by The Parenting Centre | Aug 24, 2022 | General
If decades of experience working with post separation co-parenting have taught me anything, it is that children want their parents to get along. We spend SO much time, energy and money fighting about who gets how many nights, but that is really insignificant in the lives of children, compared to the enormous impact of the parental relationship.
Children typically don’t care who is “right” and who is “wrong”. Our legal system cares, but children don’t. They want to believe Mum is right and Dad is right, and when that belief is challenged it is distressing for them. Ongoing parental conflict can compromise a child’s healthy emotional development, and reducing that conflict is the most important thing separating parents can do.
Children tend to externalize their inner conflicts, and when children are distressed it will most likely be expressed through behavior. When separated parents are in conflict and struggling with a child’s behavior and/or emotions, I will tell them the most powerful thing they can do is improve their relationship with the other parent. Often this is not the answer people want to hear, but improving the relationship is truly the key to successful co-parenting and to protecting our children.
In encouraging separated parents to reach out to their ex, I like to think of that as the “door” to positive and sustainable co-parenting. At like any door, sometimes you have to knock several times before someone answers. Often, the first “reaching out” communication is met with indifference, disbelief, or even hostility. I encourage parents to keep trying. There is only one way towards positive co-parenting, and it is through that door.
The guiding principle of my practice in co-parenting is that children should not suffer because their parents separated. It is not their fault and it is not their responsibility, and they deserve to be protected and supported by both parents. So if you try to go through this door and get knocked back, please keep trying. It may not be comfortable, but it’s the door to your children’s security and they deserve the best co-parenting possible.
by The Parenting Centre | Jul 8, 2022 | General
I am constantly amazed at what I call “the arrogance of the Zeitgeist”. Every generation feels they have got all the answers and see things clearly now, as opposed to the “ignorant beliefs” of the past.
I often think about how surely a person in 1600 would have stated that the earth was flat and revolved around the sun, or a person in 1750 would condone slavery, or the disenfranchisement of women. We love to talk and to teach about all the “scientific” discoveries we have made and scoff at how people of the past were wrong on these issues. But those people proudly talked of their achievements and scoffed at the perceived ignorance of those who came before them.
If history has taught us anything, it should be that the “facts” of the present might be the targets of scoffing in the future.
When I was in my doctoral program, we were taught that “Attention Deficit Disorder” only occurred in males, and was developmentally limited (it stopped by itself with adulthood). If I did not answer this way on my psychopathology exam, I would have been marked “wrong”. Of course as the diagnosis became more popular, and drug companies wanted to expand their potential markets, it was later announced that girls, and adults, could have “ADD”, and therefore be potential customers.
Whatever you think of that issue, in points out how “facts” change and things we are born and die believing may be completely discredited in the future.
When I was an undergraduate I complained to the university administration about student smoking during classes. I was literally ushered out of the President’s office as some sort of “lunatic”. Who would even believe that people were allowed to smoke in classrooms, or on airplanes? It was accepted, “civilized” behavior at one time, and now is inappropriate, anti-social, and illegal.
What are the things we believe and the practices we ascribe to, that people in the future will look back and be astonished about? We haven’t figured it all out in 2022; we just have our current beliefs. And everytime we hear someone pontificating about the “truth” of anything, let’s try to remember that “truth” changes with time. We have the opportunity to question everything that we “believe”, and to celebrate with wonder the reality that there is infinitely more we don’t know that what we think we do know
by The Parenting Centre | Jul 8, 2022 | General
Even though we never actually do anything about it, it is popular in 2022 for everyone to “speak out” against domestic violence. But this is always in the context of adults being violent with each other and usually in the context of adult men perpetrating violence against adult female partners.
But what about children?
The fact that we don’t consider traditional parenting domestic violence is prima facie evidence of the fact that our society still does not consider children to human beings.
For almost 20 years, I posed a two-part question to students in an Introductory sociology class. Part one asked them if they thought it was ever OK for an adult to use physical violence to control their partner. Part two asked them if they thought it was ever OK for parents to use physical violence to control their children. Hundreds of students over the years responded, and almost all said “never” to the first part, but more than half said “YES” to the second part. Of course, these were American students, and America is the most violent nation on earth, but it was still eye opening to me.
Our society cannot get its’ collective head around the idea that children are entitled to the same rights as any humans. We argue against children’s rights with much of the same rhetoric that was used to deny rights to women or to people of color.
In my opinion, any outrage about the use of violence is destroyed when we accept violence against children. And I am not just talking about physical violence. The same coercive control that we now believe defines patterns of domestic violence is a cornerstone of traditional parenting. We threaten, we intimidate, we take things away, and we yell. This is every bit as much domestic violence as the more common picture of a man hitting or controlling a woman.
The opportunity is there for all of us to realize that we cannot control any other human beings, whether they are smaller adults, or they are much smaller children. All we can do is react, and hopefully as parents that means reacting with kindness, respect and love. Accepting that we cannot control, and substituting love and acceptance for power, is likely to key to eliminating all forms of domestic violence.
by The Parenting Centre | Jul 8, 2022 | General
This is the first of a two part series on domestic violence. Each part will highlight the main victims of domestic violence: women and children.
Being an old, white man in a world dominated by old, white men, can make it challenging to empathize with the experience of being a woman in this world. Of course I can never fully understand the experience of being female in a male dominated society, but I have had the opportunity to work with so many female victims of domestic violence through the years, and their collective wisdom and insight has helped me overcome some of that challenge.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2011-12 the average Australian man was 175.6cm tall and weighed 85.9 kilos. The average Australian woman was 161.8cm tall and weighed 71.1 kilos. I don’t think most men ever stop to think what it would be like to live in world where half the population was almost 14cm taller than them, and weighed almost 15 kilos more than them. We men roam the streets secure that we are the physically dominant humans, and women simply do not have this luxury. As an adult, at 184cm, I have never had someone stand over me or try to intimidate me with their size. Women have this experience so regularly they may not even notice it. Don’t ever buy into the ridiculous argument that women abusing men is as prevalent or as serious as men abusing women.
Of course, it goes even deeper than size. Little girls in our society are brought up to believe that little boys are more important than they are. Even in 2022, gender differences in parenting are incredibly prevalent, and lead to adult women who have been trained to subjugate their needs and wants to those of men.
As parents, we can mitigate against the paternalism of this society as well as try to turn the tide of domestic violence by teaching and role modeling for all of our children that violence is never acceptable. We also have the opportunity to teach all of our children that everyone is equally important regardless of gender.
by The Parenting Centre | Apr 5, 2022 | General
I was just reading a headline announcing the winners of the 2022 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards,
and it struck me how ludicrous it is to compare movies and television shows to each other and try to
ascertain the “winner”. I’ve felt this before with other award shows, whether they be the Academy
Awards (Oscars), Grammy Awards or the Tony Awards (for stage performance and very significant
where I grew up in New York).
For me, there is deeper meaning in the incessant way we set up competitions for everything.
Competition is the cornerstone of capitalism. In some other economic systems, if we come across
$10 the enquiry becomes how to share it, or how to use it for the common good. In capitalism, the
only enquiry is who can get the $10; who can “win”.
As I thought more about this, I thought of how “winning” is so deeply ingrained in our psyches from
the time we are children. Traditional education, even preschool, is based on a system of
comparison and competition: who was the “best” at drawing, or at math, or at cleaning up. Young
children are given awards for winning at games, activities and sports. And of course we are a
culture obsessed with professional sports, where everything is about “winning”.
So who benefits from everything being a competition? Our capitalist society. As long as we
embrace the ridiculous fiction that some movies (or songs or theatre performances) can “win” over
others, we sustain the idea that winning is everything. And by inculcating this value in our children,
we grow perfect cogs for the capitalist wheel. Children grow up looking to “win” and equating
success in life with acquiring wealth and possessions. A spectacular system to sustain Telstra, and
Amazon, and Toyota. Not so great for living happy, peaceful lives where we are in the moment.
Not so great for developing humans who value the collective good over their own individual
achievement and acquisitions.
Of course, this provides awesome opportunities for parents to consciously pursue a different path
with their children. We can actively teach children they are infinitely valuable just because they are
themselves and that they are not “better” if they win, or “worse” if they lose.
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