i don’t think it’s so much as of a trend
as it is a approach if that makes any
sense meaning that
i believe parents these days are more
amenable
to
attempting to work out custody issues
with the assistance of a mental health
professional
as opposed to duking it out in court
and i think that the approach is
mostly the result
of
seeing on television seeing in the media
on social media
and having a more of an awareness that
you know going to court and having a
judge that knows nothing about you or
your children and having them make the
ultimate decision as to how
you’re going to live and your children
are going to live and the parenting
decisions that you make that may not be
the best route for every person to go
down
i think people and custody litigants
realize that them maintaining that
control
and maybe
they’re not going to get a hundred
percent of what they’re looking for in
terms of parenting time or decision
making but to be able to have control
over those decisions
and work them out with someone that
you’re not going to be married to
anymore with the help of a mental health
professional
is always going to be a better route
than having some disinterested judge
who hopefully does have everyone’s best
interest at heart but you have to
realize the constraints that they work
under and you have to deal with that
meaning time and caseload so they don’t
have that much time for your case so in
any event it’s always better to have
control over your own life so i think
parents on
a greater average are far more willing
to work to try to resolve custody issues
rather than running into court and
litigating them which i think is a
terribly it sounds counterproductive but
i think it’s a terribly important trend
and approach
one topic um i find coming up
repeatedly and it’s
i wouldn’t say bothersome to me as a
practitioner but concerning to me as a
practitioner
is parents embroiling their children and
their marital problems and their
litigation
i recently had a discussion with a
mental health professional and
they pointed out and re-emphasized how
important it was
in terms of the adult that you become
it’s the childhood that you had that
really forms that
so meaning you know if you had a great
role model great direction you know and
that positive force when you were
growing up it’s so much more likely that
when you’re a parent you’re gonna
emulate you’re gonna you know
be that same person because you had a
great example so i think that parents
because they’re so emotionally you know
overwhelmed
and
they want to feel the support of
whomever is around them including the
children they tend to over
overly involve children in their marital
issues and the litigation in their
divorce case and i don’t think they
understand as they sit there
how much damage that really does because
it makes the child feel responsible for
the parent
it over involves a child where it’s not
necessary they’re just not equipped to
deal with those adult problems and adult
emotions
and i just think it leaves a very bad
telltale in terms of this child’s
adjustment later on in life in terms of
how they deal with relationships how
they deal with problems and i would just
far more prefer that every parent get a
great therapist a great lawyer that they
can vent to speak to
get advice from talk to rather than
using their children as that person it
will just benefit them as well and
particularly their children down the
road