A Thought about Parents Not Agreeing on Visitation
There was a recent comment in the Huffington Post about parents and stepparents unable to come to terms in regard to how long a parent can stay with the co-parent and their family. Here is the comment that I made in response which is short and to the point. I hope that it can prove to be helpful in spite of its brevity.
When a child is between the struggles of parents and stepparents, there is a silent voice that cannot be heard amid the external voices of adult justification. In an ideal setting, the parents and stepparents could put aside any apparent opportunities to grow and listen to a child that may want to be with the other parent for a longer period of time. When there is no apparent harm, a child has an opportunity to learn from every parent and it takes great strength to let go of our own issues and see what good can come from the child being involved with everyone in the family. Also that internal voice of the child will eventually arise as he or she ages and it will be difficult to escape the question as to why he or she was not allowed to spend more time with the other parent.
With that said, the difficulty of having clarity as to where your line of suffering begins and ends is seemingly impossible. However, we still need to make an attempt to keep this line of suffering from encroaching onto others. This requires perfect internal vision whereby we see ourselves clearly and we can recognize our behaviors and differentiate them between promising and not promising. The only way to progress to that sort of insight is by living life and learning from it, which means people you love will get hurt. There is no avoiding that from happening. The best you can do is to try very hard to recognize yourself completely because when history appears in your personal rearview mirror, you will clearly see where your line of suffering encroached onto others and you cannot back up to change your decisions. You are only left with the new suffering of having to accept your imperfections and know that you did the best you could at the time. The idea is to minimize that inevitable part of life.
Vision
Love,
Ivy L.
No one is perfect. And everyone knows that (even your children). So perfection is not what is expected of us. On the other hand, what we know after getting really close with someone is their INTENTIONS. I can hurt my children a lot (and I do). What I can’t EVER do is hurt them intentionally, for my own benefit (and I don’t). The reason for this is that they know. So if I truly believe that they shouldn’t see their other parent because of the harm that will happen to them, then I can limit it. Later on, when they ask what happened, I can look them in the eyes and honestly tell them that I was trying to protect them, even if I actually was wrong. BUT – If I don’t let them see that parent because of my anger, or because it just “kills me” I won’t have that option available.