Told not to contact while away

[Nanodust]

I'm currently away on business. This is the first time I've ever been away my DCs are 3 and 4. I will be away for 12 days
As you can imagine I will miss them a lot. I Skyped last night to say i had arrived safely and to say hello. My DH was at his parents so skyped there.
The conversation on lasted about 5 mins.
I've now been told by my DH that because my DS were sad and down after that he and his parents think it is best that I don't contact again and just see them when I return.
I feel very sad about this. I could understand a compromise, say once every 3 or 4 days, but not at all seems very harsh to me.
What do you think? Am I being unreasonable?

The thing about best Interests is they are and should be decided on a case by case basis.

This means something's will be in the best interests of some children but won't be for other children.

Mostly the people best placed to asses this are the grown ups who currently have the children with them and mostly these grown ups won't be arseholes

needsasock How do you know? Do you have research to back that up?

Have you seriously just asked me to provide research to back up that many different situations may be in the best interests of some children and one of those situations may be not having indirect contact inbetween regular direct contact?

*It can actually be quite normal for children of seperated or divorced parents to have no indirect contact in between contact.

It's a very commen arangement and is often in the best interests of the children*

needs a sock

It's a big claim to make and I do think you need to have evidence to claim that it's often in the best interests of the children to have no 'indirect' contact with the other parent between access. There will be research around this area because it's important and people will be interested in what truly is best for the children. But you shouldn't make the claim if you don't have that evidence.

At that age ds was more than capable of accepting that he could see me and speak to me despite not being physically here. He's almost 5 now but he's spoken to me on the phone and skype for well over a year. I've only ever been away for 2 nights but spoke to ds on both nights. We give him the choice. If he wants to speak to us we will, if not then we don't worry. I know all children are different and ds isn't one who gets more upset by speaking to us, it gives him a sense of continuity and security. But almost 2 weeks is a long time to go without contact, both for the op and her dc. I would give the dc the choice.

Then might I direct you to gingerbread. Or to anywhere that publishes family court orders or any other organisation that works with lone parents or seperated parents.

Contact orders should not be issued unless they are in the best interests of the children named in them it's the over riding principle behind them.

Plenty of them exist where nothing inbetween direct contact is ordered. It is not an unusual situation.

I've also seen parents ticked off in court when criticising the other parent for not having indirect inbetween.

It would also be specifically ordered no indirect contact in between in circumstances where parallel parenting is being used (for all the reasons that happens) I attended a hearing just this week where a 50:50 arangement was changed from 50:50 to EOW and indirect was ordered to stop.

It would also not be an unusual order with a LAC

Court orders are decided on a individual basis and tailored to the childs needs obviously some situations are better than others but you cannot decide what is best for one child is automatically best for another who may be in compleatly different circumstances with compleatly different parents who may be doing things for compleatly different reasons.

I did not say it was best for all children of divorced/seperated parents just that it may be best for some of them. And this is why it gets ordered for those children.

Not really such a big claim to make when making it clear I'm meaning individual children and not a collective group.

No, you said that it was best for some children sock. Your information about court orders doesn't answer my question I'm afraid. You don't know why it's assumed to be in the best interests of the children, basically - you assume that gingerbread or the legal system will have good practice influenced by the research literature. I'm not so sure!

There are many, many things that have been widely done through the ages in relation to children because they were expedient, economical, intuitive or simply common practice, many of which we wouldn't dream of doing today because we know now they harm children. Divorce is a relatively new phenomenon and it will take a while to work out what's best and what isn't.

That's all very well, but these parents, on this thread are not divorced, not even separated. The both live with their children, they all live together.

I can see where parents are at war with each other (or one parent is at war with the other) and they are using the children as weapons that indirect contact would not be in the best interests of the children. But that is not what is happening here. So the data you're quoting is irrelevant.

That post was to sock.

Sock, I think you are an admirable person and one I trust implicitly on legal matters. But in this case I think you're muddying the waters.

That's a fair point jux, and thank you for saying that.

What I'm really meaning (before going off on a tangent) is that unless the op's DH has form for being an arse and one would think (unless ive missed it) she would have mentioned this then he is the parent with them,she trusts him enough to leave them with him that it's more likely than not a decision that he has made with nothing but the kids best interests at heart and that right now he is best placed to make that call.

And that given that on the scale of life it is a very short period of time it is unlikely to have much of an impact on anybody other than the op,if he has indeed made the decision based on his assesment of their best interests then the op's upset at it is a price worth paying.

Unless ofcourse we think he's being sneaky and is intended on changing the locks claiming she's abandoned them all and never letting her back in.

No, you said that it was best for some children sock. Your information about court orders doesn't answer my question I'm afraid. You don't know why it's assumed to be in the best interests of the children

Well that's the beauty of how a system that makes decisions for individual children on a case by case basis works really.

We can say in general xyz is better based on xyz research however treating every child and every situation like that would not be ideal, I would go as far as to say doing so could be incredibly damaging and has the potential to leave many children (all those whose situations mean they require different approaches) would be at risk of emotional harm.

It's the entire reason we have family courts to do this because otherwise we would just have every seperated couple must do xyz precisely xyz and nothing else.

I know this is going to sound overly dramatic, but in the OP's shoes, I think the DH's "non-negotiable" actions would change my view of the relationship.

I'd feel like I couldn't trust him, like he cut me off from my kids. I don't know if I'd be able to come back from that.

What a load of crap. Of course you should contact every few days.

I've been away before and my mum and dad have looked after the kids. They've told me that they're fine when in away but get upset when I ring and asked that I don't. I don't think your husband is being mean but just wants to avoid getting your kids upset. Obviously ringing them would be more for your benefit than theirs if it's upsetting them.

I think so many of these posts are being really harsh on your husband. I don't think any negative thoughts towards my parents when they asked me not to ring as they were just thinking of what was in the best interest for my kids.

sock So there's no point doing any research around child welfare at all then, or allowing it to influence good practice? What rubbish!

sock

that's the beauty of how a system that makes decisions for individual children on a case by case basis works really.

Is that really the beauty of it? Is it really so beautiful to have decision-makers who aren't drawing on the wealth of research into child psychology in recent years? I really can't believe that you would say this - but jux's comment on your knowledge of the legal system causes me to think that perhaps you have a background in legal system - and are possibly overly comfortable with a system that places all authority in the hands of a judge. A judge, it would seem, who is unaware of the existence of research in this area and doesn't believe it would have any power to inform his/her decision. Right.

I'm interested that you are so keen to emphasise the possible harm caused to children by the implementation of research. We are talking about research that would have been carried out with the goal of identifying which factors are linked to positive outcomes for children. I agree that it might be a bad idea to indiscriminately apply that information in a one-size-fits-all fashion but there are many other approaches that could be used.

May I direct you to the policy around children receiving visitors in hospital? This as clear relevance to the OP's situation and interestingly, was defended by complacent and uninformed professionals using similar arguments to your own. This is something you should know about if you're going to make sweeping assertions about what's best for some children because it's a policy that has now been ruled as best for no children.

It was thought that children shouldn't receive visits from family during hospital stays because it only upset them (ring any bells?). Against the wishes of some parents (again, ring any bells?), children were refused access to their parents. They seemed happier that way.

Roll on fifty years and study after study has shown that approach to be fundamentally flawed and extremely harmful. It turns out that crying children aren't necessarily the children who are hurting most. Unfortunately, the damage (and it was considerable) has been done to previous generations of children but this work now informs the practices of hospitals today. To the relief of any worried parent who has ever had to spend the night in a camp bed in the children's ward.

Wouldn't it have been a shame if doctors had considered themselves above the research and continued to do what was intuitive?

No point in a tailored approach if the tailor's crap.

Probably the research shows that the best thing to do is to be sensitive to the children's needs. Some children need and want contact with an absent parent. Some children cope better wihtout (like mine). In and of itself, the OP's dh saying better no contact is not necessarily wrong. It may be that that is better for their children, all families and all children are different.

The problem is that the OP doesn't trust him and his parenting skills .

I think you are probably right shak, as long as we accept that 'coping' MUST involve confronting and coming to terms with the temporary loss of the parent and making sure that the absent parent is still engaged and available. It is never never never better for a parent to drop off the face of the earth, even for a short time. It may look like it is, but it's not. Really.

And we should also be aware that a child who says 'I don't want to talk to daddy on the phone' may mean 'I'm completely fine with his absence because I know he's coming back, I don't like talking on the phone and besides I'm busy' OR it may mean 'My world was rocked when he left, it was traumatic and I've only just managed to close that compartment in my mind.' The child in the second position may look normal and composed but they are not coping.

For that child it's imperative that they have the opportunity to see their parent waving out of the skype screen saying 'I love you and I'm sorry I can't be there, I'm coming back tomorrow', even if the parent is ignored or it causes a tantrum. That's what the last fifty of years of research into attachment theory have been about even though it's become a silly buzz word now

Be interested to hear your thoughts on that research needsasock.

Which research stopping? Hospital or attachment? Having had a child spend almost 3 years as a long term hospital patient mostly with me or another family member with her where possible obviously I think this is a good thing, attachment wise I always think learning more and paying attention to what is already known is a good thing.

And no I didn't say we should ignore all reserch. What I said was not that much different to what shakshuka said.

That being for some children indirect contact would be in their best interests for others it would not be. I did expand on that by saying something along the lines of that the person often based placed to make that decision (assuming no abuse fears or history of drama llama behaviour) is the trustworthy parent with the child.

I quite agree that often the children who appear less effected by trauma are the ones where more care should be taken, I also think that being low or withdrawn can often be a bigger indicator of distress than weeping and wailing, and I do think it's a bit questionable to not spend a significant amount of time preparing children for absences in age appropreate ways prior to that absence happening when it is possible to do so because you have just assumed that because they are children they are adaptable and no support should be required.

I also don't think it's become a silly buzz word at least no more than "wishes and feelings" have.

My understanding is that if a child is saying no I don't want to talk to mum/dad inbetween normal contact because they cannot cope with it,the current practise is to work on that in the long term offering support with their emotions and relationships whilst respecting their wishes and feelings in the short term with the possibility of a less in your face way of getting the I love and miss you message across so the child can digest that on their own terms if it is age appropreate to do so.

The op is talking about a 3 and a 4 yo, I know a lot of children that age would struggle quite a bit with the entire concept of telephone calls or Skype obviously there will also be a lot that won't but some will also love it (I have a 2yo who thinks it's fantastic) and some will hate it (I have a 3yo who is totally freaked out by it).

We also don't know if any distress was contributed towards by how the conversation occured sometimes many adults without even realising it can ramp up distress due to their own distress the best intentions are there but the contact can be emotionally damaging.

Yes I do have a lot of faith in the system ,I've not known that system to blindly follow a party line (but on occasion just recently it looks like it's going that way) and of course that system brings into it a great many experts usually ones who have been asked to use their expertise and the relivant reserch to comment on a specific child or case, I'm surprised you don't know this I thought most people did.

My DH goes away quite a lot. He doesn't speak to them when away. Otherwise they get upset and cope better not doing. I send snapchats, and photos.

Actually, how children coped with hospital separation was a major focus of attachment theory in the beginning. So both.

Lifted in ten seconds from the internet:

Robertson and Bowlby (1952) believe that short term separation from an attachment figure leads to distress (i.e. the PDD model).

They found 3 progressive stages of distress:

Protest: The child cries, screams and protests angrily when the parent leaves. They will try to cling on to the parent to stop them leaving.
Despair: The child’s protesting begins to stop and they appear to be calmer although still upset. The child refuses others’ attempts for comfort and often seems withdrawn and uninterested in anything.
Detachment: If separation continues the child will start to engage with other people again. They will reject the caregiver on their return and show strong signs of anger.

Can you see the similarity between a hospital stay and a business trip though? (Not in the case of your child of course because I would not dream of bringing your personal circumstances into this dialogue - I'm sorry you have had such a rough time as a family.) If it's been found that children do better long-term when they are not exposed to the disappearing parent syndrome (in that hospital setting), surely that has relevance to how contact issues should be handled in different settings?

My main issue with what you were saying was the absence of any acknowledgement that (a) literature exists (b) it's important that contact orders take it into account (c) a case by case basis is not a good thing unless the decision makers is appropriately informed and (d) we cannot say anything is 'a good thing' for anyone else's child unless we're bloody certain, i.e., there's hard evidence. After all, this thread opened with a woman who was asking for advice on whether or not she should ignore her gut instincts and comply with her husband's wishes. Granted, there was more to it, but based on the hard evidence, the answer should have been 'no'.

When I asked you how your view was influenced by the literature, you made no reference whatsoever to having anything that might back your views up.

Where did your understanding re: 'respecting feelings in the short term etc.' come from?

When I asked you how your view was influenced by the literature, you made no reference whatsoever to having anything that might back your views up.

In fact you actually said that it would be a bad thing if the literature was taken into account because contact orders might then become formulaic. I think you meant they might stop being intuitive. But intuition is just for parents, really.