Can you foster a healthy parent-child relationship in 4-hours?

Max and I have never been a fan of these 4-hour visits. For the past 2 years the Dragon has graciously allowed for one to two 4- hour visits weekly and up to 4 or 5 sleepovers a month.  Apparently this is a common temporary order that judges appoint to families until they can work out their differences and negotiate a more equitable arrangement. Two years later Max is still trying to negotiate that equitable arrangement.

Who in their right mind thinks that 4-hour weekly visits were an appropriate set up for children to see their one parent, most commonly the father, after divorce? I can understand in situations whereby the one parent perhaps isn’t equipped to have the child for more time (e.g. recovering drug addiction, recent previous history of neglect). But why assign the same “visiting” schedule to a loving, devoted, stable father?

Currently in our system when parents separate there is no presumption of shared parenting.  If parents do not agree on shared parenting, a parent has to spend years and hard-earned dollars in court only to be awarded what should have been arranged initially. In the meantime, one of the parents usually ends up with the short-end of the stick, receiving limited access involving every other weekend and a weekly 4-hour visit.

The system is failing from the beginning by not starting the process routinely with an assessment of parental capabilities and what would be in the best interest of the child. And clearly the research does not support these limited access schedules.

From The Art and Science of Child Custody Evaluations, by Jonathan W. Gould, David A. Martindale, psychologists who specialize in child custody evaluations: “There is absolutely no evidence that children's psychological adjustment or the relationships between children and their parents are harmed when children spend overnight periods with their other parent. In contrast, brief nightly visits remind children that the visiting parents exist but do not provide the broad array of parenting activities that anchor the relationships in their minds.”

“Evening and overnight periods provide opportunities for crucial social interactions and nurturing activities (such as bedtime rituals and the reassurance and security of snuggling in the morning after awakening), that short weekly visits cannot provide. These everyday activities promote and maintain trust and confidence in the parents while deepening and strengthening child-parent attachments.”

From the perspective of a partner of a father who is fighting for equal parenting, I can attest to the research. The child feels like a yo-yo, bouncing from home to home in a 4-hour time slot heightening their anxiety. The parent and child are deprived of quality time to develop a meaningful relationship, but rather allotted “hospital-like” visiting hours. Max feels more like the old grandmother in the hospital whom you can visit during visiting hours, but when the hours are done, time to go home. See you for the next visit.

Opportunities to be involved in important nurturing activities like bedtime rituals are denied.  Not to mention having two other children in our household and running all three from activity to activity, leaving less and less time to spend with Jessie in a four hour time slot. She deserves more quality time to form a bond and maintain relationships with not only with her Dad, but her siblings. How is that possible in 4-hours?

Just recently Jessie said to me when we were putting up the Christmas tree, “I wish my mommy and Daddy could get married again.” I asked why. She went on to say “so I don’t have to go back and forth to houses”. I went on to ask what it is specifically that she doesn’t like about going back and forth. Jessie says “because it is busy”. I asked what she meant by that and she added “I come here than I go back to my mom’s”. I asked if it would help if when she came here to Dad that she would stay over either for one night or up to three or more instead of just visiting for a couple hours. She excitedly said “yes”, than did her infamous panting like a dog impression.   I gave her a hug and told her that we loved her and that her Dad will do his best to make things better for her.

Max had a meet-n-greet with a mediator/social worker in hopes of securing him as a mediator for him and the Dragon (no buy in of course from her!). When the topic of visits came up in the session, the social worker said that all the research opposes it as they increase anxiety for children. He drew diagram showing the roller coaster ride of emotions kids face in a mere 4-hours.

Even Caden, a 6 year old boy, asked me the other day: how many sleeps does Jessie have at our house mom? I told him around 4. He then asked how many Jessie’s mom gets and I told him the rest of the days in the month, so around 25. He said very abruptly “mom, that isn’t fair”.

Why is it EVERYONE, including a four year old girl and a 6 year old boy, can see the problem with this arrangement?

Well we could argue that the Dragon generally has concern for her daughter and sees her best interest being that she be under one roof during the school week, despite an overwhelming amount of research suggesting otherwise. But, when Dragon pawns off Jessie to her surrogate Mom (aka Grandma) over and over during the school week for an overnight stay while Dragon-dearest tends to her own selfish needs, any attempt at me trying to understand her point of view is thrown out the window. We are back to your insecurity Dragon at the root of this breakdown in a father-child relationship.

Max goes to mediation finally in 10 days. I have named it D-Day on our calendar. Because this day will be very telling: either we will see settlement finally or to trial he goes. He is adamant against agreeing on “visits” and will fight for equal shared parenting as this is what is best for Jessie. I have a hard time being optimistic that this controlling insecure Dragon will at all budge on her visiting schedule, but there are miracles.

Fingers crossed for a miracle. Or at least that the Dragon takes some happy pills in the next 10 days leading up to mediation leaving her more rationale, sane and empathetic.