Series on Parenting

by Deborah Hansen

The Gene Pool

The words slipped out before I could stop them, my frustration spilling out and drowning my good sense in the process.

“You’re just like your father!” I threw the jagged words at my daughter, her inability to find a trash can, any trash can, for the pieces of paper that had again spilled onto the floor from her backpack, sending me over the edge after a long day. As soon as the words were loose in the air, I was appalled that I had said them. My good intentions to keep my anger at my ex-husband in check, at least around my daughter, crumbled into a heap of smoldering emotions, her face now hard with the hurt I had inflicted. After all, she knows how I feel about her father.

We vow to take the high road, but our shoes sometimes get stuck in the mud of the fury we feel at our situation. Our children are caught in the middle of divorce in many ways, but perhaps none more hurtful than knowing that they are constant reminders to us of their other parent. The one we got rid of, or who abandoned us. And it is natural that they wonder how we really feel about them, the children of two people who are so uncomfortable around one another. Is it possible that adults who couldn’t live together were able to produce children they each love unconditionally?

We know the answer to that question, but do they? If we allow our unchecked emotions to wound these children in this way, what do we expect them to think? It’s still up to us as separated parents to assure our children that they come complete with our genes but also with souls and personalities that are individual. Just like the old adage about all snowflakes being different, children are unique gifts from the universe who happened to find us as their parents, beings entrusted to us to send out into the world when their time is right. The biologic map might be the same, but the spark that makes each child an individual is only ignited once in all of eternity. We would do well to remember that before we throw those barbed words at our children, the words that can never be called back.

Divorce tests the best of us, proving first of all that we are human. When we spoke the vows tying us together forever, we meant them. We didn’t wish this fate on ourselves, a fate full of regret and fury. Perhaps we were just too young to know how long forever really is or how much of ourselves we would have to push aside in the attempt to meld our personalities and habits into one. When the end comes, it is tempting to sever not only the physical ties but also the emotional ties forever, often with venom and vindictiveness. But our children are bound up in those same ties, constant reminders of our former partners, no matter how we might try to erase their all too familiar habits and expressions from our presence. They need to hear us recognize and honor that unique spark within them, and allow them to be who they are without fear of our painful retribution for their heritage.

-- December 2006

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Deborah Hansen is a veteran of divorced parenting, and a former middle school teacher. She is also a certified county court mediator, and a regular columnist for several parenting publications. She may be reached for comments and suggested topics at [email protected].

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