Sun Tzu says, “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.” If my relationship with my ex-wife was harmonious, she probably wouldn’t have been an ex. But then these chronicles would never have been written as the source of many of the articles comes from my life as a single dad in this unending drama of a still simmering proxy war.
In most households, where a child goes to school is usually anchored by where the child lives. In dual-parent households, that’s a no brainer—as are decisions about participation in nearby extracurricular. But in divorce settings, things can either stay the same or have the potential to be very disruptive. That’s me. Then my ex took it upon herself to move out of the city without telling me (or our daughter). Her intentions were to register our daughter at a new neighborhood school in a new city and any extracurricular activities will be cancelled or reregistered at some nearby community equivalent. So, in effect, she decided to change custody arrangements without discussion.
Notwithstanding my own opinions, I asked if my 12 year-old daughter knew anything about this. She didn’t. She was also terrified of being uprooted and losing all her friends. I asked my daughter if this change was requested. I knew the answers to both questions, of course. And what began was another ramp up in time and legal resources to buttress the 12 year-old’s decision.
But until our time in court, there was little I can do to prevent her mom from taking her to the new residence during the rotating custody shift, but our child was disallowed from registering at a new school and all her extracurricular activities ties remained intact. Without any intervention on my part, the one to sometimes two-hour commute (each way) took its toll. This type of self-inflicted collateral damage had another adverse effect as the mother / daughter relationship was strained even further while the two sat in traffic in silent resentment.
Her strategy, as my daughter reasoned, is that without severing her existing ties, she can’t be moored in a new harbor.
But what thwarted my ex’s plans most completely and conclusively was my daughter’s refusal to make friends in the new neighborhood. She’s still going to stay late at school with her existing friends. She still needs to attend all her extracurricular, practice, competition, etc. She still needs to see her doctors, dentist, physiotherapists, et cetra. She’s still going to need to be driven into the city to attend birthday parties, sleepovers and other social girly things with her existing friends. She wasn’t going to abandon the social circles she’d built for over a decade for someone else’s agenda. And this silent resistance was the thrust of my daughter’s war effort against relocation. Her strategy, as my daughter reasoned correctly, is that without severing her existing ties, she can’t be moored in a new harbor. What she needed now was a legal leg to stand on. And that came in the form of a Voice of the Child report ordered by the court.
My daughter realized that the day would come when she would decide she doesn’t want to go to her mom’s anymore and will anchor her days and life with me visiting the mom on alternating weekends. As much as I also know that day will come, it needed to come from my daughter as she will be the one who breaks new ground, sets new rules and be the enforcer of her new reality that both parents will live by. This isn’t to say that my 12 year-old rules the roost in both households, but issues like custody, access, school and extracurricular are domains that should be determined purely for the benefit of the child and they should have a voice. At the age of 12, many jurisdictions will grant a voice of the child as a legal opinion.
As I arm my daughter with another legal weapon, my hope is that she never has to go to war with her mother. Ancient wisdom says that battles can be won or lost without it even being fought. All weaponry are simply deterrents. I just want my daughter to be fully prepared so that she can righteously stand for what she feels is her will and defiantly uphold what she knows is her choice.
If we didn’t have a child together, my ex would have been a distant memory. But because we do, I choose to stand up for someone who cannot yet speak for herself. And this nurtured voice is only beginning to speak, tentatively and softly at first, but most resoundingly as time goes on. The battle lesson I take away from this is never to go to war with the unstoppable force of youth as it marches relentlessly forward.
