I love the passing of time

My friend posted about parallel parenting on her blog & I started to type a comment/reply, but it got way out of hand So, I decided to just post it here as an entry, instead…

Personally, I’m coming to believe that all custody cases where both parents are willing and able to be active participants in their child’s life should start out as ‘parallel custody’. I see it as distinctly different from ‘joint custody’ and as a more reasonable way to start.

In Joint Custody, which seems to be the default these days when neither parent is certifiable or imprisoned, the parents are expected to work together for the benefit of the child. In Parallel Custody, as I see it, both parents are expected to work independently, completely ignoring each other as much as possible, for the benefit of the child. I’m thinking this is better for everyone involved.

Of course, true, cooperative joint parenting is the most loving goal for a child. Sadly, unless both parents respect the other’s role in their child’s life, this isn’t possible. I think that’s pretty sad for a kid when one or both of their parents can’t get past their own personal issues & truly be compassionate & respectful to their child, but it is the reality for so many children of divorce that I know - including my own stepdaughter.

So, instead, as long as the courts don’t find either parent overtly harmful to the child (and, so many of them are so good at hiding the harm they do to their child - especially when that harm is deliberately undermining their child’s relationship with their other parent or making the child feel frightened to love their other parent), they usually go with Joint Custody, with stipulations for the parents to communicate & cooperate regarding their child. What a ridiculous notion, really.

In my husband’s case, his ex-wife signed off the joint custody order, then, simply, ignored all of it except for the parts that were easy for my husband to have enforced by the police without going to court. That is, she, for the most part, brought my stepdaughter to him for his parenting time. That’s it. That’s the only part of the parenting agreement that she chose to follow. Even then, she found that she could claim ‘illness’ on my stepdaughter’s part, in order to avoid bringing her, if she had other plans or if she wanted to punish my husband for asking her to cooperate on any other parts of my stepdaughter’s life.

So, my husband had regular parenting time. Once my stepdaughter was in school, with his every-other-weekends, every-other-Wednesday & school breaks, my stepdaughter’s waking time was split pretty evenly between her mother, her father and her teacher. And, from what we understood, much of her mother’s time was actually spent with her grandmother, acting as babysitter when her mother worked second shift.

But, whenever my husband would try to communicate with his ex-wife regarding their daughter, his ex-wife would yell at him, hang up on him, tell him to stop ’stalking’ them, and even resort to violence (all in front of their daughter, of course). And, whenever his ex-wife heard that my husband had visited his daughter’s school or communicated with her teachers, she would pull her daughter out of the school and move her to another. She never shared information regarding medical treatment. He has taken her to court a couple times for ‘contempt’ of their Joint Parenting Agreement, but it always costs a lot of money, creates a lot of stress in my stepdaughter’s life and never really amounts to much more than a slap on the wrist for his ex-wife.

He would offer to enroll his daughter in extracurricular activities in his ex-wife’s neighborhood, so that his daughter would be able to attend no matter who’s weekend it was. But, his ex-wife would refuse to take her - letting her child miss out on these things rather than cooperate with her ex-husband.

He would bring my stepdaughter to dental exams (as her mother, apparently, never did), where the dentist suggested braces or extended care. Her mother would refuse to allow that. In fact, after regular dental visits, he would bring her notes regarding the visit (as their Joint Parenting Agreement requires) and she would, on more than one occasion, laugh at him as he gave it to her. On one especially insane occasion, she actually tore the note up into little pieces and threw them in the air (all in the parking lot of McDonald’s).

His ex-wife refuses to allow him phone contact and has resorted to not even providing us with a home contact telephone number at all. Our only ways of reaching my stepdaughter’s mother, now, are by calling her at work or mailing her a letter. Forget about my husband just calling up his daughter & saying ‘Hi’.

I could go on & on. Sigh. Poor kid. She really deserves parents who work together for her benefit. But, that didn’t happen.

And, slowly, over the years, we’ve figured out what works best for us in this situation. We discovered that you cannot cooperate with a parent who just wants you to go away. It’s not possible.

But, what we can do, is parent the best we can in the time that we have with her. And, we can parent the way that we know is right, despite her mother’s behavior and attitude. We don’t need her approval to be good parents to my stepdaughter.

We cannot control what her mother does or says. We kind of treat her mother like an uncontrollable force - like the weather, for example. We deal with what she does and we work around the time that my stepdaughter can’t be with us.

When she’s not with us, we don’t assume her mother is doing anything more for her besides feeding her, clothing her & getting her to school often enough that she doesn’t get in trouble. We have to assume that we have to give her and teach her everything else that she needs in life -and- we have to do it in half the time that ‘normal’ parents have to do it in.

Perhaps her mother is giving her regular dental care. Perhaps her mother is giving her music lessons. Perhaps her mother is teaching her social skills, giving her moral lessons, boosting her confidence. We don’t know.

My stepdaughter was, actually, partially, a leader in our dealing with her life this way. Her mother’s vitriol regarding her father caused horrible stress in this child’s life. I still remember the sheer panic I could feel flowing off of her whenever we’d be driving her to drop her off at her mom’s. I still feel it now, sometimes, when I mention her mother at all, although, it’s getting better over the years. My stepdaughter is developing her own self, a strong self, that knows both of her parents are capable people who want good things for her - it’s just that she knows that her mother is not capable of quelling her hatred of her father enough to behave maturely about his presence in her life.

And, I know that she loves us all the more that we did not let her mother’s hatred get in the way of our love & responsibility towards her -and- that we didn’t ever try to tell her, even once, that her mother was wrong or to get her to say that her mother was wrong or even to try to make her believe that her mother was wrong. Every single thing that my husband or I have said to her about her mother was supportive, concerned or filled with praise. What else are you going to say to a child who you love about someone that they
love & who you have entrusted with her care when you can’t be with her?

Anyway, I’ve really drifted off course from the ‘Parallel Parenting’ thing, now, haven’t I?

My feeling is that more divorced parents have at least one person in the couple whose hatred for their former partner trumps their love & responsibility towards their child. One person whose need to be the ‘winner ‘ is more important than their need to be a good parent. One person whose self-esteem is so wounded by the breakup that they don’t have anything left to give their child. One person who never really intended to co-parent even when they were married, so they can’t be expected to do it now. One person who never understood the responsibilities and selflessness that comes with marriage and parenting to begin with & hasn’t yet learned. One person who thinks it’s all a game, instead of an amazing journey.

These people cannot be expected to cooperatively parent with their ex. And, I think they are in the majority.

The courts just don’t have the time to really get to know the parties involved. They see only what’s presented to them in court. They see everyone on their best behavior. They see rehearsed kids who are afraid to let down their residential parent or hurt the feelings of their non-residential parents. Or, they see parents on their worst, craziest behavior & don’t know if that’s an ongoing thing or if it’s just a nervous reaction to the seriousness of the situation.

So, my feeling is that we should have some kind of revolution in custody - one where the judges really work for the best interests of the children. They should not be trying to force people who don’t get along to co-parent, just to make things ‘fair’ for the adults. They should see that the parents can’t get along and will never be able to co-parent on their own, and, instead, give them very specific parenting boundaries and guidelines.

Each parent should be given equal time with the child. That time should not be left up to the parents to decide, they should not be told to be ‘flexible’ with each other to meet their child’s needs.

Responsibilities should also be divvied up in a very specific way. Mom is in charge of regular medical checkups. Dad is in charge of regular dental. Mom chooses the schools. Dad chooses the church. Whatever. But, it’s decided. No one is left thinking that they need to work on having a good co-parenting relationship, for years on end, trying to make it work, when the other parent is trying to make it not work. No time in the child’s life is wasted while the parents negotiate & jockey for position. Everyone knows their role & knows the other parent’s role.

And, communication guidelines are set forth, too. Each is required to send an e-mail or write a note about every school change, every medical visit, every dental. Just informational – date, time, procedure. Each is allowed and expected to make their own connection with schools, dentists, doctors, too, so that they can minimize discussion with each other as much as possible.

Then, if the parents find themselves able to work together, be civil, be respectful to each other, then that’s a great benefit for the child. They can decide on their own to put aside the strictures of the parallel parenting agreement & work together beyond the agreement. Also, if one of the parents ends up not fulfilling their end of the agreement and the child’s needs aren’t being met, then the other parent is involved enough on all counts to pick up the slack. And, if the other parent is slacking enough, the involved parent can go back to the courts with real evidence and ask for a change.

That’s how things have kind of ended up for my husband, anyway. It would have been great if it had been in writing from the beginning, so that he didn’t have to spend years & years trying to figure out how he was going to co-parent with someone who wouldn’t even speak civilly to him. It would have been so much better if my stepdaughter hadn’t been subjected to years and years of stress as they worked out their positions in her life. We all would have saved time & money. The courts would have saved time & money, too.

As it is, now, we make our own connections with my stepdaughter’s schools. We’re still afraid that her mom’s going to move her to another school at any moment. We still take my stepdaughter to regular dental visits, but have given up on getting her mom to agree about braces. We’ve told my stepdaughter that we’ll help her to get them when she’s an adult, if she still wants them then. We assume she’s getting regular medical checkups as needed for school & hope that there are no major medical problems. My husband has provided his ex-wife with medical insurance cards for their daughter, but she refuses to use them for some reason.

We just act as parents as best we can when she’s here & hope that all is well when she isn’t. Not much more we can do. I think that I’ve finally accepted that. Finally stopped trying to understand her mother, or try to find a way to make joint parenting work. My stepdaughter has a full life with her family here, despite the missing spaces when she’s not here.