Just-divorced father pushes kids into new relationship

My spouse and I split up after almost 17 years of marriage and two kids, age 4 and 8. My now ex-spouse entered a relationship mere days after our divorce. I'm concerned about the effect this will have on our children.

The children seem to be adapting well. My ex-spouse spends all free time, both with and without the children, with the new love interest. The new love interest is also recently divorced and has a child. My youngest child announced to some friends of mine that he has a new brother. The oldest child told me how they all were going to go on a trip together to meet my ex-spouse's family.

I feel that this is way too much for the children to take in. They were not even allowed the time to get adjusted to the fact that their Mommy and Daddy had divorced and now they are being thrust into a new stepfamily relationship after only a month.

Am I overreacting or should there have been more time to allow the children to cope?

-- N.W., Las Vegas

Polite, cocktail-party response: In a perfect world, we therapist types might have hoped for another few weeks or so for the children to adapt to their new world of divorced parents prior to meeting and being integrated into their father's new relationship.

Grouchy, sarcastic response: Uh, your ex-husband did what? He introduced his 4- and 8-year-old children to a new girlfriend within days of the separation? He fostered and encouraged -- expected? assigned? -- the idea that the girlfriend's son is their "new brother," and is now directing a wholesale integration of this new relationship into their lives?

What do I think? I think it's a gross failure of parental empathy. Near incomprehensible self-absorption. And, setting aside for the moment that all this is terrible for kids, I think he has cashed in his credibility as a father, which may take years for him to fully recover, if it's ever fully recovered.

Other than that, I think your ex is doing great.

It doesn't surprise me that children of this age "seem to be adapting well." And they probably are actually adapting well. It's just that the strategies 4- and 8-year-olds deploy to adapt to trauma, loss, grief, and in some cases the erratic behavior of their parents, well, they tend to be strategies that come with psycho-emotional costs to self and the development of self.

I won't bore you with the clinical descriptions. Suffice it to say that children so desperately need to have competent, loving parents that, psychologically speaking, they'll do just about anything to dodge evidence of their parents' incompetence. Children this age tend to glom on with a happy, cheery face to whatever the respective parents present.

I'm glad your children are adapting well. But their smooth adaptation in no way indicates that what is happening around them is right or good for them, or without consequence.

I'm not saying their lives will necessarily be ruined. But there's going to be a mess to clean up. And there's no way to anticipate how and when the consequences of this mess are going to show up. You'll just have to be ready.

That's right, you. It's unfair, but you've just been elected to the office of Stable Steady Credible Parent. It's going to be your job to create an oasis of constancy, credibility and empathy for your children, all the while resisting the temptation to conscript your children to side with your case or your cause.

The High Road here is that your children will always remember you as a relentless advocate for the health, hope and thriving of their relationship with the only father they will ever have. You must do this while simultaneously providing credible answers and responses to their questions and perceptions of things. You neither sugarcoat nor bash.

It's one helluva tightrope walk on a razor blade.

I wonder if he's going to tell them that, coincidentally, he just happened to meet his soul mate two weeks after he separated from their mother. That, while the timing might have been awkward, life is just like that sometimes.

And let's say, for the sake of argument, that that's true. She's the perfect woman for him. All the more reason, you would think, then, for him to create a careful, patient, credible politic, providing the best possible footing for his kids to make her acquaintance.

Well, this ain't that.

Originally published in View News on July 28, 2009.