Children Come First by Howard H. Irving

Author:Howard H. Irving
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2011-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Joint Session

Mediator: I’ve been doing mediation for a number of years and have a particular interest in helping people come up with co-operative parenting arrangements. I was really pleased to find out that you have been one of those groups of pioneers who went into shared parenting, and were able to make it work. I see so many terrible, conflictual situations with parents grabbing and manipulating their children. I compliment you on the fact that you have worked well together in having a good shared-parenting relationship.

Although subsequent questioning established both parents’ respect for each other’s parenting ability, it also revealed what was to be the first of three central stumbling blocks in the case — Gord’s continued attachment to his former wife.

Gord: Well, Margaret is a lot like her mother in many ways. She’s very nice, very pleasant to be with and I love her so much.

The second concerned Gord’s fear that the shift in Adele’s romantic situation would eventually mean loss of contact with his daughter. This fear became apparent as the mediator sought to reinterpret the issue of child custody from a marital issue to a parenting issue, with the emphasis on Margaret’s likely experience.

Next, it became clear that Adele was seeking sole custody only because Gord was doing so. She would have preferred to continue their shared-parenting arrangement because it had been working well. As would Gord; it was Richard’s presence, the second stumbling block, that was causing him grief.

Later, he made his fear crystal clear:

Gord: Well, in a lot of these cases, you know, I mean, when there is a step-parent that moves in, and I think you know that, and you’ll agree with me, that in a lot of these cases the father’s role becomes next to none.

The third stumbling block was Gord’s sense of anger and betrayal that Adele hadn’t discussed her relationship with Richard with him. Gord felt that he then could have been better prepared for her decision to move in with Richard.

This series of stumbling blocks was based in the past, in Gord’s continuing attachment to Adele and his fantasy that one day they could reconcile. Because this line of reasoning would inevitably lead to an impasse, much of the balance of the session was directed toward repeatedly reinterpreting the issues in parental rather than marital terms. At one point, this focus was stated succinctly:

Mediator: How can the two of you continue to be good parents and give your daughter everything she deserves?

Realizing that this shift would require more work than could be accomplished in one session, I used the last few minutes to set up the next series of individual sessions, especially those with Gord. I did so in two steps. First, I reinterpreted Gord’s objections in parental terms:

Mediator: I must admit, I don’t know how you feel about it, Adele, but I think it does show a lot of strength on Gord’s part to be as concerned as he is about his daughter. Would you agree?

Adele: Yeah, I do respect his concern for Margaret.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.