Children need both parents!

The habit of preventing children from seeing their other parent post break up. Or parents who abandoned children post break up. There is this thing that sometimes happens when we break up with someone and we decide that children need to decide with that parent too. Or we decide that since we are no longer with the parent, we are also no longer with the children. We are learning that children have feelings and they manage situations by developing coping strategies. Literature on alienation is helpful. When children feel abandoned by a parent, either through the influence of the parent 1, they live with, or because the other parent 2, does not maintain contact, they develop defence splitting. Splitting or fragmentation is when the self splits into different parts. A child creates a false self with a different personality, feelings, and behaviour. In this case there is a rejected self that is viewing parent 2 as bad and unloving. And the self that is possibly a good obedient child living with parent 1. An alienating parent who takes a child from their parent is suffering from their own psychological issues. A parent who abandons his child is suffering from their own psychological issues. An alienated child struggles with pathological alignment caused by distortion in the parent to whom the child is aligned, whilst the other parent plays a bystander or bad guy role. It is very helpful to identify that the habit of teaching children to dislike one parent can encourage childrem to pit one parent against the other. It also can creates adults who pit people against each other. It can even lead to very toxic traits and personality disorders if unaddressed. Abandoning a child can make a child feel as if they are defective. Your break up is between the two of you. Your children need both of you. That is not up to you. Even when children are looked after well elsewhere, they will still question being abandoned or rejected by biological parents. Just because you did not treat each other right in the relationship, does not automatically mean the ex will be abusive to the children too. Whatever the situation, using children as pawns damages children. You might release toxic individuals into the world. Even when your ex is toxic, there is supervised contact if required. It helps to minimise damage to children, especially out of bitterness or because you are no longer in a relationship. Find a way to deal with your issues for the sake of the children.Find a way to deal with your issues for the sake of the children. Not to live together, but to co-parent in a healthy way that benefits the children. Family therapy and individual therapy to recognise healthy conflict resolution. And to address your own personal childhood trauma.