As published in the Connecticut Post.
Many people wonder why there is no class required to become a parent. Many states have such a course but it is not required until the parent’s file for a divorce. Contrary to what you would expect of a required parenting course the curriculum is not about the everyday child care such as diaper changing, feeding, and nutrition of a child. The purpose of these courses is to teach proper emotional parenting skills so that the parents can use what they learn to help their children through the divorce process.
Connecticut is no different. Since 1994 Connecticut’s parenting education course has been mandatory part of the divorce and family law process for all parents of children under eighteen years of age. Only Requests for Relief from Abuse or Juvenile Law matters are exempt. The divorce may not be granted, absent exceptional circumstances, until both parents have successfully completed the course.
Children of a divorce suffer stresses and strains that other children usually do not have to deal with. Children strongly question what they could have done to have kept their parents together. They often blame themselves for their parent’s failing marriage. Those feelings are not helped by parent’s who, stressed by the burdens of everyday life and the uncertainty of their future after a divorce, turn their anger on their children.
As an attorney handling divorces and post-divorce issues I see many troubled parents who believe they know how to handle their children. They complain about the need for their attendance at the State of Connecticut’s mandatory parenting education course. Interestingly enough, these parents are the ones who most need the course.
Divorces can become a battleground for the former lovers. They look to get back at their spouse for hurts the soon to be former spouse believes were done to him or her. As their divorce goes through its processes parents run out of things to use as tools to get what they want from their spouses.
Before you know it these otherwise ‘good parents’ are trying to deny their spouse from seeing and being with their children. They forget how their spouse was good enough all those years before, but now see their spouse as an evil influence that the child must be protected from. This is why the parenting courses are here to protect the children. Parents are reminded in the course that the children are not pawns to be played like chess pieces in a divorce, visitation, or custody battle.
This is not to say there are not parents out there that children do need to be protected from. For that reason the Courts have Protective and Restraining Orders that allow a Judge, after a hearing on the facts, to take action to protect the child and, as needed, the threatened spouse. The difference between the dangerous parent and the battling parent is hard to see from the child’s view.
The emotional damage to a child from a parent who used, or may still use, their child for his or her own ends in a divorce is as damaging as physical abuse is to the child. The emotional damage may not come out for years but eventually it will. Studies show that children scarred by a bad divorce have trouble being a good parent in later life. An abused child is more often going to be an abusing parent since that is how they learned to be a parent. It does not and should not be that way.