Stuck in middle of warring exes

Separated couples should parent as one, for the children’s sake, says Helen O’Callaghan.

One of the difficulties for separating couples is that time spent with their children — for one partner — is in short supply.

“I remember one father saying ‘I can’t get my head around the fact that I won’t see my kids at breakfast’. The casualness of them being around all the time was gone,” says family mediator, Fiona McAuslan.

It’s huge for mums seeing children going to a new house — their expartner’s. “Even though we might trust implicitly our former partner as a parent, there is a lettinggo of nurturing to the other side,” says McAuslan, who, with Peter Nicholson, has coauthored Living With Separation And Divorce, a ‘separation planner’ that advises on everything from maintenance to parenting schedules.

Children sit on a bridge between their parents. If mum and dad seriously argue, the bridge shakes and the children feel on shaky ground, says McAuslan. Separating couples should keep the mutuality of parenting in focus.

“Children don’t see their parents as separate individuals in couple crisis. They don’t say to their parents: ‘I understand each of your positions’. Children need their parents to be parents, to recognise themselves as parents, to see their kids as coming from both of them. Children need to have good relationships with both mum and dad,” she says.

In separation/divorce, keep children the subject of their own lives and not the object of the separation, otherwise they will be preoccupied figuring out where to place themselves in relation to each of their parents, says McAuslan.

“On first Communion Day, what do you want them to be thinking about?

“Do you want them to be thinking about where mum and dad will be sitting, because they’re separated, or how mum and dad will be with each other? Or do you want your child to be able to concentrate on themselves,” says McAuslan, who advises separating couples — whether the child’s six months, six years or 16 at time of separation — to read up on the developmental needs of their child.

¦ Living With Separation And Divorce, Fiona McAuslan and Peter Nicholson, €15. See www.livingwithseparation.com.

COPING TIPS

¦ Shift perspective: ask ‘what’s my child witnessing’?

¦ Future focus: ask ‘what would I like to look back on in terms of the kind of parent I am being now’?

¦ Letting them know what has happened between mum and dad isn’t their fault.

¦ Avoid compensating by giving material stuff — what’s needed is consistency in parenting.