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by Harald Breiding-Buss
Not living with your children all the time adds a huge challenge to parenting. It is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain one set of ‘family’ rules at both places, and never mind trying to deal with something like the role of a new partner.
Differences in parenting very often become reasons for one parent to shut out the other one, who then sometimes has to go to Court to try and maintain his or her relationship in the face of a barrage of criticism.
There is not a lot of information on what is ‘best practice’ in parenting children after separation. This is a result of a lack of research on how different ways of parenting separately impact on the children. We know that those two-home children do best if the parents communicate well, but we do not know if that means they are parenting more consistently or simply agree to disagree, or if maybe they simply talk more about parenting than even the average married couple would do. If authors try to tell you that their way is the best way of separation parenting, this is based on their personal opinions and philosophies, not on research. This column is no different!
For small children, up to about two and a half years, we can make some reasonably certain assumptions about what would be best simply because we know a lot about early childhood development. Here’s some of the common issues we come across at Father & Child:
Consistency between parents: For older children, trying to achieve consistency between the two home environments is probably over-rated. Children experience a lot of different environments (including school, kindergarten, friends’ places etc) with different rules, and by the time they are about four they have figured that one out. They will ask questions, and perhaps even challenge why things are one way at Mum’s and another at Dad’s, but this is something you simply have to deal with.
For little children, however, consistency in routines and rules is very important wherever they are, because they draw so much sense of security from that stability. Although it is now quite common, it is less than ideal for a small child to alternate between two homes with different people in it, especially if it is for several days at a time. For children up to about two years of age, attachment to their caregivers is everything, and one caregiver cannot ‘replace’ the other even temporarily. To mitigate this as much as possible, it is best to try to have the same routines around the day’s schedule, meals, bedtime, going out etc. in both homes. It will also help if Mum and Dad still visit the same people and shop at the same places, although these are big asks.
Unsettled when coming back from the other parent: This is an extremely common complaint we hear all the time at Father & Child. Generally one parent reports that a young child is ‘playing up’ after coming back from the other, while the other maintains that the child is settled and happy while there and any problem must be in the first parent’s home.
Again, the key to this issue is attachment. As much as we all like to have our children well settled, ‘playing up’ and ‘rebellion’ are, within limits, signs of good attachment. It is a sign that the child feels secure enough that he doesn’t feel he has to please you all the time. This is the reason why even children whose behaviour give their parents a lot of headaches at home are like little angels when with others and/or away from home. Even adults put on their best behaviour in situations they are unfamiliar with or feel anxious about, and get into arguments only with people they care about most.
So if a young child is very settled at one parent’s place only to ‘play up’ once back at the other’s the most likely reason is that the child doesn’t quite feel secure and at home at the place where he is settled.
For a small child to feel secure, the environment is not very important but the people are. Attachment is created by a parent’s responsiveness to a child’s cues. This means 100% attentiveness even when there are other people or things demanding your attention. It doesn’t mean the child has to get everything they want, but they have to get a response every time they want something. They have to get your attention according to their timetable, not yours. You can’t ‘make up’ for it later.
This implies time. Little children need quantity time. They obviously also need playtime and good stimulation for learning, but attachment is created mainly by being available.
Another important factor is physical closeness. Frequent touch, snuggles, games that involve the body (tickling etc) are a must.
Playing off parents: As children grow they get more and more sophisticated in trying to get what they want by being selective with their information. If this is bad behaviour, then our free market economy is based on it. Of course you want to make sure it doesn’t work by keeping good communication with the other parent, but don’t blame the child for trying.
It can be upsetting to get the feeling that the child thinks they’re better off at the other parent’s place, and what starts off as jealousy often turns into righteousness. This is your issue. For the children this sort of thing is simply not a big deal. It will become one, however, if their parents start fighting over what’s right and wrong in parenting.
In issue 45 Christchurch Father & Child Coordinator Mark Grimes related his hopes for his family as a new immigrant from the UK. Just over a year later he concedes defeat. While the earthquakes didn’t help, it was a close-nit extended family that they found they couldn’t be away from.
Well, it’s March 2011 and I am sitting in the Christchurch office of the Father and Child Trust on Hereford Street, pretty close to the devastation known as the CBD (Central Business District) of Christchurch, reflecting on my time here in New Zealand.
15 months ago my family set off on what I can only describe as our big adventure, emigrating from the UK to the South Island of New Zealand to hopefully a better life. In reality it has turned out to be one of the most emotional journeys my family and I have ever undertaken.
On arrival, we settled into the everyday routines that most families have. My daughters Daisy (12) and Eve (9) have settled in to school enjoying new friendships’, sleep overs, camps and all the activities school throws at them. However, they would often feel emotional about the UK, or “home”, as they kept calling it.
Sharon and I got on with juggling work and looking after the girls, which was hard work as we had always had the support of family to help with the children when we were working. We would often Skype with family in the UK; this contact would encourage home sickness and a yearning for familiarity and the security of our support network, our family!
As winter approached Sharon, who works fulltime as a district nurse, was asked to work closer to home in Rangiora for a few weeks. This helped her to feel a little more settled; as for me I felt homesick some days, missing my parents and my older children. We always knew that homesickness would be hard for us all to deal with, and it was. I knew that Sharon was unhappy and, given the chance, she and the kids would be on the first flight back to the UK.
August landed and so did our overseas visitors. Peter and Alex arrived from the UK to spend six weeks with us. Peter is Sharon’s son and Alex his partner. We were all excited because it had given a sense of familiarity and belonging back to us all, something we had missed since leaving the UK.
During the next few weeks we enjoyed doing family things, days out, swimming and even a trip to Hanmer Springs enjoying the hot pools on a winter’s day. The weeks ticked by and I could see that Sharon, Daisy and Eve were not looking forward to Peter and Alex leaving us; where had the last 6 weeks gone?
Well it’s the 1st of September 2010 and time to take Alex and Peter to the airport. Sharon was struggling emotionally with the thought of being apart from her son again. Daisy and Eve were crying too; once again I asked myself: was it right to take our children away from their family?
The doubts became more evident when we said our good-byes at Christchurch airport. Sharon sobbed her heart out, Daisy and Eve where down for a couple of days after Peter had gone. So I guess the answer to this question had to be ‘no’!
The earthquake a few days later was surreal; it really shook us up, we were woken at 4.30am with everything around us shaking violently. Daisy and Eve woke up and started screaming, Sharon and I jumped out of bed and raced to the girls’ bedroom wondering what the hell was happening; the shaking stopped without notice leaving us all dazed and frightened.
Once again we questioned whether or not it was right for us to live in New Zealand even more so after being scared to death by this earthquake. We had never experienced anything like this in the UK; Saturday the 4t of September is a date that Sharon will remember for a long time: as a District Nurse she covered Kaiapoi that weekend. She was stunned and shocked to see Kaiapoi destroyed, houses damaged and huge cracks in the roads.
Normality did return after a wee while, eventually settling back into in to the routines of daily life, work, and school.
October brought more good news and bad news, Sharon’s parents had planned to visit in January, and this lifted spirits for all of the family, giving us something positive to focus upon as well as Christmas. On the downside Sharon had been asked to work in Christchurch again, and this was a move she did not want or relish.
With the onset of Christmas we enjoyed spending family time. Christmas Day on the beach was fantastic; this experience was weird in a nice way. Christmas for us is associated with cold damp weather and dark days back in the UK. It was a good experience enjoying sunny warm weather at Christmas, but it was not home and we missed family.
Happy New Year 2011 arrived.
New year, new challenges for my family. We were focused on Sharon’s parents arriving from England; this gave us the optimism that some sense of normality would return to our home for a short while.
When we met Sharon’s parents at the airport we could certainly see that they had aged. Although both in their 70s and in relatively good health, we could see the change that had happened over the last year. The joy that we felt having family here was overwhelming. We enjoyed ‘normality’ again for the next few weeks, talked about our feelings , sought opinions from Sharon’s parents and tried to make sense of what to do: stay here in New Zealand or return to England.
That decision became so easy to make after the events of 22nd February 2011. Both Sharon and I work in Christchurch, Sharon in Merivale and I on Hereford Street in Linwood.
What Sharon and I experienced on that day will stay with both of us for the rest of our lives. I was thrown about the office like a rag doll and seeing the reaction on Harald’s face I realized that this was different, this was worse, much worse!
I frantically tried to contact Sharon, school and home repeatedly but to no avail; the telephone network was overloaded and I could not contact my family, This freaked me out! Several minutes passed then my cell phone rang. It was Sharon; she had spoken with the kids and her parents. She said that she was hurt but not seriously, she had been thrown down stairs in work and managed to crawl to safety.
I felt helpless, sick and anxious. I just wanted to be with my family so that I could look after them. I had to travel to Merivale to collect Sharon; Normally a ten minute trip, it took nearly two hours this time.
It was only when we managed to get home that the reality of that day’s event sank in; for Sharon this was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. She wanted to return home more than ever. In the days after the earthquake Sharon, Daisy and Eve were very frightened and so was I. We had never experienced anything like that in our lives; the realisation about what is really important to us suddenly became more apparent. We needed to do the best for the kids and to make sure they would be safe, no matter what. At this point the homesickness that had caused so much anxiety did not seem to matter anymore.
So the decision to return to the UK was made and plans formulated in the weeks following. Flights and removal company were booked for May, the necessary arrangements made with employers in New Zealand and with schools both here and in the UK.
I actually feel quite sad at the thoughts of leaving work and New Zealand. There is so much more that I wanted to do and so much more I wanted to see. We came to live and to enjoy new experiences here in New Zealand; in essence we have experienced New Zealand at its best and at its worst. For my family to have a better life here we would need to have our extended family here as well and that is not going to happen!
Seeing Sharon, Daisy and Eve struggling to call New Zealand home became a real problem; yes, children are resilient and can adapt to most situations. However they ” just want to return home”. We were lucky to have had family come and visit in the last year but that just reinforced our feelings about family and living back in the UK every time they left and returned home
Our experiences of New Zealand will certainly be with us all for a long time. In short it’s like I said when we got here; logistically the move was straightforward, emotionally be prepared because it really is hard to make it work if you come from a close family. You just don’t have the option to fly back and forth to the UK because it costs so much; on top of that think about the earthquakes and subsequent aftershocks, and if you can live with all that, then good on you!
I know we can’t and our choice is not to!
Peter R Walker has collected some children’s voices from the Christchurch earthquakes.
“Kids say the darndest things” don’t they? Darndest meaning funny, cute, profound. Sometimes, “from the mouths of babes” comes the most honest commentary, and on such occasions adults could learn a lesson.
In the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes, everyone had something to say. For weeks there was little else we talked about. No matter what the circumstances, people who met together, strangers or friends, quickly got on to the subject of the earthquake. In September it was somewhat light-hearted and frequently focused on how fortunate we were that nobody was seriously hurt or killed. We talked about the damage to our houses, the roads, and how long it would be before we could use the toilet again.
After the February earthquake the conversations were significantly darker. In a small town like Christchurch, few people were more than two or three degrees of separation from someone who had died. Everyone knew shortly after it happened that this quake was far more serious. And the conversations reflected it.
Kids, too, talked about it. Even one and two year olds knew something was up and talked about it; something extraordinary had happened. Perhaps they saw it in their parents’ faces, heard it in their voices, and, of course, they could not ignore the fact that every now and then the house moved and the plates in the pantry rattled.
In the shadow of the first earthquake, children bought into the game of guess the magnitude. Joshua (6) would be sitting in his bedroom and, when an aftershock had settled, he would yell “what number was that? A four point two?” He didn’t (I guess) understand about magnitude, but he realised that there were certain numbers associated with the aftershocks. Who says kids don’t listen to what their parents talk about?
One of the most interesting phenomena post-September was not so much the bubbling up of grey/green silt from the depths of the earth, but rather that it actually had a name. Who knew? Now there’s nothing cuter than a three year old throwing the word “liquefaction” into the most mundane of conversations. It just rolls off the tongue and sounds so grown up.
Citywide there are reports of children’s responses to the earthquakes. We would be remiss to think that children, too, did not have real, emotional reactions. On February 22, most Christchurch kids were at school. It was lunch time. Many were on the field. Now, says year 1-2 teacher Maureen Armstrong, the kids play on the field more because they feel it is the safest place. When school returned, she says, many of the girls followed the duty teacher around, making sure she knew what to do in the event of another earthquake.
Christchurch children were asked to write down their stories, their feelings. Many of these have been published online and in the newspapers. Every household with children has stories and utterances that bring smiles to the lips of proud parents everywhere. Gill says, after one aftershock, Amber (2) proclaimed “I was a good girl mummy, I ran under the doorframe.”
Sam (7) looked at the earthquakes two ways. First, he said, “When I grow up and become an inventor, I’m going to invent a machine that stops earthquakes from happening.” But then, in typical seven year old style, he was “glad the liquefaction pushed up our driveway. It’s made good hills to drive my hot wheels cars on.”
At an even more reflective moment, Sam, in a conversation about the Bands of Hope asked what they meant. They mean we care about Christchurch, he was told.
Sam’s mum Karen relates the following: “Sam got all tearful (quite unusual) and said, “I care about Christchurch. Every time I think about Christchurch I feel like crying.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because of the earthquake.”
“What part of it makes you sad?”
“People got killed, and lots of buildings fell down, and homes got destroyed.” Then, as we went over a bump in the road, “And the roads are a mess.””
Lara (5) said she didn’t like the earthquake because “it was shaking and the floor was moving. I cried a little bit.”
Jack (5), says his mum, Vanessa, “said to me one night out of the blue (after my cell phone beeped) “is that a tweet about the aftershock?””
Older children are no less reflective and wise. Hope (12) was “terrified and scared… ran to the door frame and screamed.” Now she’s a little more calm, and “still jumpy when there is an aftershock, but I don’t run to the doorway now.”
Mikayla (11) “freaked out.” At Sumner school at the time of the February earthquake, “I thought it was a landslide from the hills. I thought the rocks were going to fall down. I’m still just freaked out.”
Jasmine (13): “Before the earthquakes I felt safe, I could walk the streets without the fear of the earth shaking underneath my feet. I went to school, hung out with my friends and didn’t realise how great my life really was. I could go home and not expect anything to be different. Christchurch was a place I could proudly call my home.”
“After the earthquakes,” she writes, “everything has changed. I’ve had to move out of my house and try and find one that is safe enough for us to live in without severe damage. It has brought my family closer together and we say “I love you” and tell them where we are going before we leave. I can still go to school but not in the same place. I don’t feel safe anymore and whenever I hear a rumbling sound the next second I can hear my heart thudding.
Christchurch just isn’t the same anymore 
“
Kids say the darndest things. Perhaps the most telling thing spoken by a child recently – although, it has not been verified and may have taken on the status of urban myth already – was by the boy who, sitting at the dinner table on March 19th, and (in reference to Ken Ring’s March 20 prediction of another massive earthquake for Christchurch) asked his parents matter-of-factly “Are we all going to die tomorrow?”
The children who experienced the Christchurch earthquakes will talk about them for the rest of their lives. My grandmother, so I was often told by my mother, was in the Napier earthquake. Every generation has historical moments that affect them profoundly. Whether it’s JFK’s, Neil Armstrong’s or 9/11, there are moments in time we will never forget. The Christchurch earthquakes will be two such moments. We will have constant reminders of them for many, many years to come. Our children will remember and speak of them forever.
A month or two after the 22nd February earthquake, Christchurch people are well and truly ‘quaked out’. Harald Breiding-Buss relates his own post-quake moments as well as the current thinking on helping children through.
A couple of months have passed since the ‘Big One’ has hit Christchurch. For a while there, when the news from Japan came in, it even seemed to be only a minor event when compared to the amount of destruction there. Living in the south-eastern suburb of South Brighton, the reminders are all around me, though, as I drive to and from work each day: half-collapsed or already torn-down buildings, the potholes, bumps and dips in the badly damaged roads. The huge mountain of silt that had been trucked in from all over the city and piled up on a paddock not far from us has all but disappeared in a landfill by now.
When something like that happens it’s really difficult to keep a clear head. When the shaking had stopped on the 22nd of February, we all went outside our office, which is just east of the CBD and could see not much else but a dust cloud in the direction of the city centre. My younger daughter goes to school in the central city, and although at that stage it didn’t occur to me that whole buildings could have collapsed I was quite frightened. Fortunately I got hold of her on the phone right away. She was on the fifth floor of the building which contains her school and said she was alright.
Much of the city erupted into chaos as everybody was trying to get home. A ten minute drive from my older daughter’s school took two hours, involving a scramble over the collapsed South Brighton bridge ramps, ankle-deep sewage running across the road and wading through a swamp (normally a perfectly dry area) to get home. My wife, who walked into town to get my younger daughter and then back to her car, ended up borrowing cycles to get through, and arrived at about six that night, five hours after the quake had struck.
The thought of possibly coming back to an uninhabitable house triggered a sickish feeling in the pit of my stomach, and as I made my way home with my older daughter in tow we walked over the carpark of our local community centre, which featured sinkholes the size of large cannonballs. Mud ran freely down the driveways of some of the adjacent homes. Not a good sign. Arriving home the front door was jammed, the chimney had come down and the mess was incredible, but the overall damage was minor. Amazingly, we still had somewhere to live!
There was no power or water, of course, just a relentless barrage of aftershocks throughout the night, some of the epicentres within 1-2 kilometres of where we lived. The kids wanted to get out, saying they didn’t feel safe in Christchurch anymore. It’s hard to argue with that when the ground keeps shaking and you start thinking that this has happened twice already, what’s stopping it from striking again?
Many people did run, of course. We spent a couple of days with friends in Rangiora, where we were exposed to the depressing 24/7 news coverage of the event, which made it hard to gather up the courage to return to what was portrayed as essentially a pile of rubble contaminated with sewage. Coming back home, though, it wasn’t all that bad. Without electronic entertainment, and with the need to go and get water several times a day, we got to know our neighbours a lot better. We were blessed with some mild nights where we sat outside with others, sharing our stories.
We were without power for 14 days and without water for ten. A lot of our ‘trauma counselling’ was done in that time, simply by talking with neighbours. As I’ve since learned it is actually not a good idea to run away from an event like this, much less so with children. Routines and ‘normality’ help children and ourselves through it. Even without power and water, and frequently rocked by blasted aftershocks, it was a great comfort to be able to be at home.
Children couldn’t understand a lot of what was happening, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. In our own hunger for information, many parents would have made the mistake of inadvertently exposing their children to the constant bad news coverage that did nothing but instil fear in them – and us. For little children most of the world is still pretty new, and many things happen for the first time. By themselves they would not recognise the significance of an earthquake like this, and the scale of damage caused. Unless they had experienced some pretty serious stuff first-hand their trauma would come from the reaction of the adults around them, not from the event itself.
It’s a different story for older children, where attitudes of friends and knowledge they may have themselves start to play a big role. The ‘news’ that some crackpot ‘scientist’ had predicted another major earthquake for the 20th of March was widely discussed amongst the friends of my teenage daughters. Add to this a little age-typical mistrust about your parents’ reassurances and you have the recipe for paranoia.
Older children or youths may understand some of the science around it which, in the case of earthquakes, is no comfort at all. A new ‘SKIP’ resource advises that ‘children want to try and make sense of what is happening, and when they don’t know they use their imagination to fill the gaps, which can make things more frightening.’
Ironically, a situation like this calls for the much condemned male trait of bottling up your own feelings so you can get on with it. The same SKIP resource advises ‘Try to act calm even when you are not feeling that way – it will reassure your children’. How many more people would have left Christchurch in panic, how many more children traumatised if there hadn’t been people in the house who were able to keep their cool – on the outside, at least. Men are good at this stuff.
Of course, many people in Christchurch have lost their home and face a long period of insecurity. For the children it is best, if at all possible, to establish a new base, avoid moving around too much, and keeping them at the school or pre-school they are used to.
It should go without saying that this is not the time to try and ‘correct’ unusual or timid behaviour. Many Christchurch dads have reported especially clingy children, some of which are getting the privilege of sleeping in their parents’ bed for the first time in their lives (although many families moved to the living room floor for a period of time after the quake and while the power was out). You don’t spoil them in doing this.
Adults in Christchurch and their older children will probably keep on suffering from what is known here as ‘quakebrain’ for months to come: difficulty concentrating, getting into useless arguments, interrupted sleep for no particular reason. It’s okay to indulge in a little more leniency than we normally would.
F&C manager Harald Breiding-Buss was on Radio NZ today (25 Nov), talking about parenting issues for separated fathers. See here for audio file.
Dan Brown, a young father being supported by the Father & Child Trust, was interviewed on TV3 about the new “In Your Hands” DVD produced by Great Fathers.
Daniel Brown TV3 13th July 2010
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Meeting every Wednesday evening from 7:00 – 9:00 pm in the Community Office 3 at the Onehunga Community Centre , 83 Church Street, (next to the library) the Fathers’ Mauri Ora Circle, embodying the principles of emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual wellbeing, is a safe place where together we can discuss any fathering issues and collectively strengthen our fathering abilities.
strong> Wednesday evenings – 7-9pm downstairs in Community Office 3 at the Onehunga Community Centre
Facilitated by our Support Worker, Brendon Smith, what is discussed is determined by those who are there. Recently we’ve talked about topics like
to name just a few.
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You are welcome to “just turn up” any Wednesday or if you would like more information feel free to call Brendon on 525 1690 or 022 697 7026 or email him at auckland@fatherandchild.org.nz
The funding support of the Maungakiekie and Tamaki Community Boards (Auckland City Council) is gratefully acknowledged.
By Harald Breiding-Buss
At a training session for a previous job, some five or so years ago, about learning and memory in pre-school children, the tutor made us memorise a sequence of unrelated numbers and then try to recall them.
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Encouraging your child to learn an instrument is one thing—pushing them to perform on one quite another. But where is the boundary between bringing out a child’s natural talent and asking them to do something they may not really enjoy? Kevin Albertson thought about what he wants for his own son.
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