MORE OFTEN than the working father, suddenly acts as though they have been the primary (or only) "REAL" parent in the family. Generally, the division of labor in the family had been organized so that Mom took care of what was important to Mom and Dad took care of what was important to Dad, and everything else either fell through the cracks (dusting the geegaws in the living room, perhaps) OR they joined together or outsourced it (such as sharing meal-making, or maybe getting takeout a majority of the time)...
When they split, Mom thinks that she should get the kids because SHE was the REAL parent, but what she doesn't understand is that Dad ALSO thought HE was doing important things for the kids.
Our courts, and frankly, our custody evaluators and other professionals in the system, are reluctant to catch up to the current reality, which is that if the parents split up, leaving the kids with Mommy for 90% of the time and making Daddy a visitor in his own kids' lives, is a big loss for Daddy (which no one really cares about, because it's all about what's best for the kids) AND it's a big loss for the kids! The therapists are so busy saying that a child needs a single home base to call their own, that moving is bad for the kids, etc... that they ignore certain realities...
In a family where the parents WANT to move, and handle it properly with the children, there are very few problems with moving from one location to another. Military families are notorious for moving regularly and also for raising wonderful, resilient children. JUST because something is disappointing to a child does not mean we should avoid it. It is through learning how to adjust to change, learning how to weather disappointment, that a child learns. The therapists will point to the losses of orphans and foster children as proof that children should not be moved if possible, but those analogies ignore the fact that in the case of foster children and orphans, the adults that they should be able to trust have become untrustworthy, and are NOT managing the changes in their own lives well.
In other words, if the adults in a child's life are positive about a change, and help the kids work through their concerns about it (where will my favorite chair be? How will Santa find us? How can I EVER find a new friend in a strange school?) the kids will be just fine. In many cases, children of divorce or separation are not helped to weather the changes in a positive light, but instead are prepared for it as if the parents are preparing for the world to come to an end. And you can be SURE that if the parents feel their world is coming to an end, the kids will feel that way also.
If parents are not taking a move well, then the kids will also not take it well. Look at parents who are losing jobs, getting evicted, or separating/divorcing. We see them explaining the move to the child in terms of "don't worry, we'll SURVIVE... somehow, as long as you stick with ME", it is a whole lot different than, "Daddy just got a great job and we're moving to a bigger town where there will be a bigger house and a playground right across the street, and the school has computers for every kid to use in the classrooms and a great soccer team"... The trick on handling a separation/divorce, and the required moves with a kid, is to help them understand that this change will be better. "Mommy & Daddy won't argue so much, but we'll be in different houses. Daddy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and Mommy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and you'll have two times as many rooms, two times as many birthday parties, two times as many visits from Santa!!! Instead of going camping as a family for 2 weeks in the summer, you'll spend 2 weeks camping with me and ANOTHER two weeks camping with Daddy, or maybe instead of camping, you'll go skiing in the winter, or to Disney... it'll be GREAT... and when we're not always arguing, it'll be a lot happier too!" A WHOLE lot better than "Dad is leaving us, we'll get by, don't worry, the judge will force him to pay child support and if he doesn't they'll send him to jail"... (yes, some parents DO say this to their children... it's awful, and it doesn't usually come all in the same sentence, but they say it in tiny little bits, until the children put it altogether and realize that this is AWFUL... Daddy doesn't love us, walked out on us, won't pay for our needs, might go to jail, we'll never see him again & Mommy & Us might starve!!!...)
Unfortunately, many people treat Daddy like an ATM... and the ability to have children as if it's a career choice... a money-earner. And when the courts support this vision of how Daddies are, the men in these children's lives will slowly disappear. They will become marginalized... they become Disney Dads who show up on the rare occasion when mom & the judge allow them to see the kids. And the kids start to feel a bit of awkwardness... feeling like a guest in what should be their own home...
When this happens, kids only get the part of parenting that the Moms took on. Dads stop parenting the kids and spend their precious little time with the kids, just trying to maintain the connection, entertaining the kids and hoping that they enjoy the relationship enough that they'll come to Dad if they ever have a need to do so. Unfortunately, they rarely do. This parenting schedule that our society has fallen into... a schedule that was more appropriate 50 years ago when Daddies did all the work and Mommies always stayed home... the every-other-holiday, every-other-weekend and one dinner a week... it's a schedule that encourages Disney Dad syndrome. If the parents have one designated as a primary residential parent, and the other as the "visitor", who is involved only during play time (every other weekend, holiday, etc), we can be sure that the primary residential parent will be the one burdened with 100% of the homework, 100% of the carpooling to & from school, 100% of the organizing of extracurriculars and play dates, 100% of the whiny wake-up moments and quick breakfasts before school, 100% of the chore-making... all while losing 50% of the vacations, holidays, weekends and fun times with the kids.
Most parents will not call this a "burden", but whatever they choose to call it, they become the disciplinarian, the organizer, the person who has to spend 100% on the kids and who has lost the partner who used to help out.... even if that partner was only helping pay the bills, clean the house, and do the carpooling when you instructed, this partner carried an important part of the burden of the household. And there are bad side-effects for the adult who is suddenly 100% in charge of children, with no partner present to take any part of that burden. First, this adult loses the opportunity to fully participate in their career, to be at the office without the likelihood of getting a call from the school that a child is sick... The absence of a second parent to call on for those duties, makes it impossible for this primary parent to fully participate in the workplace without the possibility of a child-related interruption. The primary parent also has more difficulty creating an adult social life for themselves. While the "visiting" parent can develop adult friendships in a normal fashion, outside of the influence of the children until the parent is sure the relationship is viable, the primary parent loses this opportunity. For the primary parent, a casual flirtation cannot turn into a coffee date, an invitation to happy hour cannot be fulfilled, because child care issues will nearly always be present. And any relationship that gets past the coffee date stage will necessarily start to unfold in the presence of the children, whose needs and opinions will intrude.
As a result, the opportunity for the primary parent to process the loss of the romantic relationship and replace it in their lives is curtailed and altered. If we want a surefire way to jump from marriage/mistake #1 into marriage/mistake #2, we could not create a better formula for making it happen. After the sudden loss of #1, don't give the primary parent the opportunity to mourn the loss or learn the relationship lessons, don't give them the chance to figure out what they did wrong and how they want to do it better next time, don't give them time to explore relationships in private. Instead, make sure this person has no opportunity for adult companionship unless it's mostly in the presence of the children. Instead of recovering, this person will be rebounding, and with no free time left to process what is going on, they are being reactive rather than pro-active. It will not work. It's no surprise that second marriages have a higher failure rater than first marriages, especially if children from the first marriage are involved!
I can promise everyone here that if a parent is reading this who is the primary residential parent and the children's mother, that she will be saying to herself, "I'm the MOTHER, I am the one with the INSTINCTS, and I am willing to make the sacrifice for MY KIDS". Unfortunately, this sacrifice does not do the best for the kids.
The kids lose the good homework help in the subjects that Dad is better at than Mom is. Girls lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who will always find them beautiful, who will CREDIBLY (Mom can't be credible on this issue) tell them that a boy does not deserve this much attention... the boys lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who can CREDIBLY tell them what a REAL MAN does, who was the first and most reliable example of what they wanted to be. The kids lose an example of how to live life in the way he chooses to live, so that when they grow up, they have a more balanced vision of how to get by in this world on their own.
Once upon a time, not too long ago, we would say "it takes a village to raise a child", meaning that having more examples of adulthood around, to pick up pieces of the load and help the children see how to live and cooperate in this world, is a good thing... yet when a separation occurs, we suddenly stop believing this, deciding that it's an OK thing to totally cut out one of the two most important people in the child's life. As a rule, we are making a big mistake if we think it's OK to cut out or marginalize the influence of either parent.
I do not say there are not exceptions to the rule... We MAY need to cut out the baby daddy who is a raging alcoholic, or addict... or who is dangerously violent. But more often than not, we find that the mother who, just last week, was quite willing to leave her children alone with this guy for hours on end, entire weekends while she was out with the girls, away for work, or visiting her mother... all of a sudden, upon separation, she acts as though his faults are so extreme that he does not deserve time with the children any more... or that his time should be severely limited. Suddenly, a woman who has been married nearly 2 decades where her only complaint was that he did not earn enough money, SUDDENLY she is accusing him of violence and telling judges that the children need to be protected from him most of the time. In these cases, we need to double-check the likelihood that these accusations are true. There are too many incentives for an exaggeration or lie to take place at the time of separation. Too many reasons for a person freshly angry over a split, to suddenly forget their own part in the problems of the marriage and bring every disagreement to light in an effort to crush the other parent.
Unfortunately, while recriminations or lingering angry feelings are no problem for childless couples who can separate and never have to see each other again, this does not work for separating couples who have children together. It is not good for people who must continue to co-parent, to have opportunities to bash each other. Accusations go both ways, this is why the couple is no longer together. The courts understand that there are usually two sides to any story, but instead of encouraging the parties to put aside their anger, the court system, which is adversarial by nature, encourages both sides to have equal opportunity to vent.
Perhaps one reason that mothers are often winners in the initial custody battles is that fathers are less articulate about emotional issues such as this. Unless a daddy takes on the significant burden of very high legal expenses required for a very difficult and protracted custody battle (and unless the daddy is willing to put his children through such a battle), the woman will usually win, just by virtue of being better at holding onto their grudges against the ex and being better able to articulate their grudges.)
Some parents with very strong parental instincts manage to put the anger behind them. And generally, they figure out an amicable arrangement of parenting time. Usually, these days, the arrangement is something close to equal time... he gets a week, then she gets a week... something like that.
Such a schedule gives her time to go grocery shopping on her off weeks, without little hands reaching for every piece of candy in the checkout line... it makes it possible for her to have HALF of her work days ENTIRELY available to stay late at the office if the boss needs it... making it possible for her to do the kind of office politics/networking that will help her break through whatever glass ceiling her mommy-track might have held for her...
Generally, such a schedule also causes her a LOT of worry at first. The kids' hair won't be brushed right, or they will be fed on McDonalds fries and sodas... they'll be allowed to stay up all night and will be late to school... Dad will forget to take the Tuba to school for band practice. If she calms down and lets him do this stuff without her interference or nagging, she will probably find that he can manage these things just fine. If he's JUST as incompetent as I described, he will find out the frst time they're up all night, bouncing around because of the sugar & caffeine high of the McDonalds' colas, that this might not be such a great idea for dinner... he will figure out how to put the kids' hari in a pony tail and the KID will come home crying that her hair was a mess all day and her friends made fun of it, so he will figure out how to get it done correctly, even maybe helping her learn how to do it himself if he feels that incompetent about it. And the first time he has to re-organize his work schedule to go pick up the stupid tuba from the house and bring it to the school in time for Band... he'll remember not to let the kid forget it again.
More likely, he'll feed the kid a more balanced meal from a healthier fast food place, will have learned how to brush his own daughter's hair after watching you do it for years, and will be JUST FINE. And in some instances, Mom will have to enforce the parenting time issues, such as refusing to take over when the kid is sick on his watch... Dad needs to step up and do the whole job, just like Mom now has the opportunity to step up and do Her whole job as far as breadwinning goes.
And the kids will get the Daddy who can help them with their math, who takes them to see a really cool workplace on "bring your kids to work day", who talks to them about budget and career and what boys really think like and how a real man handles his responsibilities, who takes them on more physically challenging activities on weekends than Mommy might usually schedule.
And Daddy might have a Wii at his house, while Mommy has a Playstation... daddy has scooters while Mommy has bikes. Daddy has a dog who catches Frisbees while Mom's dog has learned to roll over and play dead.
Pushing daddy away gives the child half a life. It should be reserved for very rare, dire circumstances... which do not exist in most separations or divorces!
Daddies are REALLY important for this... they provide a balance in the kid's life.
Daddies are important.
Unfortunately, though the world has changed such that Dads expect to be involved in their kids' lives, we pretend that change doesn't exist the minute the parents decide to separate. Upon separation, the working mother who saw their children NO MORE OFTEN than the working father, suddenly acts as though they have been the primary (or only) "REAL" parent in the family. Generally, the division of labor in the family had been organized so that Mom took care of what was important to Mom and Dad took care of what was important to Dad, and everything else either fell through the cracks (dusting the geegaws in the living room, perhaps) OR they joined together or outsourced it (such as sharing meal-making, or maybe getting takeout a majority of the time)...
When they split, Mom thinks that she should get the kids because SHE was the REAL parent, but what she doesn't understand is that Dad ALSO thought HE was doing important things for the kids.
Our courts, and frankly, our custody evaluators and other professionals in the system, are reluctant to catch up to the current reality, which is that if the parents split up, leaving the kids with Mommy for 90% of the time and making Daddy a visitor in his own kids' lives, is a big loss for Daddy (which no one really cares about, because it's all about what's best for the kids) AND it's a big loss for the kids! The therapists are so busy saying that a child needs a single home base to call their own, that moving is bad for the kids, etc... that they ignore certain realities...
In a family where the parents WANT to move, and handle it properly with the children, there are very few problems with moving from one location to another. Military families are notorious for moving regularly and also for raising wonderful, resilient children. JUST because something is disappointing to a child does not mean we should avoid it. It is through learning how to adjust to change, learning how to weather disappointment, that a child learns. The therapists will point to the losses of orphans and foster children as proof that children should not be moved if possible, but those analogies ignore the fact that in the case of foster children and orphans, the adults that they should be able to trust have become untrustworthy, and are NOT managing the changes in their own lives well.
In other words, if the adults in a child's life are positive about a change, and help the kids work through their concerns about it (where will my favorite chair be? How will Santa find us? How can I EVER find a new friend in a strange school?) the kids will be just fine. In many cases, children of divorce or separation are not helped to weather the changes in a positive light, but instead are prepared for it as if the parents are preparing for the world to come to an end. And you can be SURE that if the parents feel their world is coming to an end, the kids will feel that way also.
If parents are not taking a move well, then the kids will also not take it well. Look at parents who are losing jobs, getting evicted, or separating/divorcing. We see them explaining the move to the child in terms of "don't worry, we'll SURVIVE... somehow, as long as you stick with ME", it is a whole lot different than, "Daddy just got a great job and we're moving to a bigger town where there will be a bigger house and a playground right across the street, and the school has computers for every kid to use in the classrooms and a great soccer team"... The trick on handling a separation/divorce, and the required moves with a kid, is to help them understand that this change will be better. "Mommy & Daddy won't argue so much, but we'll be in different houses. Daddy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and Mommy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and you'll have two times as many rooms, two times as many birthday parties, two times as many visits from Santa!!! Instead of going camping as a family for 2 weeks in the summer, you'll spend 2 weeks camping with me and ANOTHER two weeks camping with Daddy, or maybe instead of camping, you'll go skiing in the winter, or to Disney... it'll be GREAT... and when we're not always arguing, it'll be a lot happier too!" A WHOLE lot better than "Dad is leaving us, we'll get by, don't worry, the judge will force him to pay child support and if he doesn't they'll send him to jail"... (yes, some parents DO say this to their children... it's awful, and it doesn't usually come all in the same sentence, but they say it in tiny little bits, until the children put it altogether and realize that this is AWFUL... Daddy doesn't love us, walked out on us, won't pay for our needs, might go to jail, we'll never see him again & Mommy & Us might starve!!!...)
Unfortunately, many people treat Daddy like an ATM... and the ability to have children as if it's a career choice... a money-earner. And when the courts support this vision of how Daddies are, the men in these children's lives will slowly disappear. They will become marginalized... they become Disney Dads who show up on the rare occasion when mom & the judge allow them to see the kids. And the kids start to feel a bit of awkwardness... feeling like a guest in what should be their own home...
When this happens, kids only get the part of parenting that the Moms took on. Dads stop parenting the kids and spend their precious little time with the kids, just trying to maintain the connection, entertaining the kids and hoping that they enjoy the relationship enough that they'll come to Dad if they ever have a need to do so. Unfortunately, they rarely do. This parenting schedule that our society has fallen into... a schedule that was more appropriate 50 years ago when Daddies did all the work and Mommies always stayed home... the every-other-holiday, every-other-weekend and one dinner a week... it's a schedule that encourages Disney Dad syndrome. If the parents have one designated as a primary residential parent, and the other as the "visitor", who is involved only during play time (every other weekend, holiday, etc), we can be sure that the primary residential parent will be the one burdened with 100% of the homework, 100% of the carpooling to & from school, 100% of the organizing of extracurriculars and play dates, 100% of the whiny wake-up moments and quick breakfasts before school, 100% of the chore-making... all while losing 50% of the vacations, holidays, weekends and fun times with the kids.
Most parents will not call this a "burden", but whatever they choose to call it, they become the disciplinarian, the organizer, the person who has to spend 100% on the kids and who has lost the partner who used to help out.... even if that partner was only helping pay the bills, clean the house, and do the carpooling when you instructed, this partner carried an important part of the burden of the household. And there are bad side-effects for the adult who is suddenly 100% in charge of children, with no partner present to take any part of that burden. First, this adult loses the opportunity to fully participate in their career, to be at the office without the likelihood of getting a call from the school that a child is sick... The absence of a second parent to call on for those duties, makes it impossible for this primary parent to fully participate in the workplace without the possibility of a child-related interruption. The primary parent also has more difficulty creating an adult social life for themselves. While the "visiting" parent can develop adult friendships in a normal fashion, outside of the influence of the children until the parent is sure the relationship is viable, the primary parent loses this opportunity. For the primary parent, a casual flirtation cannot turn into a coffee date, an invitation to happy hour cannot be fulfilled, because child care issues will nearly always be present. And any relationship that gets past the coffee date stage will necessarily start to unfold in the presence of the children, whose needs and opinions will intrude.
As a result, the opportunity for the primary parent to process the loss of the romantic relationship and replace it in their lives is curtailed and altered. If we want a surefire way to jump from marriage/mistake #1 into marriage/mistake #2, we could not create a better formula for making it happen. After the sudden loss of #1, don't give the primary parent the opportunity to mourn the loss or learn the relationship lessons, don't give them the chance to figure out what they did wrong and how they want to do it better next time, don't give them time to explore relationships in private. Instead, make sure this person has no opportunity for adult companionship unless it's mostly in the presence of the children. Instead of recovering, this person will be rebounding, and with no free time left to process what is going on, they are being reactive rather than pro-active. It will not work. It's no surprise that second marriages have a higher failure rater than first marriages, especially if children from the first marriage are involved!
I can promise everyone here that if a parent is reading this who is the primary residential parent and the children's mother, that she will be saying to herself, "I'm the MOTHER, I am the one with the INSTINCTS, and I am willing to make the sacrifice for MY KIDS". Unfortunately, this sacrifice does not do the best for the kids.
The kids lose the good homework help in the subjects that Dad is better at than Mom is. Girls lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who will always find them beautiful, who will CREDIBLY (Mom can't be credible on this issue) tell them that a boy does not deserve this much attention... the boys lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who can CREDIBLY tell them what a REAL MAN does, who was the first and most reliable example of what they wanted to be. The kids lose an example of how to live life in the way he chooses to live, so that when they grow up, they have a more balanced vision of how to get by in this world on their own.
Once upon a time, not too long ago, we would say "it takes a village to raise a child", meaning that having more examples of adulthood around, to pick up pieces of the load and help the children see how to live and cooperate in this world, is a good thing... yet when a separation occurs, we suddenly stop believing this, deciding that it's an OK thing to totally cut out one of the two most important people in the child's life. As a rule, we are making a big mistake if we think it's OK to cut out or marginalize the influence of either parent.
I do not say there are not exceptions to the rule... We MAY need to cut out the baby daddy who is a raging alcoholic, or addict... or who is dangerously violent. But more often than not, we find that the mother who, just last week, was quite willing to leave her children alone with this guy for hours on end, entire weekends while she was out with the girls, away for work, or visiting her mother... all of a sudden, upon separation, she acts as though his faults are so extreme that he does not deserve time with the children any more... or that his time should be severely limited. Suddenly, a woman who has been married nearly 2 decades where her only complaint was that he did not earn enough money, SUDDENLY she is accusing him of violence and telling judges that the children need to be protected from him most of the time. In these cases, we need to double-check the likelihood that these accusations are true. There are too many incentives for an exaggeration or lie to take place at the time of separation. Too many reasons for a person freshly angry over a split, to suddenly forget their own part in the problems of the marriage and bring every disagreement to light in an effort to crush the other parent.
Unfortunately, while recriminations or lingering angry feelings are no problem for childless couples who can separate and never have to see each other again, this does not work for separating couples who have children together. It is not good for people who must continue to co-parent, to have opportunities to bash each other. Accusations go both ways, this is why the couple is no longer together. The courts understand that there are usually two sides to any story, but instead of encouraging the parties to put aside their anger, the court system, which is adversarial by nature, encourages both sides to have equal opportunity to vent.
Perhaps one reason that mothers are often winners in the initial custody battles is that fathers are less articulate about emotional issues such as this. Unless a daddy takes on the significant burden of very high legal expenses required for a very difficult and protracted custody battle (and unless the daddy is willing to put his children through such a battle), the woman will usually win, just by virtue of being better at holding onto their grudges against the ex and being better able to articulate their grudges.)
Some parents with very strong parental instincts manage to put the anger behind them. And generally, they figure out an amicable arrangement of parenting time. Usually, these days, the arrangement is something close to equal time... he gets a week, then she gets a week... something like that.
Such a schedule gives her time to go grocery shopping on her off weeks, without little hands reaching for every piece of candy in the checkout line... it makes it possible for her to have HALF of her work days ENTIRELY available to stay late at the office if the boss needs it... making it possible for her to do the kind of office politics/networking that will help her break through whatever glass ceiling her mommy-track might have held for her...
Generally, such a schedule also causes her a LOT of worry at first. The kids' hair won't be brushed right, or they will be fed on McDonalds fries and sodas... they'll be allowed to stay up all night and will be late to school... Dad will forget to take the Tuba to school for band practice. If she calms down and lets him do this stuff without her interference or nagging, she will probably find that he can manage these things just fine. If he's JUST as incompetent as I described, he will find out the frst time they're up all night, bouncing around because of the sugar & caffeine high of the McDonalds' colas, that this might not be such a great idea for dinner... he will figure out how to put the kids' hari in a pony tail and the KID will come home crying that her hair was a mess all day and her friends made fun of it, so he will figure out how to get it done correctly, even maybe helping her learn how to do it himself if he feels that incompetent about it. And the first time he has to re-organize his work schedule to go pick up the stupid tuba from the house and bring it to the school in time for Band... he'll remember not to let the kid forget it again.
More likely, he'll feed the kid a more balanced meal from a healthier fast food place, will have learned how to brush his own daughter's hair after watching you do it for years, and will be JUST FINE. And in some instances, Mom will have to enforce the parenting time issues, such as refusing to take over when the kid is sick on his watch... Dad needs to step up and do the whole job, just like Mom now has the opportunity to step up and do Her whole job as far as breadwinning goes.
And the kids will get the Daddy who can help them with their math, who takes them to see a really cool workplace on "bring your kids to work day", who talks to them about budget and career and what boys really think like and how a real man handles his responsibilities, who takes them on more physically challenging activities on weekends than Mommy might usually schedule.
And Daddy might have a Wii at his house, while Mommy has a Playstation... daddy has scooters while Mommy has bikes. Daddy has a dog who catches Frisbees while Mom's dog has learned to roll over and play dead.
Pushing daddy away gives the child half a life. It should be reserved for very rare, dire circumstances... which do not exist in most separations or divorces!
Daddies are REALLY important for this... they provide a balance in the kid's life.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Kids lie
So many people will protest loudly at the claim that kids lie. Anyone who uses children as a witness in a case HOPES that the children know better than to lie under oath, but the truth is that at a certain age, children can't even tell the difference between truth and a lie. To them, ghosts and fairys and "the borrowers" really do exist. At an older age, they have often been taught what the proper answer is to many questions, and they will supply whatever answer does not get them into trouble. If a divorced mother is angry at the kid's father, the children know very well that it will make her happy if they say things that is bad about him. He is mean, he doesn't let them do stuff. Or maybe the kids will try to be the peacemaker, saying he's really NICE, that he's not so bad, he lets them eat candy and stuff (innocently unaware that the issue of eating candy and not eating nutritiously at each other's house has been a main issue in the custody battle).
If kids are angry at someone, they will say things that will get that person into trouble, and if they are happy with that person, they will say things that will get the person OUT of trouble. If they want something, they will say things designed to get that thing for them, and if they don't want something, they will make up things that they hope will prevent them from having that something. "I'm allergic", becomes the refrain told to the lunch lady, babysitters, and camp counselors. I've heard "I'm allergic" as an excuse not to eat oatmeal, not to drink milk, not to eat fruit, or any kind of meat that the child did not like. A recent set of foster kids had me totally convinced that they were "lactose intolerant" (advanced little brains using a much more sophisticated form of "I'm allergic"), so that they could turn down milk, only to go bananas over ice cream, butter, and cheese when the opportunity arose. My explanation that those things include lactose did not faze them... "MOMMY lets me eat that!", is their way of proving that I'm wrong. Even scientific proof garnered from that perfect source of all truth (the computer), could not convince them to drink milk or let me sneak it into their cereal or any other normal option... no, their allergy was ONLY negated if the milk came in a high fat, high sugar option.
I have even known parents to TEACH their kids how to lie, thinking that it was for a better purpose... a mother, wanting to win the custody battle, was seen sitting in the lobby of the counselor's office (the counselor who would report to the judge), coaching the kids... "if she asks ..., you can say..." VERY carefully parsing the words so that the kids could tell the "truth" (Mom's version), without saying something they KNEW to be a lie under oath... and insisting that the intention to mislead while still telling the truth was OK, because if they went to Dad's house, they'd not be allowed to see their friends (he lived a few miles away from their Mom's neighborhood), drive their car (SHE bought it for them and would not allow them to keep it at Dad's house), participate in their sports (Dad was upset about their grades and had suggested curtailing the extracurriculars until their grades had come back up), OR go on vacation (a vacation she had planned in secret because it was against the court order regarding parenting time, her intention had been to keep the kids away from Dad so she planned the vacation specifically to keep them out of state at the time Dad was supposed to spend time with them). So they intentionally mislead the counselor, each separately telling her that, contrary to Mom's claim, they DID love their Dad and they did NOT fear him, but magically, each of them had only a few hours a week to see Dad... between Sunday morning at church (which Mom rarely attended), and Sunday evening's youth group, if they weren't booked for an afternoon with friends or Mom's family, they could envision letting Dad spend a few hours with them. Understand, these lies are coming from OLDER kids, who were WELL OVER the idea that fairies were real. They were young and idealistic enough that they did not WANT to do the wrong thing, but when their mother explained all the reasons they would want to lie, they did NOT naturally revert to the truth. Faced with the possibility that they could get what they wanted, and not get caught, by lying. They lied.
The Mom who taught her kids to hide things from their Dad and to lie about things so she could win the custody battle, is now reaping the rewards of her choice, and now that the children are adults, they are lying to her as well. But that is all I'll say about that situation for now, because this is not about the evils of using your children as weapons against your co-parent, but rather about how easily children lie, how they are not born with an innate knowledge of truth, nor are they born with an innate desire to tell ONLY truth.
The knowledge of what is truth, and the desire to tell it, only come with training. We teach children about how the world works by lying to them... we teach them to "be good" by telling them about Santa Claus, we get them not to cry over losing a tooth by lying to them about the tooth fairy. We tell fairy tales that have morals we want them to learn. And if they ask us the tough questions about whether our family is financially secure, whether we are cheating on each other, hiding things from each other, or splitting up... if the truth is inconvenient, we lie. On the other end, we spend a lot of time telling them that strangers are dangerous, and then we're surprised when they meet ONE stranger who proves to NOT be dangerous, and they decide we don't know what we're saying when we preach about stranger danger, so they stop being careful around OTHER strangers.
Worse then telling them an altered version of the truth to teach them a lesson, we reinforce the lies they tell. If a cookie is missing from the cookie jar and crumbs all over their mouths, we ask, "where did it go", and when they say "I don't know" or "(name the invisible friend) took it"... we play along and try to convince them to come clean by proving it to them by logic. Or, BONUS, we laugh at the absurdity of the story. In doing so, we confirm for them that the lie worked, and even that it was cute and funny. That telling the lie made us love them more at the same time as keeping them out of trouble! If we ask, "did YOU do it"? (for just about ANY infraction of rules), and they say "no", we are thrown into a posture of having to play detective and prosecutor with them, convince them that their lies are not plausible. We give them the power of having fooled us so now they have made us WORK at it, and they are sure that we can never be completely sure of our conclusions, because they are pretty sure the lie worked. There is no down side to the kid for lying like this.
Think of it. "Did you take the cookie?" has two possible answers. "Yes", guarantees punishment. "No", evades punishment for at least a short time, and forces Mom to find evidence that will convince us that she knows we're lying. And to a 3 year old, saying it louder and longer sometimes just MAKES it true. We all know adults who never learned otherwise... those people who are so sure that if they say it, it is true, despite all evidence to the contrary, or who believe that it doesn't matter what anyone else says, if they say it louder and longer, we'll believe, or at least we'll submit to their demands.
So what is the solution? There is no requirement that we STOP telling fairy tales or change the Santa story. No... but we must address each situation of the children finding out the truth, as it arises, confirming for them that there is a different between fairy tales and truth, and the fairy tales are often based upon truth or teach very valuable lessons. But when we catch them red-handed in the cookie jar, we need not engage in any little games where they get to play "innocent until proven guilty" and turn us into a detective and prosecutor. Particularly when they are not old enough to understand logical reasoning! NO. When we catch them with a hand in the cookie jar, it's perfectly OK if they think we have eyes in the back of our heads... They were SURE we were turned around or out of the room, but we KNOW that they just stole a cookie. At the time of life when they can't possibly understand logical reasoning, it's perfectly OK if we are part of that magical world in their heads where some things... fairys, Santa, and Mom & Dad, KNOW EVERYTHING. We don't ASK, because we KNOW. So we do not ask, we TELL them. Johnny, you just took a cookie. You know how you're not supposed to get into the cookie jar when Mom is not here? Well, because you took a cookie now, you go into time out. 3 minutes. And then you don't get a cookie later because you already had it now. OK? And we do NOT let them wheedle, whine, and try to convince us that we're wrong.
Of course this doesn't work if we are not sure. Being unsure and falsely accusing the kid is a sure-fire way to OTHER bad things. However... sometimes we have to decide whether it's more important to make sure the kid does not get the feeling that lying can get them off the hook for stuff, or ... well, whatever other bad thing we're facing... punishing them for a cookie that we're not sure whether they ate it or not. Teaching them to save snacks till Mom says it's snack time, or whatever other lesson... which is more important... explaining snack time to a kid who can barely pronounce the word "snack", or teaching the child that lying does not work?
If you have gotten past this age and are confronted with a child who seems entrenched in a lying behavior, you may have some very difficult choices. Consult a therapist for help with this. With one of my foster children, I have to say that the therapist and I worked out a very important intervention for lying... we needed to even praise the child for telling the truth EVEN WHEN the truth was, "yes, I hit my little brother". The bottom line is that we were never going to get that statement out of her without a lot of work, so giving her the opportunity to lie about it by asking the question was not going to happen. We needed to work on telling the truth in LITTLE issues, like whether her homework was done or whether she spilled her orange juice, having a little party even, (making a big deal out of the occasion, not a whole PARTY with cupcakes & stuff!)... to celebrate her successes in telling the truth. Something like this needs to be done very carefully.
And the sooner, the better. You REALLY do not want to wait till the kids are away at college before you address the issue... because they'll be lying to you about the BIG things... drinking, drugging, roommates, romances, health, tuition, other finances, grades, and future plans... that can become a BIG expense (bail, bailing out credit, dropping out of college, raising grandbabies, etc). At some level, if your child has learned that lying is easier than the truth, you'll be lucky if your kid gets through adulthood without missing a holiday season visit with you because of a prison term!
Kids DO lie. And if we cannot acknowledge it, we cannot address it. And if we DO try to address it, we need to do so in a way that they can learn how to tell the truth. If we do not, we will regret it.
If kids are angry at someone, they will say things that will get that person into trouble, and if they are happy with that person, they will say things that will get the person OUT of trouble. If they want something, they will say things designed to get that thing for them, and if they don't want something, they will make up things that they hope will prevent them from having that something. "I'm allergic", becomes the refrain told to the lunch lady, babysitters, and camp counselors. I've heard "I'm allergic" as an excuse not to eat oatmeal, not to drink milk, not to eat fruit, or any kind of meat that the child did not like. A recent set of foster kids had me totally convinced that they were "lactose intolerant" (advanced little brains using a much more sophisticated form of "I'm allergic"), so that they could turn down milk, only to go bananas over ice cream, butter, and cheese when the opportunity arose. My explanation that those things include lactose did not faze them... "MOMMY lets me eat that!", is their way of proving that I'm wrong. Even scientific proof garnered from that perfect source of all truth (the computer), could not convince them to drink milk or let me sneak it into their cereal or any other normal option... no, their allergy was ONLY negated if the milk came in a high fat, high sugar option.
I have even known parents to TEACH their kids how to lie, thinking that it was for a better purpose... a mother, wanting to win the custody battle, was seen sitting in the lobby of the counselor's office (the counselor who would report to the judge), coaching the kids... "if she asks ..., you can say..." VERY carefully parsing the words so that the kids could tell the "truth" (Mom's version), without saying something they KNEW to be a lie under oath... and insisting that the intention to mislead while still telling the truth was OK, because if they went to Dad's house, they'd not be allowed to see their friends (he lived a few miles away from their Mom's neighborhood), drive their car (SHE bought it for them and would not allow them to keep it at Dad's house), participate in their sports (Dad was upset about their grades and had suggested curtailing the extracurriculars until their grades had come back up), OR go on vacation (a vacation she had planned in secret because it was against the court order regarding parenting time, her intention had been to keep the kids away from Dad so she planned the vacation specifically to keep them out of state at the time Dad was supposed to spend time with them). So they intentionally mislead the counselor, each separately telling her that, contrary to Mom's claim, they DID love their Dad and they did NOT fear him, but magically, each of them had only a few hours a week to see Dad... between Sunday morning at church (which Mom rarely attended), and Sunday evening's youth group, if they weren't booked for an afternoon with friends or Mom's family, they could envision letting Dad spend a few hours with them. Understand, these lies are coming from OLDER kids, who were WELL OVER the idea that fairies were real. They were young and idealistic enough that they did not WANT to do the wrong thing, but when their mother explained all the reasons they would want to lie, they did NOT naturally revert to the truth. Faced with the possibility that they could get what they wanted, and not get caught, by lying. They lied.
The Mom who taught her kids to hide things from their Dad and to lie about things so she could win the custody battle, is now reaping the rewards of her choice, and now that the children are adults, they are lying to her as well. But that is all I'll say about that situation for now, because this is not about the evils of using your children as weapons against your co-parent, but rather about how easily children lie, how they are not born with an innate knowledge of truth, nor are they born with an innate desire to tell ONLY truth.
The knowledge of what is truth, and the desire to tell it, only come with training. We teach children about how the world works by lying to them... we teach them to "be good" by telling them about Santa Claus, we get them not to cry over losing a tooth by lying to them about the tooth fairy. We tell fairy tales that have morals we want them to learn. And if they ask us the tough questions about whether our family is financially secure, whether we are cheating on each other, hiding things from each other, or splitting up... if the truth is inconvenient, we lie. On the other end, we spend a lot of time telling them that strangers are dangerous, and then we're surprised when they meet ONE stranger who proves to NOT be dangerous, and they decide we don't know what we're saying when we preach about stranger danger, so they stop being careful around OTHER strangers.
Worse then telling them an altered version of the truth to teach them a lesson, we reinforce the lies they tell. If a cookie is missing from the cookie jar and crumbs all over their mouths, we ask, "where did it go", and when they say "I don't know" or "(name the invisible friend) took it"... we play along and try to convince them to come clean by proving it to them by logic. Or, BONUS, we laugh at the absurdity of the story. In doing so, we confirm for them that the lie worked, and even that it was cute and funny. That telling the lie made us love them more at the same time as keeping them out of trouble! If we ask, "did YOU do it"? (for just about ANY infraction of rules), and they say "no", we are thrown into a posture of having to play detective and prosecutor with them, convince them that their lies are not plausible. We give them the power of having fooled us so now they have made us WORK at it, and they are sure that we can never be completely sure of our conclusions, because they are pretty sure the lie worked. There is no down side to the kid for lying like this.
Think of it. "Did you take the cookie?" has two possible answers. "Yes", guarantees punishment. "No", evades punishment for at least a short time, and forces Mom to find evidence that will convince us that she knows we're lying. And to a 3 year old, saying it louder and longer sometimes just MAKES it true. We all know adults who never learned otherwise... those people who are so sure that if they say it, it is true, despite all evidence to the contrary, or who believe that it doesn't matter what anyone else says, if they say it louder and longer, we'll believe, or at least we'll submit to their demands.
So what is the solution? There is no requirement that we STOP telling fairy tales or change the Santa story. No... but we must address each situation of the children finding out the truth, as it arises, confirming for them that there is a different between fairy tales and truth, and the fairy tales are often based upon truth or teach very valuable lessons. But when we catch them red-handed in the cookie jar, we need not engage in any little games where they get to play "innocent until proven guilty" and turn us into a detective and prosecutor. Particularly when they are not old enough to understand logical reasoning! NO. When we catch them with a hand in the cookie jar, it's perfectly OK if they think we have eyes in the back of our heads... They were SURE we were turned around or out of the room, but we KNOW that they just stole a cookie. At the time of life when they can't possibly understand logical reasoning, it's perfectly OK if we are part of that magical world in their heads where some things... fairys, Santa, and Mom & Dad, KNOW EVERYTHING. We don't ASK, because we KNOW. So we do not ask, we TELL them. Johnny, you just took a cookie. You know how you're not supposed to get into the cookie jar when Mom is not here? Well, because you took a cookie now, you go into time out. 3 minutes. And then you don't get a cookie later because you already had it now. OK? And we do NOT let them wheedle, whine, and try to convince us that we're wrong.
Of course this doesn't work if we are not sure. Being unsure and falsely accusing the kid is a sure-fire way to OTHER bad things. However... sometimes we have to decide whether it's more important to make sure the kid does not get the feeling that lying can get them off the hook for stuff, or ... well, whatever other bad thing we're facing... punishing them for a cookie that we're not sure whether they ate it or not. Teaching them to save snacks till Mom says it's snack time, or whatever other lesson... which is more important... explaining snack time to a kid who can barely pronounce the word "snack", or teaching the child that lying does not work?
If you have gotten past this age and are confronted with a child who seems entrenched in a lying behavior, you may have some very difficult choices. Consult a therapist for help with this. With one of my foster children, I have to say that the therapist and I worked out a very important intervention for lying... we needed to even praise the child for telling the truth EVEN WHEN the truth was, "yes, I hit my little brother". The bottom line is that we were never going to get that statement out of her without a lot of work, so giving her the opportunity to lie about it by asking the question was not going to happen. We needed to work on telling the truth in LITTLE issues, like whether her homework was done or whether she spilled her orange juice, having a little party even, (making a big deal out of the occasion, not a whole PARTY with cupcakes & stuff!)... to celebrate her successes in telling the truth. Something like this needs to be done very carefully.
And the sooner, the better. You REALLY do not want to wait till the kids are away at college before you address the issue... because they'll be lying to you about the BIG things... drinking, drugging, roommates, romances, health, tuition, other finances, grades, and future plans... that can become a BIG expense (bail, bailing out credit, dropping out of college, raising grandbabies, etc). At some level, if your child has learned that lying is easier than the truth, you'll be lucky if your kid gets through adulthood without missing a holiday season visit with you because of a prison term!
Kids DO lie. And if we cannot acknowledge it, we cannot address it. And if we DO try to address it, we need to do so in a way that they can learn how to tell the truth. If we do not, we will regret it.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Adoption of foreign children
In the U.S., we recognize that we have more opportunities and we pride ourselves on sharing those opportunities with those who are less fortunate. In many instances, families seeking to adopt a child will look for that child in a foreign country. Our foster system has many children who are available, but for some families, the option to foster a child with the hope of eventually adopting, is not their first choice.
A few warnings to those who seek to adopt through a foreign source. First, the Hague Convention covers the adoption of some foreign children. It does not cover the adoption of ALL foreign children. The Convention is a treaty signed by many countries, where part of the convention addresses inter-country adoption of orphans. In other words, if a person in China wants to adopt an orphan from England, they can expect that the procedures found in the Hague Convention will be followed. Not all countries signed onto the convention, but most have. You will want to double-check to make sure the country you seek to adopt from has signed this convention, because if it is not, you may find yourself facing rules that are not as easy to identify.
The Hague convention only covers adoptions of orphans. Each country who has signed the convention has slightly different procedures, but the biggest advantage of this convention is that, for U.S. citizens, once you have properly accomplished your adoption process through the Hague Convention, the U.S. state department will honor the adoption and issue a passport, allowing the child to attain citizenship through this means.
In a non-Hague adoption (for example, an inter-family adoption or the adoption of a person who is not identified as an orphan), our government does not recognize the adoption as qualifying the child for citizenship. In other words, we are not allowing the Hague Convention to let us circumvent our immigration rules, to bring people into our country and give them citizenship, just by adopting them, if they are not orphans. When someone very close to me decided to adopt her niece, for example, and bring her to the U.S. for her schooling, the U.S. government required this friend of mine to spend 3 years in the niece's home country, acting as her adoptive parent IN THAT COUNTRY, before they allowed her to bring the child here.
In another instance, I had a potential client consult me about a non-Hague adoption. She and her husband were living in an asian country as missionarys for a few years with their church. They had met a teen from Nigeria. His parents had been caught in a scam so he was now stuck. The scammer had promised to get the teen enrolled in a soccer team where he would be making a significant amount of money, if they could scratch up enough money to pay the scammer. The scammer had arranged a flight, and the families who succombed to the scam, brought their teens to the airport and gave them a great send-off, with the scammer taking the kids and their money. The scammer left the kids in this Asian country and flew away, never to be heard of again. The kids were left in an airport with no further instructions. The mission helped them get through customs and found out about the scam. Several of the kids' parents welcomed them home, but this one older teen, his parents did not want him back. They could not afford him. They could not afford tickets for his trip home. The kid was stuck. So my potential client felt they had a solution... adopt him and bring him home with them when they returned in another month. They had consulted with their embassy, but were rebuffed, so they reached out to me, a lawyer from their home state.
I felt bad about it, but I had to explain about the Hague Convention situation that this does not apply to children whose parents are still alive. All their good intentions had nothing to do with being this young man's parents, they were simply trying to solve an immigration issue. And that is not what adoption is about. It is no there to solve immigration issues.
In the process of our conversation, this couple brought up to me the situation of some famous people who have adopted children from other countries who were not necessarily orphans. Was this about giving kids to people who were rich or famous, and keeping kids away from the poor (but possibly more deserving) missionaries? No... I had to point out, those famous adoptive parents were living in other countries at the time of their famous adoptions. Our own government is very sensitive to the potential accusation that we are coming to their countries and BUYING children from their parents, who are very much alive. We do not believe in doing this thing. If you are not familiar with similar situations in other countries, such as what happened with this young Nigerian man, you might not be aware that this does happen. Parents effectively sell their children. In the most notorious of instances, they are selling the kids into slavery or indentured servitude, to work in a factory or worse. Our country does not want any part of that. We often help the victims of human trafficking incidents, but we don't want to encourage such trafficking. So, where the child's birth parents are still alive and capable of parenting, we require the potential adoptive parent to prove their intention to parent. Go there, and be the kid's parent, if this kid is that important to you!
It sounds difficult, but think of it in two ways. First, as I already mentioned, our government does not want to turn adoption into a loophole for immigration, allowing people to adopt each other, willy-nilly, just to get a passport. Second, We do not want to be the subject of a news expose where some poor mother from another country gets on camera and points fingers at us for being so arrogant that one of our citizens convinced her to sell her beloved children to them, and now she regrets it.
If you're seeking adoption from a foreign country, recognize that you will be required to cross all the Ts and dot all the Is. If you are working with an adoption agency who has a good lawyer, who has had success in making adoptions from this particular country you're working with, then great. HOWEVER, if you are seeking to adopt your own relative, or a child you have found through a source other than an experienced adoption agency, you will want to be sure to hire an immigration attorney with experience in foreign adoptions. If you are adoption in a non-Hague fashion, be sure your lawer is familiar with the rules for non-Hague adoptions and has had success with making such adoptions happen. Finally, no matter which version of foreign adoption you are seeking, recognize that you may find the requirements to be difficult to fulfill. If the requirements feel impossible, there may be a reason. It's quite possible that our government has decided to impose extreme requirements on your particular situation because they do not approve of people seeking to adopt for your particular reasons. I have advised people seeking to adopt their adult landscaper to help him get citizenship, or seeking to adopt their spouses because the circumstances of their marriage had caused the Immigration authorities to deny citizenship under that route. In each of these situations, the difficult requirements for non-orphan adoption felt bad. These people honestly just wanted to help someone immigrate, and they were sure they had found a loophole under the adoption opportunity. Unfortunately, the "loophole" is not as open as some people would hope. Thank goodness those people consulted me before they proceeded very far with the adoption process, because the expense of following through with the adoption would not have been worth it for the results they sought.
Before you start this adventure, please, consult a lawyer. And good luck. Creating a family for a person who has none can save lives, and futures.
A few warnings to those who seek to adopt through a foreign source. First, the Hague Convention covers the adoption of some foreign children. It does not cover the adoption of ALL foreign children. The Convention is a treaty signed by many countries, where part of the convention addresses inter-country adoption of orphans. In other words, if a person in China wants to adopt an orphan from England, they can expect that the procedures found in the Hague Convention will be followed. Not all countries signed onto the convention, but most have. You will want to double-check to make sure the country you seek to adopt from has signed this convention, because if it is not, you may find yourself facing rules that are not as easy to identify.
The Hague convention only covers adoptions of orphans. Each country who has signed the convention has slightly different procedures, but the biggest advantage of this convention is that, for U.S. citizens, once you have properly accomplished your adoption process through the Hague Convention, the U.S. state department will honor the adoption and issue a passport, allowing the child to attain citizenship through this means.
In a non-Hague adoption (for example, an inter-family adoption or the adoption of a person who is not identified as an orphan), our government does not recognize the adoption as qualifying the child for citizenship. In other words, we are not allowing the Hague Convention to let us circumvent our immigration rules, to bring people into our country and give them citizenship, just by adopting them, if they are not orphans. When someone very close to me decided to adopt her niece, for example, and bring her to the U.S. for her schooling, the U.S. government required this friend of mine to spend 3 years in the niece's home country, acting as her adoptive parent IN THAT COUNTRY, before they allowed her to bring the child here.
In another instance, I had a potential client consult me about a non-Hague adoption. She and her husband were living in an asian country as missionarys for a few years with their church. They had met a teen from Nigeria. His parents had been caught in a scam so he was now stuck. The scammer had promised to get the teen enrolled in a soccer team where he would be making a significant amount of money, if they could scratch up enough money to pay the scammer. The scammer had arranged a flight, and the families who succombed to the scam, brought their teens to the airport and gave them a great send-off, with the scammer taking the kids and their money. The scammer left the kids in this Asian country and flew away, never to be heard of again. The kids were left in an airport with no further instructions. The mission helped them get through customs and found out about the scam. Several of the kids' parents welcomed them home, but this one older teen, his parents did not want him back. They could not afford him. They could not afford tickets for his trip home. The kid was stuck. So my potential client felt they had a solution... adopt him and bring him home with them when they returned in another month. They had consulted with their embassy, but were rebuffed, so they reached out to me, a lawyer from their home state.
I felt bad about it, but I had to explain about the Hague Convention situation that this does not apply to children whose parents are still alive. All their good intentions had nothing to do with being this young man's parents, they were simply trying to solve an immigration issue. And that is not what adoption is about. It is no there to solve immigration issues.
In the process of our conversation, this couple brought up to me the situation of some famous people who have adopted children from other countries who were not necessarily orphans. Was this about giving kids to people who were rich or famous, and keeping kids away from the poor (but possibly more deserving) missionaries? No... I had to point out, those famous adoptive parents were living in other countries at the time of their famous adoptions. Our own government is very sensitive to the potential accusation that we are coming to their countries and BUYING children from their parents, who are very much alive. We do not believe in doing this thing. If you are not familiar with similar situations in other countries, such as what happened with this young Nigerian man, you might not be aware that this does happen. Parents effectively sell their children. In the most notorious of instances, they are selling the kids into slavery or indentured servitude, to work in a factory or worse. Our country does not want any part of that. We often help the victims of human trafficking incidents, but we don't want to encourage such trafficking. So, where the child's birth parents are still alive and capable of parenting, we require the potential adoptive parent to prove their intention to parent. Go there, and be the kid's parent, if this kid is that important to you!
It sounds difficult, but think of it in two ways. First, as I already mentioned, our government does not want to turn adoption into a loophole for immigration, allowing people to adopt each other, willy-nilly, just to get a passport. Second, We do not want to be the subject of a news expose where some poor mother from another country gets on camera and points fingers at us for being so arrogant that one of our citizens convinced her to sell her beloved children to them, and now she regrets it.
If you're seeking adoption from a foreign country, recognize that you will be required to cross all the Ts and dot all the Is. If you are working with an adoption agency who has a good lawyer, who has had success in making adoptions from this particular country you're working with, then great. HOWEVER, if you are seeking to adopt your own relative, or a child you have found through a source other than an experienced adoption agency, you will want to be sure to hire an immigration attorney with experience in foreign adoptions. If you are adoption in a non-Hague fashion, be sure your lawer is familiar with the rules for non-Hague adoptions and has had success with making such adoptions happen. Finally, no matter which version of foreign adoption you are seeking, recognize that you may find the requirements to be difficult to fulfill. If the requirements feel impossible, there may be a reason. It's quite possible that our government has decided to impose extreme requirements on your particular situation because they do not approve of people seeking to adopt for your particular reasons. I have advised people seeking to adopt their adult landscaper to help him get citizenship, or seeking to adopt their spouses because the circumstances of their marriage had caused the Immigration authorities to deny citizenship under that route. In each of these situations, the difficult requirements for non-orphan adoption felt bad. These people honestly just wanted to help someone immigrate, and they were sure they had found a loophole under the adoption opportunity. Unfortunately, the "loophole" is not as open as some people would hope. Thank goodness those people consulted me before they proceeded very far with the adoption process, because the expense of following through with the adoption would not have been worth it for the results they sought.
Before you start this adventure, please, consult a lawyer. And good luck. Creating a family for a person who has none can save lives, and futures.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Cooperative co-parenting: giving each other the information
I recently helped someone figure out how to handle a situation: her child was scheduled for an event. She and her ex husband had chosen to schedule the event together, because they were trying to be cooperative co-parents rather than competitive co-parents. But she was the "point person" on the task of applying for the event, paying, preparing and taking the child to the event. She sent several reminders, and could not figure out why he had not yet asked her for the address or contact information so he could attend and participate. She was getting frustrated, and believed he was expecting her to act as his receptionist, organizing his schedule for him and helping him figure out how to get there and who to contact so that he could do something special for their child.
It took about a minute and a half of talking to her that she realized what was going on. In her head, she was handling this in the same way she handled things during the marriage, when they lived in the same house and drove to events in the same vehicle. She was frustrated at what she perceived to be his inability to organize his life. She expected him to rely upon her, so she did not just cut and paste the contact and other event information (date, time, location) into her e-mail reminders to him. She was waiting for him to realize that he did not have it already and ASK for it. She was getting frustrated at him for not recognizing that he did not have it yet, and expecting her to organize his life for him (or at least his participation in this event).
I pointed out that it does not matter HOW he organizes himself any more. That's up to him. But in case he is the type who doesn't realize that he doesn't have the address of the place he's going, until he's about to get in the car, she can save herself the frustration of getting a last minute call from him while she's in the car and on the way, if she only cuts and pastes the event information into one of her reminder e-mails to him.
She admits to me that her thought process was mixed up with a little anger at him for a past situation where he failed to give her event information until she asked directly, but she realizes that letting this issue become "an issue", is more appropriate to competitive co-parenting than it is to cooperative co-parenting. She realizes that she solves the potential drama in this situation if she sends him the information without making him ask for it first.
We talked a little about her feeling that he was turning her into “his secretary", as she put it. I pointed out that even if this is one of the support staff-like functions of organizing a family, then the secretary of the business doing the event-planning is responsible for sending out the complete contact information for those business people who are not directly planning the event, bur merely attending and participating. When she realized that she is acting as HER OWN secretary rather than his, by giving him complete information, it fell into place in her head. Her responsibility in being point person on an event they agree about, is to keep him fully informed without waiting to be asked.
Once she gives him the information that she possesses, her responsibility to him is over. He can keep or toss the information, if he mistakenly hits the "delete" button, then it's reasonable for him to ask if she can re-send and she’s being nice (and doing right by her kid) to do that, but other than that, it's all on him.
The lesson here? In this world of instant communication, the process of letting each other know who, what, when, where, why (and how much $$), is simple. Cut, paste, and <send>. Assuming that you are in agreement on the actual event, coordinating attendance is as simple as handing each other the information. Cooperative co-parents learn to do this automatically, as automatically as if they were acting as THEIR OWN secretary in forwarding their boss' invitations with complete information. Once the recipient gets the information, it's up to them to follow through. Cooperative co-parents need not nag, push, manipulate or mislead each other on this particular issue. After they have been so good as to cooperate in choosing the event and choosing a point person for making the event happen, all they have to do is inform. Completely.
It took about a minute and a half of talking to her that she realized what was going on. In her head, she was handling this in the same way she handled things during the marriage, when they lived in the same house and drove to events in the same vehicle. She was frustrated at what she perceived to be his inability to organize his life. She expected him to rely upon her, so she did not just cut and paste the contact and other event information (date, time, location) into her e-mail reminders to him. She was waiting for him to realize that he did not have it already and ASK for it. She was getting frustrated at him for not recognizing that he did not have it yet, and expecting her to organize his life for him (or at least his participation in this event).
I pointed out that it does not matter HOW he organizes himself any more. That's up to him. But in case he is the type who doesn't realize that he doesn't have the address of the place he's going, until he's about to get in the car, she can save herself the frustration of getting a last minute call from him while she's in the car and on the way, if she only cuts and pastes the event information into one of her reminder e-mails to him.
She admits to me that her thought process was mixed up with a little anger at him for a past situation where he failed to give her event information until she asked directly, but she realizes that letting this issue become "an issue", is more appropriate to competitive co-parenting than it is to cooperative co-parenting. She realizes that she solves the potential drama in this situation if she sends him the information without making him ask for it first.
We talked a little about her feeling that he was turning her into “his secretary", as she put it. I pointed out that even if this is one of the support staff-like functions of organizing a family, then the secretary of the business doing the event-planning is responsible for sending out the complete contact information for those business people who are not directly planning the event, bur merely attending and participating. When she realized that she is acting as HER OWN secretary rather than his, by giving him complete information, it fell into place in her head. Her responsibility in being point person on an event they agree about, is to keep him fully informed without waiting to be asked.
Once she gives him the information that she possesses, her responsibility to him is over. He can keep or toss the information, if he mistakenly hits the "delete" button, then it's reasonable for him to ask if she can re-send and she’s being nice (and doing right by her kid) to do that, but other than that, it's all on him.
The lesson here? In this world of instant communication, the process of letting each other know who, what, when, where, why (and how much $$), is simple. Cut, paste, and <send>. Assuming that you are in agreement on the actual event, coordinating attendance is as simple as handing each other the information. Cooperative co-parents learn to do this automatically, as automatically as if they were acting as THEIR OWN secretary in forwarding their boss' invitations with complete information. Once the recipient gets the information, it's up to them to follow through. Cooperative co-parents need not nag, push, manipulate or mislead each other on this particular issue. After they have been so good as to cooperate in choosing the event and choosing a point person for making the event happen, all they have to do is inform. Completely.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Cooperative co-parenting versus competitive co-parenting
Most people have an instinct to protect a child from playing favorites, developing a dislike for or hearing bad information about (a), the people who are raising them and (b), the people who provided DNA to them. To people who have this instinct, it is intuitive that a child who hears that she was the product of a rape of her mother, (a plot of one of my favorite TV series, “Law & Order”, I think in the Special Victim’s Unit group), will be damaged by this information. While a child raised with this information under her belt might eventually become a tough cookie who is loved by many, the problems caused by it are instinctively avoided by most of us. And this is not just a situation with major problems (like finding out that your mother is bitter about your presence on earth because your father was her rapist), it’s also a situation with minor issues (like hearing that your Dad is a failure at finding gainful employment so your Mom can be the stay-at-home mother that she aspires to become). Most of us understand that and will not burden children with this information.
People who understand this will not undermine the other parent’s discipline, will not give the child back the cellphone when the other parent has punished the child by removing it, will not allow the kid to watch TV behind the other parent’s back, will not encourage secrets, playing favorites, and will not bribe the child. Parents who understand this will present a unified front on issues involving parenting, and for issues they’ve not previously come to an agreement on, they will rehearse and say, “I don’t know, what does your Dad say about this?”, or, “Let me talk to your Mother about it first, OK?”… and the kids will quickly learn that no amount of wheedling will let them play the parents against each other. Parents who understand this will work cooperatively, even when separated and angry at each other over adult/relationship issues, to find a way for each of them to play an important, hopefully equal, part in the children’s lives.
However, way too many people engage in a style of parenting, even when they have not yet separated, which might best be described as “competitive”, if not “malicious”. They have no problem asking the children to play favorites. They tell the child to “wait till your father gets home”, and then burden the other parent with the job of meting out punishment. They sigh heavily when the other parent fails to show up for a kid’s piano recital even though they know the other parent was tied up at work. They criticize each other even when they do not contemplate separating, or after the decision has been made and therefore the tension between them is settled and they SHOULD be focusing on the children by now. After separation, they find ways to interfere with the other person’s parenting time, forcing the other parent into bribery in order to get the child to spend parenting time with them. They engage in bribery, themselves. Or worse, they accuse the other parent of vile things such as abuse, addiction, abandonment. They look for excuses to withhold the children from each other.
Most parents, EVEN IF VILE THINGS ARE TRUE about the co-parent, care too much about their kids to drag them into the middle of it. Unfortunately, too many people want to give you dirty tricks about how to handle your divorce and/or custody battle. They’ll take you to coffee once you’ve announced your separation, and will talk you into hiding all your assets or kidnapping the kids. They’ll convince you it was “abuse” that the time the other parent looked at you crosseyed or frightened you by yelling loudly during an argument (whether or not you feared for your physical safety, they convince you that your own feeling of upset is what’s relevant to determine whether it’s “abuse). They’ll have you convinced that this person you shared a bed with for YEARS is evil, evil, evil, and should be crushed. They’ll write books and blogs about what kind of dirty tricks will preserve your wealth and put your partner in prison. They give seminars and sell their services to help you with the dirty tricks. And if you are upset enough by the loss of the relationship, it’s tempting to believe them. After all, you did not know that this person would leave you or fall out of love with you, so what else is this person hiding?
During the separation and divorce process, it’s nearly impossible to keep all of this information away from the children unless you are very strong in your determination not to let them get involved! Too many people are trying to convince you to play dirty. But these are YOUR children AND your ex’s children, and if you have that instinct to protect them from bad stuff about their other caretaker/DNA provider, go with your instinct. There are very few circumstances under which a child should be introduced to a parent’s wrong qualities, and none of those circumstances include hearing it from a recently dumped competing parent. Even when it’s imperative that a child find out that the parent is not perfect (such as in a foster care situation where the child needs to know that their parent did something wrong and needs to work to change that in order for them to be able to get back together), this information should be approached with as much care as you would approach telling them your version of the truth about Santa Claus, or sex, or that testicular cancer runs in the family so maybe they’d like to consider getting their testes cut off as a preventative measure, or any number of other touchy and difficult topics.
Absent serious circumstances (the parent is in prison and therefore unavailable to see the child), children should not find out that their parents are not perfect until well after they are no longer dependent upon adults for their care. Only if the other parent is entirely cut from the child’s life for legitimate reasons, should the child be informed (carefully) of those legitimate reasons. And wanting your new mate to be free to adopt the child should not be considered a legitimate reason to bash the other parent! Even if the other parent appears to have abandoned the children (whatever the reasons), if it is possible that that parent may someday need to be their primary caregiver, if, for example, you and your new spouse die in a horrible accident, you do not want your child to have to go through fear of the new caregiver at the same time as having to deal with grief over your death. And worse, what happens when, years from now, your child finds out that the other parent does not have horned and cloven hooves as you implied when you were freshly feeling the pain of the separation and busily competing for your children’s time and love?
When you announce your separation from your children’s co-parent, you will be lucky if you find friends who will supply support without malicious ideas, who will help you figure out how to spend your free time when the kids are not around and will encourage you not to trash the other parent. These friends and family are gems and you should keep them as close as humanly possible to your children. They will keep you sane through it, and keep you understanding that your own disappointments in your spouse need not be experienced by your children. Not to mention that your children’s ability to grow up will improve with as close to equal time as possible with each parent, and your ability to move forward as an adult will improve as you have time without the kids (while they’re with your co-parent) to develop your personal life. These friends and family might have the number of a good mediator to help you resolve the issues of divorce, or a lawyer who will be able to handle the paperwork of ending your marriage in as businesslike and amicable a way as possible, while still protecting you from the possibility that your evil ex will play dirty tricks.
My point is that, no matter how evil your co-parent, you need to develop ways to avoid letting the kids get hurt by this evil quality. And if you find a definitive answer on how to do this, let me know!!! I have a few ideas on it, but the study of this issue is certainly not complete.
Friday, March 11, 2011
4 steps to take after you made a mistake
Everyone makes mistakes. Your reaction provides a measure of maturity and personal ethics is how you decide to react to mistakes (your own mistakes as well as those made by others). This post is focused on handling your own mistakes.
- Be honest: Whether or not you get caught, it's best to recognize your mistake. Even if you are unable or unwilling to take step 2, there are a few things you need to do. Being honest with yourself about the fact that you made a mistake is vital to your integrity. Refusing to perpetuate the mistake by trying to cover it up or lie about it is another thing. People who always follow this rule will not have to memorize a tangle of lies made up to cover up a mistake, their lives are simpler for it. But more importantly, they have opened theirselves up to the possibility of learning from the mistake. In terms of law situations, it's very important to discuss the issue with your lawyer honestly. More than one lawyer has built a case based upon a lie told by their client, only to find the case entirely lost because of the lie. The truth would not have hurt the outcome of the case, but the fact that the case was built upon a false version of events showed that their side were lying.
- Apologize: This goes beyond just being honest. It's also best to let anyone affected by your mistake know that you made it, and to let anyone hurt by your mistake know that you feel bad for it. This is one reason why litigating things in court is often a bad idea. Litigating usually means choosing not to disclose the parts of the issue that you did wrong or that are your fault, but rather requiring the other person to prove your mistake. Sometimes you can not help but litigate. If you find yourself in this position, make sure your lawyer knows the whole truth so that they can make preparations for settlement conferences, and make recommendations with the full knowledge of what will happen in court, at their fingertips. And once court is over, as your lawyer for the opportunity to apologize for your mistake. You don't want to make admissions about things happening in litigation before the opportunity for the other side to appeal is over.
- Fix it: Pay restitution, correct mis-information that you might have created, issue a public apology. Do whatever it takes to make the victim of your mistake whole. Or better yet, to put your victim in a better position than when you made the mistake. Think of it as compensation for their trouble. My husband backed into a car of a person who was parked in an awkward location a few years ago. The car was old, probably worth about $800. The person he backed into said that the dent would cost $900 to repair. We gave the man $900. Why? Not because we are stupid, but rather because we are not going to fuss over a few dollars when the mistake was on our side. Is our only reward for this one in heaven? No. There were several people who knew what we were doing. This man was obviously down on his luck. His transportation was obviously unreliable, and he had issues that made it difficult for him to park it properly. While we did not think of it at the time, and this was not our motive, the people who knew what we had done recognized that we were being kind to a person who needed the kindness, and over the course of time, they returned that kindness in other ways. Another example of this type of situation is where the mistake involved being mean or cruel to someone else. It is imperative that you apologize and find a way to help that person recover their ego. But if you can also help lift that person up to feel better than they did when you originally found them, then you will find the reward to be much bigger than you can predict. If you cannot afford to make your victim more than whole, do everything you can to make sure that you at least make them whole.
- Take steps to make sure you never make a similar mistake. If you parked in a handicapped space because you were late and in a hurry, then do the personal improvement necessary that you will not be in such a hurry in the future, or change your attitude about your own personal needs versus the needs of the handicapped persons that the space has been reserved for. If you committed DUI, then go to the education to figure out whether or not you have a problem with drinking and need to stop drinking, or make a policy that you will always have a designated driver before driving. Whatever it takes, whether it is therapy or paying more attention or keeping your house more in order, do it. Let your victim know about the steps that you have taken to prevent making the mistake again. This is just one example... preventing future mistakes does not always require intensive psychotherapy! My husband regularly made the mistake of leaving his reading glasses at the office requiring extra time and effort to return to the office if he had anything to read while at home. We prevented future mistakes by getting a second pair of reading glasses, so that now he has one for home and one for work.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Daddies are important, part 1
Daddies are important, too
I talk to too many people who seem to think that father’s are merely a supplemental adult in a child’s life. We need to explore how this concept was created and how we can stop it. Really, we need a national, ongoing conversation on the matter, and I am eager to be a party to this conversation.
How this situation was created:
We need to figure out how we arrived at this moment in time. Although I could examine the changing role of each parent through the centuries, we need only go to the middle of the last century to figure out how tour family constellation got created for the modern era. About 50-60 years ago, just after World War II, men were coming home from war and taking over the available jobs. People were eager to get back to normalcy and create nuclear households after a decade of depression and a half decade of war. In their idealized version of the new world, women were in charge of the home and men were in charge of the workplace. The good ol’ boy network was full of boys, and women had a hard time finding a way to get ahead at the office. Men were expected to be the providers, and if a woman had income, it was expected to be supplemental to her families’ needs, not essential to putting the roof over their heads. It is no surprise that everyone assumed, when a couple was getting a divorce, that the mother would get custody of the children and the father would have to continue to support the children until they were through school (college or high school, whichever was expected in their family) as well as support his ex wife throughout her life until she got re-married and had a new man to support her.
That configuration worked well on the surface only as long as all parties threw themselves into their roles, but a lazy homemaker or rebellious and resentful breadwinner would through a family constellation into oblivion. Family problems were kept behind closed doors, so we do not have a count of how many families this did not work for, but the eventual rise of domestic violence awareness shows us that one of the biggest indicators of a family at risk for violence is an inequitable distribution of tasks, and one of the biggest reasons women are reluctant to leave an abusive situation is financial need (arising from not having been self-supporting in their own careers). While many see those days as idyllic, the “Leave It To Beaver” family constellation was not as frequent as we dream. Baby boomers who grew up during that time worked hard to change the way this worked, whether it was to compensate for knowing their mother was never fulfilled with her lack of career, whether it was to compensate for their father’s inability to connect with the family, or to release themselves from the traditional requirement to get married before becoming intimate or setting up shared households. The people who lived through those seemingly idyllic times, worked hard to change the ultimate configurations of their own lives.
Women have worked very hard to gain recognition in the workplace and we have been, for the most part, successful, taking positions in management and even breaking through the glass ceiling in many ways. For some reason, we did not immediately adjust household duties to match the new reality that women were not spending full time at home. About 20-30 years ago, women were all over Phil Donahue (for the youngsters out there, he was a talk popular show host) and Oprah Winfrey shows talking all about how they were now gaining power in the workplace but their husbands were not taking over to do the chores at home. The lines were drawn in the battle of the sexes of the era, and if a woman wanted to take a turn about being a “mean girl” with her husband, all she had to do was roll her eyes when he started talking about doing chores. “Mr. Mom”, “Mrs. Doubtfire”, and a host of other movies made it clear that men were only capable of handling household chores in a bumbling, comical and nearly dangerous way.
So the modern young husband of the 1970s, 80s & 90s listened & took pains to take responsibility for a reasonable percentage of the work in the household. There remain some common areas of division of labor. As I’ve talked to my clients about how their marriages are configured, it seems that men usually handle the car and larger home maintenance duties, women usually handle the baby care and shopping, and there has been a division of labor on the issue of laundry, cooking, cleaning. Most households no longer expect the same standards of cleaning as was once expected of the homes we grew up in, the weekly dusting and vacuuming may have been put aside in favor of making sure the kids made it to all their extracurricular activities, and we have been more careful in our generation to book our kids for lots of extracurriculars, taking to heart the advice that a busy kid is less likely to get into trouble. My generation has been known for over-involvement of parents who, rather than tell the kids, “go outside and play”, would hover over them like a helicopter in an effort to make sure nothing bad ever happened.
In this brave, new world where we have re-defined our expectations of family, the only thing that really divides men and women is the biological function of pregnancy and breast feeding. Men even have the opportunity to take parental leave from work to bond with their children as women had been doing for years. Women can bring home the bacon while men cook it up. Dads can bathe a child, change their diapers, take their turn in the car pool, and serve as the parent organizer of the kids’ club events.
So far, so good. But we have not gone far enough in changing the expectations associated with gender. The changes I described have improved the quality of life, but one last vestige of the old system is the marginalization of fathers as having primary importance in their children’s lives. Nowhere is this problem clearer than when we’re looking at families who are trying to co-parent even after they are no longer romantically linked. As of the day of separation, many people assume that Mom will have control of what happens with the children. Some mothers use the opportunity of controlling the children, to continue to exercise control over their ex. It’s not so surprising that fathers react badly to having their children held hostage, used as little ATM machines or weapons in the relationship war.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Rule 6 on co-parenting: No controlling the other parent
Everyone thinks they have the right to control things that go on in the other parent’s household. Everyone is wrong. When you separate from your co-parent, you no longer have the right to control the other parent. You can insist on following the court-ordered parenting plan, but anything beyond that is by choice. If it happens during your ex’s time with the child, it’s your ex’s choices. If it happens during your time with the child, it’s your choice. You cannot choose what your ex will be doing with the children. So, if you want the child to go to private school, name it in the parenting plan to make sure the other parent complies, and if you want the other parent to pay for part of that school, you need to have that in the parenting plan/child support agreement as well. If raising the children as vegetarians is important to you, get your ex to sign off on it in the parenting plan, before they decide to be a meat lover. Anything worth arguing about later should be thought of and spelled out earlier. During this process, you will learn that you and your ex do not agree on everything, and that you cannot control their choices. This is an important lesson to learn, and one that will solve a lot of heartache.
Because you should not be making the other parent’s plans for them, then you should also not schedule activities for the child that take place in the other parent’s time. Your ex is allowed to choose activities or their own, or they are allowed to choose to do nothing at all when they have the kids. You cannot insist that the ex take them to a certain place or avoid other places. You cannot prevent your ex from taking the child to visit friends, grandparents, and new romantic relationships unless it is in the decree or you get a post-decree ruling from a judge on the issue.
Your joint co-parent can arrange the haircuts, ear piercings, and food that the child eats with that parent. They have as much right as you do, to choose the child’s style and clothing. This is particularly true if they have joint custody, so if you choose to go to war over these items, I guarantee you will be frustrated and disappointed. Learn to cooperate on decisions like this for the sake of the child, or resign yourself to unpleasantness about these life decisions until the child is 18 years old and making those decisions for him or herself.
Your joint co-parent can arrange the haircuts, ear piercings, and food that the child eats with that parent. They have as much right as you do, to choose the child’s style and clothing. This is particularly true if they have joint custody, so if you choose to go to war over these items, I guarantee you will be frustrated and disappointed. Learn to cooperate on decisions like this for the sake of the child, or resign yourself to unpleasantness about these life decisions until the child is 18 years old and making those decisions for him or herself.
Most states do not require parents to pay college expenses, if you want to guarantee payment, you must have it in the settlement agreement. Unless the decree is from a state which requires it, the judge will not require it without the paying parent’s agreement.
Your ex cannot tell you who you are allowed to date, and visa versa. Your ex cannot tell you where you are allowed to live and visa versa. Your ex cannot tell you what to eat, feed the children, when to do homework, what activities you can or should do with the kids, and visa versa. It does not matter if you think you have superior knowledge of the children or better parenting skills, you are not allowed to force the other parent to do things that are not in the decree. There are some extreme circumstances where parents feel they must defy the decree or else the co-parent will expose the child to danger (such as when the ex has a new spouse who happens to be a registered sex offender). In those circumstances, you must go back to court to get a court order changing the parenting plan to fit the new circumstances.
Controlling the other parent’s behavior is a hard habit to get rid of, if you had a division of labor in the household that put you in charge of organizing the extracurricular activities and dinner menu, and the other parent in charge of the homework. Now that you are separated, you are not allowed to tell the ex what to sign the kids up for during their time, just like they are not allowed to force you to do homework with the kids in a certain way. Failures to follow this rule can turn into nasty battles for control of each other and of the kids.
This does not mean you do not have to inform the other spouse of what you are doing. Every parent should always know what their child is doing and where they are, as well as how to reach them if there is an emergency, so it’s important to tell the other parent if you’ve moved back to your parent’s house until you can get on your feet, or if you’ve signed them up for piano lessons every Wednesday after school at the music teacher’s house. You can’t force the other parent to pay for the piano lessons, but at least let them know about it.
If a parent moves, they must still adhere to other portions of the parenting plan until it’s changed in court. No court prohibits an adult from moving, but the fact that you wanted to or had to move does not change the parenting plan. Realistically, this means you must go to court to amend the parenting plan (or get your ex to stipulate) if you are moving too far away to maintain the current plan. Either that, or do not move that far away. It’s a choice: either jump through hoops to follow the decreed parenting time, get the decree changed, or choose not to move, it may not be not an easy choice, certainly not as easy as if you were still together and making these decisions together, but that’s what happens when parents split before the children are adults, they must submit their plans to court approval.
I have never known any separated parents who did not find something to worry about, about the other parent’s household, whether it’s the other parent’s friends, new romantic interests, activity choice, extravagant lifestyle, choice of discipline or lack of it, homework, school, clothing, holiday traditions… there is a reason you are split and these reasons are often reflected in such issues. However, you can either run back to court for a new refinement of the parenting plan on the issue, or you can follow the parenting plan to the letter and let the other parent control things when the children are in the other parent’s care. There are no other appropriate choices.
The easiest solution, and the one most separated parents make, is to learn to cooperate for the big issues and let the little ones slide. I hope you can get to that point if you’re reading this, because the alternative, taking repeated trips to court, is expensive, frustrating, and difficult for all involved.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Rule 4 on co-parenting: do not let your child feel rejected
Do me a favor, please: whenever you hear the phrase, "he (or she) left us", please correct the speaker. Or if you hear it in a movie, make note of it and make sure everyone knows that this is not good parenting.
Let's start by assuming that it's a true statement, that the other parent said, "I don't want to be a parent any more" and walked away. It is uncommon, but it does happen. How awful is it for the children to have to hear reminders that their primary residential parent's life would be better if the children disappeared? How awful to have their first experience of rejection being from a parent? Why would a parent want the child to be reminded of this awful circumstance? This is one of those things you should try to protect the children from. They will notice that the other parent does not show up for parenting time or holidays or any other things. They don't need to have the remaining parent rub their nose in the rejection.
But more often than not, the statement "he (or she) left us" is a lie. The other parent rejected the spouse, not the children. The other parent may disagree with the spouse's parenting ideas, or may have simply wanted to avoid argument, but never intended to let the children get hurt from the separation. Very often, the absent parent knows that the primary parent would use the children as weapons and believes that as long as they stay away, this is less likely, and therefore they believe that their absence is less harmful to the children than the anger that comes with their presence. It's often a mistaken idea, but someone in the midst of a very difficult situation with a spouse, who has previously trusted the spouse with the children, is likely to believe that the spouse will not hurt the children... they know that the spouse will hurt them if possible, but not the children. In the situations where the spouse is saying "he (or she) left us", the absent spouse's faith in the primary parent is misplaced.
Here's how I advise parents who pop out with that sound bite without a good foundation for it:
I know your ex is a jerk. There is a reason that you are separate now. But you picked that person as a co-parent. You picked that person to give your love to. There was a time in your life when you were willing to cooperate with them and felt it was in the best interests of the kids to spend time with that person. And they made that commitment to you. And that commitment has changed. Their status as a parent as not changed, only their commitment to you. It hurts, but their separation with you says nothing about their feelings towards the kids.
Interestingly, many parent's relationship with their children improves after a separation. This phenomenon is easily explained if you realize that they weren't intending to be bad parents, they were simply removing themselves from the anger that arose every time you were in the room together, and unfortunately, that meant that they did not see the children as often. Remember, IF THEY WITHDREW FROM FAMILY EVENTS BEFORE THE SEPARATION, THAT WAS LIKELY MORE ABOUT STOPPING THE UNCOMFORTABLE SITUATIONS THAN ABOUT REJECTING THE KIDS. The person who was rejected was you, not the children!!! Rejection hurts, and I hate rubbing your nose in it, but understand that every time you say "he (or she) left US", you are rubbing your children's noses in the rejection, and your children are younger and less emotionally able to handle the rejection. As much as that hurts, try to understand it and hold the children away from your anger about the rejection.
Do not tell anyone that the other parent does not care about the kids. That is not for you to judge. You are not a credible judge of your ex's motives in anything, including their motives in parenting. You can be sure that they care about the children as much as they did when they lived with you. But they have to show their care in a different way. Living under a different roof, they have to change their parenting style, and you are no person to judge whether the changes that they've made are appropriate. You are separated as romantic partners and you simply no longer have any right to comment on your ex's choices.
If you privately feel that they are not caring enough, do not let the kids hear it. Kids don't need to hear from you that you predict the other parent will be late to pick them up for parenting time. When you say it, it implies that they don't love the children. Do not ever let the children feel unloved. Do not ever suggest to them that the other parent's bad habits about being timely or reliable are a reflection of rejecting the children.
You have enough to deal with, with your separation and a whole new life. Some parts of it will be good (eventually, if not now), but it's for you to deal with, alone. Do not compound it by bringing the children into the misery. Let the relationship they have with the other parent, whether it's a good relationship or a bad one, develop without making your opinion known.
Let's start by assuming that it's a true statement, that the other parent said, "I don't want to be a parent any more" and walked away. It is uncommon, but it does happen. How awful is it for the children to have to hear reminders that their primary residential parent's life would be better if the children disappeared? How awful to have their first experience of rejection being from a parent? Why would a parent want the child to be reminded of this awful circumstance? This is one of those things you should try to protect the children from. They will notice that the other parent does not show up for parenting time or holidays or any other things. They don't need to have the remaining parent rub their nose in the rejection.
But more often than not, the statement "he (or she) left us" is a lie. The other parent rejected the spouse, not the children. The other parent may disagree with the spouse's parenting ideas, or may have simply wanted to avoid argument, but never intended to let the children get hurt from the separation. Very often, the absent parent knows that the primary parent would use the children as weapons and believes that as long as they stay away, this is less likely, and therefore they believe that their absence is less harmful to the children than the anger that comes with their presence. It's often a mistaken idea, but someone in the midst of a very difficult situation with a spouse, who has previously trusted the spouse with the children, is likely to believe that the spouse will not hurt the children... they know that the spouse will hurt them if possible, but not the children. In the situations where the spouse is saying "he (or she) left us", the absent spouse's faith in the primary parent is misplaced.
Here's how I advise parents who pop out with that sound bite without a good foundation for it:
I know your ex is a jerk. There is a reason that you are separate now. But you picked that person as a co-parent. You picked that person to give your love to. There was a time in your life when you were willing to cooperate with them and felt it was in the best interests of the kids to spend time with that person. And they made that commitment to you. And that commitment has changed. Their status as a parent as not changed, only their commitment to you. It hurts, but their separation with you says nothing about their feelings towards the kids.
Interestingly, many parent's relationship with their children improves after a separation. This phenomenon is easily explained if you realize that they weren't intending to be bad parents, they were simply removing themselves from the anger that arose every time you were in the room together, and unfortunately, that meant that they did not see the children as often. Remember, IF THEY WITHDREW FROM FAMILY EVENTS BEFORE THE SEPARATION, THAT WAS LIKELY MORE ABOUT STOPPING THE UNCOMFORTABLE SITUATIONS THAN ABOUT REJECTING THE KIDS. The person who was rejected was you, not the children!!! Rejection hurts, and I hate rubbing your nose in it, but understand that every time you say "he (or she) left US", you are rubbing your children's noses in the rejection, and your children are younger and less emotionally able to handle the rejection. As much as that hurts, try to understand it and hold the children away from your anger about the rejection.
Do not tell anyone that the other parent does not care about the kids. That is not for you to judge. You are not a credible judge of your ex's motives in anything, including their motives in parenting. You can be sure that they care about the children as much as they did when they lived with you. But they have to show their care in a different way. Living under a different roof, they have to change their parenting style, and you are no person to judge whether the changes that they've made are appropriate. You are separated as romantic partners and you simply no longer have any right to comment on your ex's choices.
If you privately feel that they are not caring enough, do not let the kids hear it. Kids don't need to hear from you that you predict the other parent will be late to pick them up for parenting time. When you say it, it implies that they don't love the children. Do not ever let the children feel unloved. Do not ever suggest to them that the other parent's bad habits about being timely or reliable are a reflection of rejecting the children.
You have enough to deal with, with your separation and a whole new life. Some parts of it will be good (eventually, if not now), but it's for you to deal with, alone. Do not compound it by bringing the children into the misery. Let the relationship they have with the other parent, whether it's a good relationship or a bad one, develop without making your opinion known.
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