i don’t think it’s so much as of a trend

as it is a approach if that makes any

sense meaning that

i believe parents these days are more

amenable

to

attempting to work out custody issues

with the assistance of a mental health

professional

as opposed to duking it out in court

and i think that the approach is

mostly the result

of

seeing on television seeing in the media

on social media

and having a more of an awareness that

you know going to court and having a

judge that knows nothing about you or

your children and having them make the

ultimate decision as to how

you’re going to live and your children

are going to live and the parenting

decisions that you make that may not be

the best route for every person to go

down

i think people and custody litigants

realize that them maintaining that

control

and maybe

they’re not going to get a hundred

percent of what they’re looking for in

terms of parenting time or decision

making but to be able to have control

over those decisions

and work them out with someone that

you’re not going to be married to

anymore with the help of a mental health

professional

is always going to be a better route

than having some disinterested judge

who hopefully does have everyone’s best

interest at heart but you have to

realize the constraints that they work

under and you have to deal with that

meaning time and caseload so they don’t

have that much time for your case so in

any event it’s always better to have

control over your own life so i think

parents on

a greater average are far more willing

to work to try to resolve custody issues

rather than running into court and

litigating them which i think is a

terribly it sounds counterproductive but

i think it’s a terribly important trend

and approach

one topic um i find coming up

repeatedly and it’s

i wouldn’t say bothersome to me as a

practitioner but concerning to me as a

practitioner

is parents embroiling their children and

their marital problems and their

litigation

i recently had a discussion with a

mental health professional and

they pointed out and re-emphasized how

important it was

in terms of the adult that you become

it’s the childhood that you had that

really forms that

so meaning you know if you had a great

role model great direction you know and

that positive force when you were

growing up it’s so much more likely that

when you’re a parent you’re gonna

emulate you’re gonna you know

be that same person because you had a

great example so i think that parents

because they’re so emotionally you know

overwhelmed

and

they want to feel the support of

whomever is around them including the

children they tend to over

overly involve children in their marital

issues and the litigation in their

divorce case and i don’t think they

understand as they sit there

how much damage that really does because

it makes the child feel responsible for

the parent

it over involves a child where it’s not

necessary they’re just not equipped to

deal with those adult problems and adult

emotions

and i just think it leaves a very bad

telltale in terms of this child’s

adjustment later on in life in terms of

how they deal with relationships how

they deal with problems and i would just

far more prefer that every parent get a

great therapist a great lawyer that they

can vent to speak to

get advice from talk to rather than

using their children as that person it

will just benefit them as well and

particularly their children down the

road