REQUEST NO #6

“Never plan anything with me for time I should be with the second parent. Part of my time belongs tome and my Mum and part of my time to me and to my Dad. Please keep this strictly.”

In my practice of a mediator, for a long years of a children´s guardian and now of a paralegal, I meetweird types of parents.

First type is “Controller”. This is a parent who plans, manages, and controls time the child spendstogether with the second parent. It starts by equipment for outdoor activities, continues by buyingtickets for activity planned by this parent, and ends by investigation of the child (or the secondparent in the best case), to find out and criticize all mistakes made.

Second type is “Ghost”. This is a parent who never appears. Does not answer phones, disappearswhen the child should be transmitted to the second parent, does not respond to e-mails. Just whenhe or she disappears, the child cannot be located as well. With afterwards reasoning like: I was sick,the child was sick, I have forgotten, we were in town to make an appointment, my car was broken,we missed a train, Grandma had a heart attack. The aim of this is to eliminate the second parentfrom child´s life.

Third type is “a Programmer”. This is the most astute type with sophisticated methods. This parentshortly says to the child that the second parent is very bad and he does not love the child at all, or heremembers to highlight that he (or the Grandma, or the dog, or the parrot) will miss him a lot whenthe child is gone. The aim of this all is to manipulate the child, so the child does not want to gohimself or herself.

These types interbreed together and creates various mutations. Despite the ideas areunderstandable, such behaviour destroys the relationship of both parents with the child. Finally, thechild will not be a little boy for a long time and will make his or her own view on the situation. Thepractice of “Controlor”, “Ghost” and “Programmer” will be seen in bright colours soon.Unfortunately, sometimes it takes all childhood. Lets be a good model for our children to how tosolve the troubles. The patterns they learn in their childhood, will be transmitted to their adulthood.