72 days?

7 years?

40 years?

How long is long enough to file for divorce in the court of public opinion and not hear that you didn’t try hard enough to save your marriage?  That you’re what’s wrong with the culture today: people give up too easily and don’t want to put in the hard work that marriage requires, and presumably, rewards? Or that because you’ve managed to stay married for as long as you have, you might as well just stick it out?  If only for the fact that you have kids?

The above numbers, for Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, Heidi Klum and Seal, and Al and Tipper Gore, respectively, have been central to the commentary on their decisions to divorce.  How exactly does divorce math work for celebrity marriages?  Let’s take a look:

If you’ve been married between 1 day  and 9 years and 364 days, with no reports of infidelity, abuse, or drugs and alcohol problems, you may divorce in the court of public opinion once problems arise if you go to counseling 25 times and try to work things out but can’t.  If TMZ is involved, you may subtract 24 counseling sessions.

If you’ve been married 10-14 years with no reports of infidelity, abuse, or drugs and alcohol problems, you may divorce in the court of public opinion at the very first sign of one of the aforementioned problems. Congratulations! You’ve earned it.

But…

If you’ve been married 15 or more years with no reports of infidelity, abuse, or drugs and alcohol problems, don’t worry. We’ll be there to support your widow or widower when you pass way.

If your last name is Kardashian…adjust for inflation.

It’s one thing to abhor that divorce and marriage are taken too lightly in our culture, and that people aren’t willing to push up their sleeves, do the work, and stay the course ’til death do them part. It’s one thing to lament that celebrities, and maybe even your cousin Lisa, trivialize marriage and want constant and instant gratification.  It’s one thing to have our hearts go out to children whose parents are divorcing and wish things could be better and different for them.  But it’s quite another to insist that individual couples have given up too easily when we don’t know the interior of their marriages.  And for goodness’ sake, a press release does not reveal the interior of anyone’s marriage. To wit, here’s the statement Heidi Klum and Seal issued:

“While we have enjoyed seven very loving, loyal and happy years of marriage, after much soul-searching we have decided to separate. We have had the deepest respect for one another throughout our relationship and continue to love each other very much, but we have grown apart. This is an amicable process and protecting the well-being of our children remains our top priority, especially during this time of transition.”

Here’s my take on this press release as someone who is not a celebrity, but who is a divorced parent.  First, for your children’s sake, you’re not going to make public the ugly details of your marital strife, if you can avoid it.  You come up with a vague, public response, and you stick to it.  If you choose to share details with your kids, either now or when they are older, that’s preferable to them finding things out via a Google search, or hearing stuff from your drunk auntie with no filter.

Seal and Heidi Klum’s statement reads to me like: 1) responsible parenting and responsible co-parenting, and 2) a pre-emptive media strike against the inevitable reports that will attribute salacious details about the marriage to unnamed “sources close to the couple.”  This statement tells me nothing but that Seal and Heidi are trying to keep it classy.  And kudos to them. I don’t believe this statement is a window into the heart of their relationship.  It takes more than fidelity and love to sustain a marriage.

Further, things other than infidelity and abuse and drugs can unravel a marriage.

Some people have unrealistic, fairytale expectations going into marriage.

Not everyone marries with the intention of staying married until death.

Some people decide they should never have married in the first place, for whatever reason.

We allow for the fact that people marry for all sorts of reasons, so why is it so hard to believe that people would divorce for different reasons? There is no universal divorce standard.  People say, “As long as he or she doesn’t _______________________, they should be able to work things out, especially after all these years, especially because they have kids.”  But we have no business trying to fill in that blank for anyone’s relationship but our own.

Who gets to decide what the straw that broke the camel’s back should be when it comes to deciding if a marriage is salvageable or not? The people who are in that marriage.

And the rest of us? I say we recognize that we can’t say from the outside looking in who did and did not try hard enough.  I say we give people who divorce with kids in the mix the benefit of the doubt: Knowing what a life-changing and traumatic experience divorce is for children, I want to believe that parents do what they can to avoid taking their kids through this wringer.  Some don’t, but the “divorce is a selfish act” meme should be far more nuanced (see Lee Block on the subject) than it usually is.  The divorced parents I know did not arrive at this decision without a lot of heartache.

We can bring all sorts of baggage and expectations and personality conflicts and compatibility issues and conflicting values and conflicting priorities into marriages.  It’s a wonderful thing when marriages thrive despite the challenges.  But some marriages don’t survive the ebb and the flow and the ups and downs, for all sorts of reasons.  Who is to say how much work and trying is “enough”? I thought about why people conjecture and feel so strongly on this subject as it relates to complete strangers, and without knowing everyone’s motivation, I do wonder this: Do other people’s divorces make us nervous about our own relationships? The ones we’re in or the ones we hope to have in the future?

“OMG. Seal and Heidi renewed their vows every year. If they can’t make it…then what hope is there for me?”

And maybe “We let people divorce too easily in this country!” sometimes means, “I don’t want my partner to give up too easily and treat me and our marriage as disposable.”

These are very real concerns. Loving someone and vowing to spending the rest of your life with them is…complicated.  Maybe the root of the “divorce problem” in our culture isn’t failure to wrestle with the decision to divorce long enough.  Maybe it’s that we’re not wrestling with the decision to marry long enough.

Mike, our girls Taylor and Peyton, and Baby Mika (about 4 days old at the time)

So my big ol’ co-parenting family experienced an interesting little twist last week.  My girls’ school was able to snag a special early evening screening of the new Harry Potter movie.  This meant that 150 lucky people in our school community saw the movie almost 6 hours before the rest of the country (our tuition dollars at work!).  I  am not a Potter fan, but my ex, Mike, our girls, and Mike’s wife Sherry are.  Maybe not as diehard as the folks at the tailgate who arrived dressed like the characters, but still fans.  So, it was with glee that I offered to watch the girls’ new baby sister Mika at a Starbuck’s adjacent to the theater inside the mall.  Not only would Sherry only be a text away if Mika got fussy, but I would be only a text away if my youngest, Peyton, got spooked out as Mike predicted she would.  She hadn’t seen any of the movies, deeming them “too scary”, and this was supposed to be the scariest yet. But she still wanted to see it.

At the tailgate, we stood around Mika’s stroller talking.  Well, others did all the talking about characters and plot turns that I knew nothing about.  I stood there waiting to get my baby fix.  At some point, I wandered over to talk to a group of moms I know. One of them had brought a friend who, in the course of conversation, said to me, “How old is your baby?” I pointed at Sherry and said loud enough for her to hear, “She’s almost 6 weeks old, but THAT’S her mother over there.”

In Starbuck’s, with Mika pasted on my chest for the duration of the movie, several women approached to coo over Mika, ask how old she was, and, a few times, if she was my first. I thought about the times Sherry has been mistaken for my girls’ mother, and how she (or our oldest daughter) will generally correct the person.  I never felt that it was a big deal that strangers knew that she wasn’t their mother; the girls, Sherry, and I are clear on that fact.  But I’ve always appreciated the gesture on Sherry’s part, to acknowledge me, even to strangers.  And when the tables were turned, I understood that impulse to give the mama her due.

Oh, and for the record, my baby, Peyton, made it through the entire movie without needing her mama.  And so did Mika.

A few days before Christmas 1979, I was doing what I always did during those glorious days when I was on vacation from school and home alone: snooping around in my mother’s bedroom.   Back then, I was a latchkey kid anyway, so I guess it was no big deal that I was home without supervision. And I didn’t mind.  Having the house all to myself meant that I could read all day undisturbed, look up interesting names in the white pages of the phone book (don’t ask), and snoop around in my mother’s room.  I went through her drawers, tried her perfumes (all of them), dressed up in her clothes and high heels, and searched for my Christmas presents.  They were usually under her bed, so I always saved that spot for last.   This particular Christmas, I pulled out a long, white, rectangular JC Penney gift box and frowned. Clothes. In my ungrateful mind, clothes were the consolation prize of Christmas gifts.  So I reluctantly opened the box.

Inside, I found not clothes but piles of paper.  Tannish, legal-sized paper, which made sense because these were legal documents.  The pages were typewritten and had a lot of words that even an precocious, 8-year-old voracious reader like me didn’t understand.  So I went and got my trusty dictionary.  It turned out to be of little help because the definitions of some of the words were equally puzzling.  But because I recognized my name, my mother’s name, and my father’s name, I knew I had to get to the bottom of this.  Why, for example, after each instance of my name, did they type “the bastard child”?  I knew “bastard” was a bad word, like “bitch” and “motherfucker,” but what did it have to do with me, or any child?

I found “bastard” and read the definition…What the hell did “illegitimate” mean?  I turned to the I’s.

I already knew that my parents never married, and I knew from TV that this was Not Normal.  But other than the white kids at the school to which I was bused, I didn’t have any peers with married parents.  So I didn’t think too much about my family situation besides wishing that I could see my dad more often, and that when I did he would be more dad-like (which is another post for another day).  So the fact that my situation had a name–that there was a name for kids like me–was astonishing.  Even more surprising was that the courts would need to be involved in this.  In my mind, court was for criminals. Again, TV formed my understanding of life.

I kept reading. What I came to understand from that pile of papers was that my mother wanted my father to pay child support.  My father objected by denying paternity.  (As an adult, I would hear from a family friend that a judge saw a picture of me, looked at my dad, and laughed him out of court.  This was of course in the days before Maury Povich adjudicated such matters).  So I learned from those papers that my father had not wanted me.  And I learned to be ashamed.

So when the news about Arnold Schwarzenegger fathering a child with an employee broke and the headlines began popping up on my Twitter timeline, I was reminded of my discovery that December day in 1979.  “Love child” appeared in a lot of the headlines, and I was also reminded of a song by that title, by The Supremes:

Love child
Never meant to be
Love Child
Born in poverty
Love Child
Never meant to be
Love Child
Take a look at me

On lead, Diana Ross sings this song as an adult “love child,” warning a would-be lover:

This love we’re contemplatin’
Is worth the pain of waitin’
We’ll only end up hatin’
The child we may be creatin’

Love Child
Never meant to be
Love Child
(Scorned by) Society
Love Child
Always second best
Love Child
(Different from) Different from the rest

There are moments when I don’t like my kids very much, but I can’t fathom hating one’s child.  But you know what I really do hate?  The words we use to describe children like the one that Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he’d fathered.  Children who didn’t ask to be born, and who most certainly didn’t choose the circumstances of their births.  A Twitter friend, @JBeezy007, commented: “Most people think of the word “bastard” as a profanity, but back in the day, it meant a “‘Love Child’…It still does.”  And vice versa, of course.   Funny how Arnold Schwarzenegger has a “love child,” but when poor single parents have children, they are labeled “out of wedlock.”  I know that the definitions aren’t identical, but “love child” is certainly the more sentimental of the two. But there’s nothing sentimental about it when everyone knows it’s just a Hollywood way of calling a child a “bastard.” And from a kid’s perspective, you just want to be a child, without any qualifiers.

Schwarzenegger’s revelation also reminded me of another Motown song, one I’ve long identified with–The Tempations’s “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”:

And Mama, bad talk going around town
saying that Papa had three outside children and another wife.
And that ain’t right.

Here “outside” means outside of one’s marriage, or more liberally, outside of one’s acknowledged household.  Technically speaking then, my 4 half-sisters and I wouldn’t really be considered “outside children” because our father never married any of our mothers.  (We were all adults when he married our stepmother.) It doesn’t matter though, because the sentiment still applies: we were born outside of what is deemed acceptable.  Those who are invested in such classifications would perhaps bypass “outside children” and label us “illegitimate” and “out of wedlock,” two more words that stigmatize children for matters beyond their control.  I was surprised to learn recently that in some states, a father has no automatic parental rights if he and the child’s mother never married.  Interestingly, however, even without rights, he’s still obligated to pay child support, if paternity is established.  For him to have legally recognized parental rights, he must pursue a legal process called…you guessed it: legitimation.  Jump through these hoops to make your child “valid…in accordance with established rules, principles, or standards.”

This morning,  my Twitter timeline was still abuzz about Schwarzenegger’s confession.  Several folks were concerned not with the grown-ups involved (and who knew what and when they knew it), but rather with the child at the center of this story:

@SkinnyBlackGirl: Look, I know everyone hates infidelity, but can we stop disrespecting children who had nothing to do with how they were conceived? They are children. Just refer to them as such. I’ll tell you right now: I’m the product of an affair. Call me illegitimate and see if I don’t legitimately punch you in your jaw.

@Wisemath: Two of my siblings whom I love dearly were results of an affair.  I love them like you can’t know.

@KimMoldofsky: One of the many things that irks me is that [Schwarzenegger] calls this an “event.” An affair might be an event, [but] a child is not!

@Firemom: I’ve been twitching with all the “out of wedlock,” “love child.” A child is somewhere, hearing this.

What does all this labeling mean…to the children to whom the labels are assigned?

Back to Christmas 1979. I put the papers back in that JC Penney box, pushed the box back under my mom’s bed, and kept that secret for nearly 20 years.  During the remainder of my childhood, I was often sad, angry, and frustrated.  Frustrated because, if I worked really hard, I made Honor Roll.  But no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t exit the Hall of Shame into which I’d been born.

Why do we persist with these designations for children? If there’s a legitimate (no pun intended) reason to discuss a child’s parents’ marital status, isn’t “They aren’t married” sufficient?  It is, except when we want to pass judgment, and in doing so, we dump the full-weight of the so-called sins of the fathers (and mothers) on their children’s heads.

Because I get along with my ex-husband (and CoParenting101.org co-founder) so well, people have remarked that our family should be cast in a reality TV show.  While it’s true that we have a good parenting partnership and do things like take an annual vacation with our kids, his wife, my husband, and my stepkids, the stuff that makes us such a rarity is precisely the reason why we’d be bad reality TV fodder—which, like a double negative, is a positive.   Reality TV show producers would no doubt write us off for lack of drama, much like singer Monica’s short-lived reality show (Don’t remember it?…Exactly.) However, there are some common co-parenting scenarios that would play out as ratings gold:

The Co-Parent
Think The Apprentice meets Divorce Court.  Contestants would compete for a grand prize, not for charity, but enough money to pay their divorce-related legal costs in full.  Their challenges would involve juggling school conferences, birthday parties, holidays, new spouses, child support issues, and joint asset splits with their exes, all without using their children as pawns.  Trump, no stranger to divorce himself, would send each week’s loser on his or her merry way by declaring, “You’re saddled with lawyers’ fees!”

America’s Next Top Co-Parent
On this show, co-parents compete to outdo each other and wow the judges: their children.  Once the contestants have mentally and physically exhausted themselves and blown their budgets on vacations, cars, clothes, and game systems, they each win the prizes they’ve earned: their own spoiled, demanding, confused children.

Making the Blend
A couple + his kids + her kids +their exes +their new baby = non-stop comedy and drama.  Spoiler alert: The family finally bonds in the last episode of the season when host Sean “Puffy” Combs makes the whole lot of them walk over the Brooklyn Bridge to get him a slice of cheesecake from Junior’s.

Trading Ex-Spouses/Ex-Wife Swap
Apparently, these shows were deluged with audition videos from co-parenting dads eager to take on an ex-wife—any ex-wife—besides their own for a week.  And more than a few co-parenting moms sought to swap their kids’ Disney Dads for ones who would make sure the kids did their homework and ate meals that didn’t come out of boxes.

Stepmom Rehab
Dr. Drew gives burnt-out stepmoms a much-needed break and helps them through a specialized 12 Step program. The first step is admitting you have a problem—and no, it’s not just his ex-wife.  Step 2: I will not throttle anyone for showing me less respect than the babysitter.

The Real 2^nd Wives of Baltimore
In the spirit of the Real Housewives… franchise, the cast doesn’t include any 2^nd wives.   Basically, this is just a random group of women who sit around bickering with each other.  Must-see TV.

Bowling BabyMamas
This show puts the real back into reality TV.  No screaming at each other over mojitos at trendy South Beach restaurants for these mamas.  They’re pulling hair over chicken fingers and Bud Light in a bowling alley.   In the spirit of VH1’s Basketball Wives, only one of the cast members actually has a child fathered by a guy who bowls.  As long as they at least know someone who is the cousin of someone who once saw a guy bowling, they qualify for the show.

Hollywood Ex-Husbands
This is the true story of seven celebrity co-parenting dads picked to live in a house and have their lives taped. Find out what happens when these guys stop being polite and start getting real. Hollywood Ex-Husbands… starring Shaq (Kazaam), Nas (Belly), Will Smith, Charlie Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Gabriel Aubry, and Tyrese.  No matter that Gabriel and Tyrese aren’t ex-husbands (see also Wives, Basketball).

Survivor: The School Play
The premise of this show is simple.  The ex-couple and their respective new significant others sit on opposite sides of the school auditorium, shooting daggers at each other.  The winner: The couple that survives the daggers over the course of several years’ worth of plays, and lives to see graduation.

Jon and Kate Plus His Ex-Wife
We all know how this ends.

Divorced Eye for the Married Guy
Divorced dads draw on their “If I had to do it over again…” wisdom to school married dads in how to keep the home fires burning.  They also remind them that the grass is not always greener in Singleland.

Keeping Up with Bruce, Demi, and Ashton/Keeping Up with Will, Sheree, and Jada
A reality TV show that’s a class act?  Not one, but two.  These folks show us how it’s supposed to be done.

If your co-parenting situation was a reality TV show, which one would it be?

I’m going to start by stating the obvious without rehashing all the gory details: Charlie Sheen is a mess.

This past Saturday, his wife, Brooke Mueller (from whom he is separated; pictured above) was told by police that she could not have the boys removed from Sheen’s home.  She cited concerns for their safety, while cops cited the custody order that gave Sheen the right to have the boys in his care at that time.

But by Wednesday, the cops were at Sheen’s door to remove the boys from his custody after Mueller filed for a restraining order based on a long list of abuses attributed to Sheen (none alleging child abuse).  A judge ruled that Sheen must stay at least 100 yards away from Mueller and the children.  Initially after the children were removed from his home, Sheen did not know their whereabouts, but later tweeted that the boys were “fine.”

(An aside: If Charlie is really concerned about his kids, he’ll cut lose the “member of his entourage” who videoed and then released footage of him and his not-yet-2-year-old twins as they are being taken away by police.)

Sheen also tweeted that “Defeat is not an option.”  Hopefully,  this wasn’t just another crazy soundbite of which he’s been rather fond of late, but rather an indication of his plans to get his act together and restore his parental rights, for his kids’ sake.   We have come to know Charlie as the bi-winning genius with a history of violence against women (about which he’s unrepentant) whose demons cost him a hit TV show.  But for two little boys, he’s still “dada.”

Over the nearly 3 years since I co-founded CoParenting101.org with my ex-husband, I have been continually astounded and saddened by just how much the family court system will subject children to before (if ever) lowering the lost-custody boom, all in the name of the sanctity of the parent-child bond.  And certainly that bond is sacred.  And to be sure, reasonable people disagree as to what makes someone a good parent.  Some parents get a raw deal in family court.  Others get too many 2nd chances at the expense of their children’s well-being.  Some judges overreach; others don’t reach far enough to protect children, dismissing legitimate concerns from distraught parents.  Some parents make false accusations.  Some are indeed abusive or negligent.  The end result? Too often, the family court system feels–pardon my French–like a fucking crap shoot, and kids deserve better.

So back to Charlie Sheen, Brooke Mueller, and their sons.  I believe Sheen’s history of violence, his addiction, and obvious mental impairment warrant at the very least an investigation into the environment where his children are when they are in his custody, and into his competency to care for them.  And if their mother’s situation is also cause for concern as some reports suggest, she should be held to the same standards and scrutinized as well.  Finally, it should be mandated for all four of them to attend counseling.  In general, my layperson’s opinion rests with the sentiments of John at SingleParentTravel.net who wrote that supervised parenting time–not permanent loss of custody–may be in order. I believe the court system is well-intentioned in having as its goal the maintenance of the parent-child bond, and to offer solutions like supervision, short- and long-term. Such solutions, ideally, protect parental rights while also protecting children.

Parenting is not an absolute right. But it is an absolute responsibility.  Charlie Sheen must show himself to be responsible and fit for the job of parenting those boys.  Whether Brooke Mueller’s allegations are true or not, what is undeniable is that Sheen’s public behavior has left him wide open to questions about his parenting competency.  And for that, he must take full responsibility.

In more peaceful times

Dear Hall Berry and Gabriel Aubry:

For the love of Nahla, please stop issuing statements about your on-going custody dispute.

Halle, you aren’t the first parent to have concerns about their child’s well-being while in the other parent’s care.  But you aren’t concerned about how the media is exploiting the custody battle at which your child is the center?  You don’t have concerns about making the private details of her life available for public consumption?

The media frenzy surrounding your custody case has dredged  up that age-old  referendum on your sanity, your questionable taste in men, and more recently, if you really just wanted Gabriel for his great genes.  Honestly, I had forgot about all of that.  I had even managed to shuttle memories of your wtf? performance in Monster’s Ball into the farthest recesses of my mind after reading this statement you made in Vogue last summer regarding co-parenting with Gabriel after your break-up:

We were meant to bring this amazing little person into the world. And I think that’s why we came together. And because of that, we are going to be together forever, all three of us. We are a family until we are not here any more.

Certainly, things change, people change, situations change.  But hopefully you can see that airing dirty laundry flies in the face of the commitment to Nahla reflected in this statement.

Now Gabriel, you had the right idea with your public statement via your rep:

Gabriel refuses to air their issues in the press as he believes this may ultimately harm their daughter…

…but then you couldn’t leave well enough alone.  You had to add:

…Halle’s continuing allegations in the press are untrue and irresponsible.

Which the media promptly spun into “Gabriel fires back, calling Halle irresponsible!”  You’ve been in Hollywood long enough to know how the game is played, so it’s hard to believe that you didn’t see it coming.  If you really wanted to keep the media out of it, then you would have put a full stop after “…daughter” and refused to offer any more grist for the mill.  Instead, the press is now having a field day speculating whether you are a golddigger and a racist, or just a gold-digger.

Perhaps both your reps got tired of taking media calls asking for details, so you felt compelled to issue statements.  But by making statements that go beyond “We’re keeping this private.  For our child’s sake, please respect our wishes”, you’ve both contributed to the pimping of your child’s life .  I mean, you’re no Joe Jackson or Dina Lohan, but still.  The parasitic “sources” and “former friends” who are dishing on you are opportunists with no vested interest in Nahla’s well-being.   What’s your excuse?  By trying to embarrass and expose each other, the person you’re really exposing is Nahla.

It’s in the best interest of your child to put your egos and your desire for public approval aside and agree to a media blackout on this case.  The eventual court ruling aside, the opinion about your parenting skills and your general conduct that should concern you most is Nahla’s, not the court of public opinion.  You can’t retract from the public record what you and “sources” have already put out there and what Nahla herself may read some day.  But you can do the right thing and refuse to feed the media monster any more morsels of your child’s privacy.

And while you’re shutting up, please tell  “sources” and “friends”  to stop telling your business to the media.  (I’m going to pretend like it’s not at all possible that some of these people have been doing your bidding.)  If your “friends” must “pick sides”, tell them to pick Nahla’s.  Because regardless of how a judge ultimately rules, she stands to lose the most.

This morning, Negro Twitter was abuzz with commentary on model-actor-R&B singer Tyrese late-night tweets about sitting in his car outside of his ex’s house.  Why?  According to Tyrese, via Twitter:

“I tell you guys all the time.. It’s ONLY the kids that suffer in the end when parents drag their innocent kids into ADULT STUFF..”

“It’s reality.. Sometimes relationships don’t work.. Be grown, move on, and become responsible adults ..”

“I’m parked outside of my baby momma spot to MAKE SURE I get to spend time w/my child for X-Mas. Done w/games…”

Now, if you’re not familiar with Tyrese Gibson, perhaps this Coca-Cola commercial will jog your memory.  This triple-”threat” (quadruple if you count the stalking) is aiming to become a quadruple (quintuple) “threat” with the release of a self-help book, How to Get Out of Your Own Way, in 2011.  But if Tyrese’s trite and grammatically incorrect tweets are any sign of the book to come, praise be to his ghostwriter.  But I digress…

Not surprisingly, the “parked outside of my baby momma spot” tweet and others like it had mysteriously disappeared by the time those of us who sleep through the night in our beds and not our cars were up and reading Twitter.  But  one self-help lesson Tyrese could use is this: Twitter is forever. Thanks to The Fabulous Ms. @SteenFox, screenshots of Tyrese’s how-not-to-co-parent tweets will live forever.

Predictably, there were tweets that balked at Tyrese’s antics, especially in light of his forthcoming book and typically self-righteous tweets.  But he was not without supporters for his efforts.  Some wished him well, hoping his child’s mother would allow him to see their child.  And I get that;  it’s important for children to spend holidays with their parents.  However, when parents share custody, unless they both plan to spend the holidays with their child, together, somebody isn’t going to be with the child for all or part of each holiday.  Does Tyrese and his ex’s shared parenting agreement state that his daughter is supposed to be with him this Christmas? Some co-parents alternate years; others split the day. As @SteenFox and others have pointed out, Tyrese certainly has the resources to pursue legal action where his parenting time is concerned.  But what if he’s done that already, and his ex is violating the order’s parameters re: Christmas?  Stalking still isn’t the answer.

Is stalking ever the answer?

Exactly what was he planning to do when/if the child stepped outside of the house?  Take her against her mother’s wishes?  A parental tug of war over the child, verbally or physically? Classy.  And even if it didn’t come to that, hanging around outside someone’s home can help that someone build a case against you for harassment.  Instead of How To Get Out Of Your Own Way, would Tyrese’s book be more aptly titled, How to Post Bail on Christmas Day and Risk Losing the Parenting Time You Do Have?

Look, my sympathies and support are with Tyrese or any parent who is denied their rightful parenting time, especially during the holidays.  However, two wrongs don’t make a right, and his sitting outside his ex’s house overnight had the potential for so much wrong.

According to Tyrese, however, his vigilance paid off.  While I was writing this post, he tweeted:

I got my daughter…. Yes!

I hope for the sake of all involved, but especially his daughter, that whatever transpired leading to this turn of events was in keeping with this season of peace.

The first time a book ever broke my heart it was Push, a novel written by the poet Sapphire and upon which the film Precious was based.  In a single, tear-filled night, I stayed up until sunrise reading this story of horrific emotional, physical, and sexual child abuse.  Even though the book is a work of fiction, I ached for the real girls who endure such mistreatment, or even a fraction of it.

The second time a book broke my heart was this past week when I finished reading A Family’s Heartbreak: A Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation, also in a final marathon read that kept me up much later than I needed to be.   And once again, I thought not only of c0-author Mike Jeffries’ real-life horror story, but of all the Mikes–moms and dads–and all the children from whom they’ve been alienated.

What is parental alienation?  Parental alienation is a type of emotional abuse.  It occurs when “one parent deliberately damages, and in some cases destroys, the previously healthy loving relationship between the child and the child’s other parent.” We’ve all heard of parents who use their children as weapons in divorce and who actively seek to destroy their children’s relationship with the other parent, but a lot of people aren’t familiar with the terminology “parental alienation.”  Some are only introduced to it once their relationship with their child is well on its way to being permanently destroyed.

One of the saddest emails I ever received was from a frantic, frightened non-custodial mother who described an ex-husband who refused to communicate with her, and a formerly loving young daughter who also would no longer speak to her. On top of everything else, the father and daughter were relocating cross-country.   Before I could write back to her, the mom emailed again to say that she’d stayed up all night reading online and discovered that her daughter’s pattern of behavior as well as her ex’s had a name: parental alienation.

The American Psychiatric Association recently considered whether or not to include parental alienation as a diagnosis in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM-V). Ultimately, they chose not to*, but since this same organization that has also decided to delete narcissistic personality disorder from the DSM, that’s not saying much.  As any alienated parent will tell you: It doesn’t matter who does or does not formally recognize parental alienation; the systematic destruction of their once-loving relationship with their child is real, painful, and maddening.

Astonishingly, those who advocate against parental alienation have their critics.  Among them are mothers’ rights groups who say that women are disproportionately accused of alienation, and that parental alienation is a smokescreen and a fraud perpetrated by abusive fathers who play the parental alienation “card” in order to gain custody of their children and continue their pattern of abuse, after being accused  of child or spousal abuse.  But wait a minute?   Isn’t lying about alienation, convincing your child she is being harmed, and getting your child to lie and say she is being alienated in order to take he child way from the other parent…isn’t all of this itself a form of alienation?  Can we agree that fathers who do this are in fact alienators?  How are children served by a blanket dismissal of parental alienation as a scam?  Not all accusations of alienation are founded, but neither are they all unfounded.

A common response to parental alienation is to take the alienating parent to court, file motions of contempt, and pursue every legal and therapeutic option available to stop the alienation and repair the relationship between the parent and the child.  In court, judges, attorneys, and mental health professionals may dismiss or minimize charges of parental alienation because they’ve come to expect parents to behave badly and to make wild accusations during divorce and custody fights.

But what if  the accusations are true?

All too often the alienating behavior is chalked up to bad parenting, and the alienated parent may even be portrayed as equally complicit in his/her child’s struggles.

Parenting alienation isn’t a crime because bad parenting isn’t a crime.

The children in such situations are essentially abandoned by the system.  You can’t throw your child out of a window to keep him away from the other parent, and get away with it.  But you can do the emotional equivalent of that and get away with it.

Parental alienation is “successful” when alienators and their attorneys get delay after delay in an already backed-up court system.  Motions related to parental alienation are not deemed emergencies.  So the delays add up, buying the alienating parent more time to drive the wedge deeper between the child and the alienated parent.  And here’s the rub: By the time the alienated parent gets his or her day in court, the child’s hatred of , professed fear of, and desire not to spend time with the alienated parent may be so strong, that now the court must consider the trauma that would result from forcing the child to be with a parent who has been so thoroughly painted by the alienating parent as the enemy.

Parental alienation is allowed to continue when judges do not enforce their own contempt of court rulings against alienating parents, with the punitive measures available to them: jail time, fines, and loss of custody. So, the alienating parent can be found in contempt and told to cease and desist the alienating behavior (and take the child to mandatory counseling, etc.), but this parent learns that nothing will be done if he or she doesn’t comply…except maybe another contempt charge brought by the alienated parent.  Which brings us back to doe…and the parent is still free to alienate another day.

*Update/correction from author Mike Jeffries: “Parental alienation is still being considered by the DSM Review Committee.  You were correct about the committee rejecting alienation for the section that covers mental illness (and I agree with them on this), but there are two other sections of the DSM that alienation can potentially fall under and the committee has not yet made a decision about alienation in those sections.”

To learn more about parental alienation and to find out how you can raise awareness of it, visit: A Family’s Heartbreak and the Parental Alienation Awareness Organization.

Emotional abuse of children during and after divorce proceedings is one of the most insidious and common problems we hear about from co-parents who contact us via CoParenting101.org. Emotional abuse is generally more difficult to prove than physical abuse, and family court judges and lawyers who have seen it all know that such charges can be slippery and easily thrown around by divorcing parents, without merit. To some extent, they expect embattled divorcing parents to make damning but ultimately unfounded accusations against each other in an attempt to emerge as the better parent and “win” in the divorce. (This is why children’s issues have no place in an arena that by definition seeks to identify a “win” and a “loser.” But that’s a different rant for a different day.) The result can be that accusations of emotional abuse are minimized, not thoroughly investigated, or dismissed outright.

So when accusations of emotional abuse do have merit, the parent making the charge may face an uphill battle to have his/her concerns about the children’s well-being taken seriously.

Narcissists are amongst those who emotionally abuse children during and after divorce. Narcissism is “the personality trait of egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness.” While Freud argued that “healthy narcissism” is essential to normal human development, high levels of narcissism are manifested pathologically as narcissistic personality disorder. While co-parents shouldn’t invest themselves in trying to diagnose their exes, understanding their personality traits or potential disorders can be useful in learning how to deal with them constructively and in ways that benefit the children.

Here’s an excerpt from an article that addresses how narcissists abuse children during and after divorce:

Narcissists will use people in whatever way is necessary to get what they want. This world view also applies to their children…During and after divorce, a narcissist’s emotional abuse of their children may seem more direct or blatant…

Narcissists are masters of lying. They will lie to their children and distort reality the same as they do to everyone else. Often, narcissists will sacrifice their children’s well-being in an attempt to save face. This leaves the children feeling confused and unsure of their own reality and judgment. Narcissists will ask their children to lie for them, keep secrets and to spy on the other parent.

Narcissistic parents do not respect their children’s desires. They may make promises to the children in order to gain compliance from the child, then refuse to honor the promises. Children may miss out on birthday parties, sporting events or other activities important to them in order to accommodate the narcissistic parent’s wishes. The children soon learn that what they want is not important when with the narcissistic parent…

It may seem excessive or restraining but in the long run…written agreements will often be easier than constantly renegotiating with an unreliable and emotionally abusive former spouse.

Divorce is never easy on children. Coping with a narcissistic parent makes a stressful situation even more difficult. Learning to identify the games narcissists play can help parents to minimize the emotional abuse children suffer at the hands of a narcissistic parent.

Source

See the source link above for the complete article and for tips and strategies for dealing with a narcissist during and after a divorce.

Take a look at these “Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism.” These behaviors on the part of a parent can wreak havoc on a child emotionally:

Shamelessness – Shame is the feeling that lurks beneath all unhealthy narcissism, and the inability to process shame in healthy ways.

Magical thinking – Narcissists see themselves as perfect using distortion and illusion known as magical thinking. They also use projection to dump shame onto others.

Arrogance – A narcissist who is feeling deflated may reinflate by diminishing, debasing, or degrading somebody else.

Envy – A narcissist may secure a sense of superiority in the face of another person’s ability by using contempt to minimize the other person.

Entitlement – Narcissists hold unreasonable expectations of particularly favorable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves special. Any failure to comply will be considered an attack on their superiority and the perpetrator is considered to be an “awkward” or “difficult” person. Defiance of their will is a narcissistic injury that can trigger narcissistic rage.

Exploitation – can take many forms but always involves the exploitation of others without regard for their feelings or interests. Often the other is in a subservient position where resistance would be difficult or even impossible. Sometimes the subservience is not so much real as assumed.

Bad Boundaries – narcissists do not recognize that they have boundaries and that others are separate and are not extensions of themselves. Others either exist to meet their needs or may as well not exist at all. Those who provide narcissistic supply to the narcissist will be treated as if they are part of the narcissist and be expected to live up to those expectations. In the mind of a narcissist, there is no boundary between self and other.

Source: Hotchkiss, Sandy & Masterson, James F. Why Is It Always About You? : The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism (2003)

Googling “narcissism and divorce” yields a ton of resources which I believe is a testament to just how draining this particular personality trait or disorder can be in a situation that is already difficult and emotionally charged. The conventional wisdom for dealing with narcissists is: Get away from them. But of course that’s not possible when you must co-parent.

One co-parent we know told her children: “I’m your mother; I can do anything I want with you and to you” in response to their father’s attempt to intervene on their behalf.

So what’s a concerned co-parent to do? Bill Eddy, founder of The High Conflict Institute and author of Don’t Alienate the Kids! Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce shared some advice with us on an episode of “Co-Parenting Matters”, “Dealing With High Conflict in Your Co-Parenting Relationship.” (podcast at the link). According to Eddy, it’s important to realize that you cannot change a narcissist. And certainly trying to convince the narcissist that he’s a narcissist is pretty much a fool’s errand.

Here are some additional tips for dealing with a narcissistic co-parent:

Don’t swing at every pitch. For example, emails that are just rants, atttention-seeking, or expressions of self-aggrandizement should be ignored. Address any issue or problem that relates to your child; attack the problem, not the other parent, even if s/he is on the attack. If you do respond, keep it brief, to the point, and business-like.

Maintain firm boundaries. Limit your contact and communication, and maintain boundaries to keep the narcissist from inserting him/herself in your household and in your relationship with your children in inappropriate ways.

Accept that you can’t win an argument with a narcissist. Give up any efforts to be “right” in the eyes of the narcissist–even if you are. Focus instead on peace and wellness for your children.

Don’t take it personally. The narcissist has a disorder that’s about them, not you.

Take care of yourself. Divorcing a narcissist with children in the mix means that for some years you will not be able to completely sever ties with this person. Dealing with them can be exhausting and stressful. Commit to self-care to bring yourself some relief. Your martyrdom will not help your children.

Earlier this week, my ex and CoParentng101.org co-founder, Mike, our daughters, and I appeared on CBS News’ The Early Show in a segment about co-parenting after divorce (excerpted above).  We were thrilled to have the opportunity to encourage other co-parents to keep the peace for their children’s sake, in a forum that reaches 3 million people.  Our segment was taped over the course of about 4 hours on a Sunday afternoon, and we knew much of it,  understandably, would end up on the cutting room floor.  Fortunately, we have a forum here–and on our site–to round out our comments, three key points in particular:

We get along well, and we consider ourselves friends as well as co-parents.
But things haven’t always been this way.  While our girls have been spared the ugly exchanges, we have had them.  From the outset of our separation, prior to our divorce, we agreed on the vast majority of matters related to the girls, including the fact that we would never bad-mouth each other in their presence or otherwise drag them in the middle of our grown-up Stuff.  But that left a lot of room for other things about which to disagree and fight.  Eventually however, with time, effort, and our own individual ways of healing and coming to terms with the end of marriage, we were able to make peace.  Seeing each other through our children’s eyes–and not the lens of prior hurts, anger, expectations, and disappointments–made this possible.

So, yes, we’re friends, but it didn’t happen overnight.  We had to bury our old relationship in order for a new, stable co-parenting relationship to emerge. And this is an on-going journey, one we know is worth it for our children’s sake.

And the kids aren’t the only ones who benefit.  Getting along is certainly much easier on the two of us than constantly being in conflict and tension would be.

Yes, we have socialized and vacationed together with each other, our kids, and our spouses.
You should have seen the stank face Harry Smith gave during one of the promos for the show when it was mentioned that we all vacation together.  Mike and I have been vacationing together with our kids since we first separated.  Now, we’re joined each summer by our respective spouses and my bonus daughters (and occasionally, nieces and dogs).  This works for our family; for the majority of co-parents, it wouldn’t.  Obviously, vacationing together isn’t required for co-parenting to be successful.   Every co-parent has to draw boundaries that make sense and fit his/her family’s circumstances.  In fact, we don’t believe that parents even have to be friends , much less vacation together, in order to co-parent in the best interests of their children.  Interacting with each other in respectful ways, keeping kids out of the middle, keeping the focus on the children, and not using kids as weapons to punish each other–-all of this is possible without co-parents being friends or socializing with each other.

Our ability to parent cooperatively does not make our divorce a good thing for our children.
On more than one occasion, well-meaning people have called us the “poster children for divorce.”  No one sets out to become that.  The hope was of course, to be the poster children for successful marriage, for ourselves and for our kids.  But it didn’t work out that way.  So we see our co-parenting arrangement as the 2nd best that we can give our children.  The Early Show segment producer asked us if we thought our cooperation is a gift to our children, and in our responses, Mike and I were careful not to suggest that somehow divorce has been a gift to our kids, because it has not.   We’re not divorce advocates; we’re advocates for parental cooperation and civility after divorce.

Our intention in appearing on The Early Show was the same as our reasons for founding CoParenting101.org: 1) To encourage co-parents in their journey, and 2) to challenge what seems to be a cultural assumption that parenting through and after a break-up is by definition wrought with high parental conflict and kids caught in the crossfire.   It doesn’t have to be that way.  Even one parent striving to keep the peace can a make a difference in child’s life.