Table of Contents
Child Custody Conflicts
There is no greater tragedy than when an opposing king and queen battle in a strategic chess game, I mean a child custody conflict. While the king and queen may once have been on the same team, an unfortunate fact that often accompanies divorce is that those once-loving parties become engaged in a conflict where the disdain or hatred one or both parties may feel for each other may outweigh the love they may have for the children.
Does this need to be the case? No. Still, having been in the field of psychotherapy for over two decades, I cannot help but see how the devastation associated with divorce and child custody conflicts creates wounds that should be addressed, at least in a preemptive manner, to decrease the collateral damage at a minimum, if not tone down the conflict between two warring parties willing to love their children more than the conflict they create.
Divided Without: Divorce, Child Custody, and the Broken Psyche
In a former article for the San Joaquin County Bar Association entitled A Child Divided: Healing the Psychological Wound of Divorce (Maples, 2015), I re-told the biblical story from Kings 3:16-28 from a modern-day psychological perspective. While it may sound like a far stretch to examine a biblical account to understand the effects divorce and child custody have on a child, its account shows the clear physical, psychological, and spiritual consequences a child will face when conflicting parents divide them during a contemptuous child custody legal matter.
The biblical rendition tells the story of two women who fight vehemently over the custody of a young child after the death of one woman’s child left her so grief-stricken she could only do the unthinkable: steal the other woman’s child. As the two parties stood before the king, they both begged for the life of their child, neither party budging from their claims that the right to the children was naturally theirs as a mother. One party was innocent, the other was lying, and both grieved over the loss of their child.
Who was right? Who was guilty? What was to become of the child? Only the king, as judge between the two parties, could decide the fate between the warring parties and the innocent victim caught in their vicious melee.
Who was right? Who was guilty? What was to become of the child? Only the king, as judge between the two parties, could decide the fate between the warring parties and the innocent victim caught in their vicious melee.
Does this Sound Familiar?
It should. It is the story played out between the warring couples of broken marriages in our local family court system nearly every day. In many cases, the parents love their children, and rightfully so, they want to spend uninterrupted time with the ones they love. For it is the children from whom they will most likely judge the success or the failure within their own life.
However, why is it when two people decide to divide their relationship, so many times children become fodder in financial games that ultimately lead to great hardships in their lives? When a court gets involved in an order of custody, the scope of that order stretches far beyond the legal and physical custody of the child, and it carries with it financial weight that can exacerbate the conflict. When child custody and parenting time take a back seat to economic issues, who and what force is playing the pawns on the board?
This lesson should not be taught to children, for it leads to a thwarted value system that states the extent of their value is monetary, forcing them to become collateral damage between their parent’s war to divide assets v. liabilities.
Divorce is a disturbing phenomenon to address both at the personal level of the child (The child receiving personal therapy to make sense of their emotions as it relates to the division of their family) and within the family system that is now dividing. While the intact family no longer operates in unison in this case, it must continue to act as a fostering agent for the child’s continued emotional well-being.
Parents may divide, but the child still views them as Mom and Dad, and this will never change, no matter how contested the divorce is or how hard one party may try to buy for the love of their child while discounting the other party’s right to be a parent of their child.
What can you do in Your Child Custody Case?
Look within. If you say, “Well, that doesn’t pertain to my case,” or “My case is different,” or “This is so my child can have a better life,” you better think again. Children are not collateral to be divided for monetary gain or used as pawns in a war against your ex for retribution. Furthermore, it is also the court’s responsibility to act in the best interest of the child, see beyond what an order is, and at least have access to referral networks that may offer assistance to conflicting parents to move beyond the child custody battle and at least develop some aspect of a co-parenting relationship at the parent’s expense.
Too many times, when highly contested custody disputes emerge, it is caused by warring parties fighting for their selfish aims at the expense of the child’s psychological welfare, who, in most circumstances, is acting more adult-like than the parents who claim to fight for their best interests.
If you find yourself in a child custody dispute, before looking to drag it out, think twice about the needs you are attempting to serve. Also, realize that the type of triangulation caused within the child is psychological maltreatment at the least, if not outright abusive, to their developing emotions and minds at the extreme.
Going within, you may find that your disputes are your own and have nothing to do with your child. From this perspective, you can ultimately alienate them from the positive interpersonal relationships they need to grow into healthy individuals. If you find yourself in this space, it is time to reexamine what is there, introspect, and determine if other actions can help you and your children avoid this trap.
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