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Separated
Parents
- Gary Direnfeld
Children need
and want the best relationship possible with both parents, and the involvement
of both parents is important to the emotional health of children now and
in the future. While such involvement is easily achieved by parents leading
a happily married life, what about single parents? How do they cope? The
Child-Up Parenting Plan is a dynamic solution to address such a situation.
The first step
is to understand the needs of a child as he grows, to the time he is old
enough to leave home and start out on his own. Needs may be related to
education, religion, health, extra-curricular activities, residence and
daily care. The child-up approach takes all these into account and then
builds upon the resources, availability and desires of each parent to meet
these needs over time. If either parent is lacking in knowledge, skill
or ability, the plan may also include counselling or parenting classes.
The basic belief is that parents will do whatever is necessary to best
meet their children's needs and will undertake activities to prepare themselves
if necessary.
Parents will
have to adapt to different stages according to their children's development.
The parenting plan must therefore be dynamic, as it will need to change
with time.
With infant
children, one parent may be more relied upon to provide day-to-day care.
However, the other parent should be provided opportunity to bond and form
attachments through frequent visits. As children become toddlers, pre-schoolers
and then school aged, they are increasingly exposed to the world. So rather
than an arbitrary rule that provides a mid-week visit, parents can negotiate
and share responsibilities for transportation or swimming lessons or after-school
activities. Sharing responsibilities pragmatically changes parents' duration,
frequency, time, activity and exposure to their children in a way that
is natural.
In other words,
parental time with children is as much task-specific as time-directed.
As the demands of school increase, one parent may provide assistance with
math homework, while the other with English. The key is to develop the
parenting plan for meaningful, goal directed and structured activity aimed
towards meeting the needs of children at particular ages. Close parent-child
relationships form through positive involvement with typical daily tasks.
Other benefits
of sharing parental responsibilities through a “child-up parenting plan”
is the reduced risk of one parent taking on the role of the disciplinarian
while the other parent develops a kind of fantasyland relationship. Children
benefit from access to both parents according to their needs and parental
abilities. Further, it distributes the demands placed upon parents and
can reduce their stress.
Ongoing parental
involvement throughout childhood will determine how well children are able
to accept parental guidance and direction come adolescence. This will be
vital and protective at this time in their lives. While many people think
that peer pressure has more influence on teen behaviour, this is only true
for teens who have tenuous parental relationships. Parents who have long
established, good and significant relationship with their children can
actually have more influence on them during adolescence than their teen
peers.
Involvement
now will determine your relationship with your child, and the course of
your child's future relationships and well-being. If a such a plan is developed
and followed, both parents can dance at their children's wedding, and then
take turns babysitting grandchildren! Needless to say, this approach will
best with parents who have put aside their differences or hatred for each
other, for the betterment of their children. The worst thing one parent
can do, is to turn the children against the other parent.
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