The Song Remains the Same....

[Mach1]

I don't think there is any doubt that children are better off in a family where the parents are together and are happy, healthy, respect one another and enjoy being together. The question becomes how many long-term marriages fit that equation? One of my best friends has been married 25 years and has 5 kids and right now is staying married for the children. His house is very toxic because they fight with one another and call each other names and can't stand the fact the other is breathing. Now whose kids need to be more resilient his or mine? Mine go from one house where there is peace and love to the next house where there is peace and love.

Even in the most perfect of circumstances, children will inevitably-at some point in time- wish that their parents were still together....and wonder why they aren't.

In the most perfect of situations, children will still get tired of not having a permanent "home" that doesn't change weekly. They will get tired of having to plan where they are going to be on what week, and forgetting certain clothing items at one house or another. Having to check plans for each house when planning a sleepover, or forgetting which house this holiday is at this year....

The issues through divorce are still there. They may change and be different depending on the situation, however they are still present. That CAN be minimized through a good co-parenting system, however not in a parallel parenting system (which is often the case).

Toxic or not, children still want stability.

Those questions will still arise at some point, likely when your children are coming into their own, and finding out who they really are, and how their past will define them for their future.

So resiliency is graded on a curve for each situation, and the level of need may not appear until years down the road ....

There are good divorces and there are bad divorces. The ones where the children struggle are typically (but not always hence the use of the word typically) because one or both of the parents aren't holding up their end of the bargain of putting the children first. When the children get dropped off and picked up a police station the children are more than likely going to have to be resilient.

And there is the rub....

It's expected that both parents will put the children first, and that couldn't be further from the truth. In crisis, and depression, there are parents that are not capable of putting the children first. There are even more that "think" that they are putting the kids first. And the sad effects of that aren't realized until years later. Parent Alienation is a huge part of that also.

I read an article years ago about that....

Essentially, it said that each child is 50% of each parent, and every time a parent bashes the other parent, they are essentially telling the child that 50 % of them is bad.

Personally, I couldn't live with myself knowing that I played a part in that. I had a rule, that I did not want a good relationship with either of my children IF I had to destroy the relationship with their Mother to get it...

My Son told me a few months back that he couldn't remember that there was ever a time that he heard me talk badly about his Mother, and considering the amount of damage that she caused, he was thankful that he didn't hear that from both of us.

My children feel loved by both of us, they know that we are there for them, they have each other, and that is more than enough. Believe me it is.

Unfortunately, that might not be enough...

The conversation that I had with my Son wasn't about whether or not he felt that his Mother loved him, or wasn't there for him. It was about that he felt that she didn't know HOW to love him, and that he felt that there has been a lot of lies to cover up what really happened, and that he didn't have, and felt that she isn't capable of having anything more than a superficial relationship with him, or his Sister.