Tanzi's Blog

You are your child’s advocate.  I advocate for my child all the time with my ex and it sometimes takes careful reframing to make it clear that I am helping to present her viewpoint, not arguing mine.   In order to do that, you have to ask the right questions, involve your child appropriately if they are old enough, do not attack your ex or cut them down in front of your child, keep your voice at a normal level, and find solutions together.  The alternative is doing nothing (I can't), making excuses for your ex (waste of time), manipulating your child's feelings to make them not want to be with your ex (not healthy for any of you!)  To illustrate my point I am going to share a story.  Is it verbatim?  No recording but I am going to use my impressions to relate the conversation and it literally just happened so it’s fresh in my mind.

This is my ex's weekend.  He came to pick our daughters up earlier than I expected and the girls and I were halfway out the door to the neighbors’ house to see what Amanda thinks of lacrosse.  We recently established that she is scared when someone chest passes a basketball and I’m trying to decide if we should sign up for spring lacrosse or not.  So I said, are you headed to Hagerstown (where his mom lives) right away or do we have time to take Amanda to the neighbor’s to play around with a lacrosse stick and try to catch a ball?  He said we had time; he wasn’t going to Hagerstown until Saturday.

Red flag.  I asked if he was staying in – no, his roommate would be watching them.  (Same roommate he allowed our 5 year old to spend the night in bed with the other day.  Female, but I am still very uncomfortable with the idea.  I wouldn’t let the kids stay the night with my boyfriend who I trust because it’s INAPPROPRIATE.  I tell the kids you sleep with Mom, Dad, or a Grandma.  That’s it.)

Anyway, I said, are you coming home alone or not?  He said alone.  Anyone who thinks that’s a strange question or that I am paranoid, nope, I’m just experienced:  about 10 days ago he had a woman he was sleeping with over and the kids came upon her when they woke up during a thunderstorm and she was in Daddy’s bed.  Back to our story.

I suggested he just bring the girls back to my house at bedtime if he wasn’t going to be with them himself.  His response came down the concept that, in his opinion, they love his roommate, Susie Q, and, in fact, when he moves she’s going along as a built in nanny.  Now I take issue with this need for a nanny because I have the kids most of the time and the time he does have them they are supervised by his mom or his girlfriend (when he has one) quite a bit, and I know it upsets our older daughter, Amanda.  I explained they’d rather be with a parent.  He asked the girls how much they love Susie Q.  They answered lots. 

But that’s the wrong question!  At this point I jumped in and facilitated a healthy conversation where I advocated for my daughter without trying to influence her responses.  Here, the right question is “Would you rather be with Susie Q or Dad overnight?”  If you frame the questions to get the answers that rationalize your behavior, you miss the point of the exercise; that’s what he was doing. 

We continued on that track-

How does it make you feel when Dad is home?  Safe, like he loves me and wants to be with me. 

How do you feel when you wake up and Dad is asleep?  Bad. 

What happens when you try to wake Dad up?  It doesn’t work. 

How does that feel?  Sad. 

What do you do next?  Play by myself until he wakes up or make myself breakfast. 

How does that feel?  Lonely.

What do you wish would happen instead?  Daddy would want to stay home with me.

We moved onto what happens later in the weekend.  If they’ve spent the night in Hagerstown on Friday, either their 11 year old cousin makes breakfast or Dad gets up until Grandma is awake around 10am (night owl).  I had a real issue with that a few years ago when the girls were younger because they have a big staircase with no carpet runner and I had visions of my 1 year old (at the time) falling down the steps and lying there alone for an hour while my 3 year old was in the basement playing unsupervised.  Also, they couldn't make themselves breakfast and would complain about being hungry in the morning. 

They spend the day with their grandma and their dad on Saturday, which is good, and he goes out at 9pm on Saturday.  They feel ok with this because they feel safe at Grandma’s.  I can’t blame them for not feeling safe at Dad’s because random roommates live there and surely are wandering around the house making noise and it must be difficult to get a good night’s sleep knowing strangers are in other rooms.  Sunday morning, Grandma takes them to Sunday school while Dad stays home and sleeps.  Sunday school teachers watch the girls while Grandma is in church and they don’t like spending their morning there.  Dad told them they need to go to make Grandma feel happy.  I jumped in again, here, because I think it’s an awful lot of pressure on a little girl to have them do something with the express purpose of making someone else happy and, knowing his mother, she wouldn't want them to do something solely for her enjoyment.   I asked him to really be honest with himself to answer the question of whether the girls are going to make his mom happy or to let him sleep in?    Crickets chirping.

He started to argue his general case to Amanda, saying that she is the one who doesn’t seek him out to spend time together and she is off playing with her cousin or her grandma, he is always around, he doesn't watch much TV, and so on.  She started to cry and looked scared but remained silent.  I stopped him, and she whispered, “I’m afraid.”  He called her over for a hug and she went but I said, “Wait a minute, back up.  Quit arguing with her and trying to be right, try to hear what she’s saying instead.  Let’s ask questions and follow the answers to an entire story.”

Do you ever ask Daddy to play?  Yes.

What happens?  He is on the computer, the phone, or watching TV.

Does he stop? No.

What happens?  He tells me just a minute.

Does he stop in a minute?  No.

How does that feel? Bad.

Does that make you ask again?  No, I go do something else.

What do you wish would happen instead?  Daddy would want to play with me.

At this point, she had been crying several times and was overcome by emotion.  Her dad explained he loved her and she could tell him how she feels, not just tell Mommy, and she shouldn’t be afraid to tell him.  (She tells me all these things at bedtime, usually.)  Statements seem to go one way with kids, up against a wall, so here I went again with the questions:

Why are you afraid to talk to Daddy?  Shrug.

Now what, right?  Well, I know why she’s afraid because we’ve talked about it a bunch and because I have access to great counselors and I know from experience when you approach him with something you don’t like about his behavior, he automatically defends himself pretty aggressively by telling you umpteen reasons why you’re wrong and he’s right.

So I advocated for her in this way:

Amanda, I’m going to take a guess but I need you to stop me if I am wrong and nod if I am right, ok?  OK.

Are you afraid Daddy is going to argue why you’re wrong?  Nod.

Are you afraid Daddy won’t love you as much?  Nod.

Are you afraid Daddy won’t want to spend any time with you?  Nod.  And she looked relieved to have it out there.

He told her he loves her no matter what and she is one of the two most important people in his life.  I cautioned him that actions would show her that the words are true and that she just won’t believe his words without them.  I urged him to think about 5 to 10 years down the road when the LAST thing the kids will want to do on the weekend is spend time with Mom and Dad and I doubt he will look back and regret missing some Friday and Saturdays in bars.  He promised to consider my words and walked out.  Amanda lingered an extra moment.  I knelt down and she gave me a huge hug, then whispered “Thank you so much for helping me, Mommy,  I love you,” and ran out the door.

Do I have a fairytale ending for you where Dad thinks about words vs. actions, cancels his plans, and stays in for the night with the kids?  Sure don’t.  I mentioned finding solutions but I didn’t say they are perfect.  I prompted the decision to be made right there about whether the girls would rather come back to me that night or stay at Dad’s since he wasn’t going to cancel his date.  The kids are coming back to me at 9pm and he will get them Saturday whenever he wakes up.  That means I am cutting short a holiday party, not sleeping in, and probably missing some of the weekend projects I had in mind.  I don’t mind one bit and am lucky to have a supportive boyfriend who doesn’t get upset when our plans change this late in the game.  I know I, for one, won’t be looking back with regrets in 5-10 years.