Polarized Parents: Protecting Children’s Attachments
A child of divorce, caught between two parents who share week-on, week-off custody, described her experience as like constantly building two houses of cards: “I go to my mother’s house and during the week, I carefully build my house so that it is comfy. When it is time to leave, I know that I must smash it down before I go to my father’s house where I will go through the same exercise of building my place in his home. If only my parents didn’t ask me which of them is my favourite or why I seem to have such a good time at the other’s home or why I don’t cry when it is time to leave to go to the other’s house, I would be able to leave my delicate houses of cards in place and move back and forth with ease”.
Divorce brings about many losses both for parents and for children. Divorce is the end of a role as a husband or a wife and it challenges confidence in us, as a mother or a father. Ex-spouses once loved by the other, grieve the loss of hopes and dreams as an individual, a couple and as a family. Anger is a distraction from unrecognized, unresolved and unique grief and it becomes a double-edged sword, when it is used with the intention of severing the attachment of one parent from the other. We are blind to the damage that this inflicts on the children of the marriage.
During the separation process and sometimes forever, a child’s innate need to be committed and loyal to both parents is overlooked. Because a child is the result of a union (and s/he carries both the mother and the father in their DNA), each parent must do everything in their power to help the child to stay loyal to and involved with the other.
Any competing attachment between parents must be neutralized. Children must never be put in the position of hearing about a parent’s shortcomings nor should s/he be required to take sides. Unilaterally, while your child is with you, do what is possible to act friendly, to talk in friendly terms and help your child to be close to the other parent. Avoid being seen as thwarting contact or as interfering with the relationship to the parent you divorced. Become the answer to helping your child maintain proximity with your ex-spouse. Facilitate attachment, assume responsibility to preserve the ties that bind, and demonstrate that you are on the same side as the child. Appearing open to being the conduit to the relationship with the parent who is absent at the time is pivotal to your child’s development as a whole person.
When we honour the child’s first attachments, we are honouring a deep place within the child that must never be split in two. When closeness with both parents is preserved simultaneously, when overt permission to spend “alone” time with each parent is given and when a place can be created where there is no competition between biological parents and their new spouses, a child can rest in having two moms or 2 dads. Step-moms and biological mothers, step-dads and biological fathers can also foster the maturation of a child together by refraining from the practice of shunning contact with an existing attachment in order to prime a new working attachment. Assuming the responsibility to preserve attachments with both parents is our number one priority. Get on the same side of the attachment magnet when it comes to your kids. Polarization is contagious and generates all kinds of mental health issues.
