It has been said, if you want a great column, write about something you are passionate about. If you want a good opinion piece, you should write with your heart. 

There are a few things I have a deep passion for and one of those is children. 

I came from a “broken home,” not only once, but twice. I watched my biological parents divorce when I was around 7. Those of you from these so-called “broken” families understand how detrimental that is at any age let alone such a young one. I grew up in a house where hugs and I love you didn’t come often and I grew up in a house where my parents hated each other. 

Hate is such a hard word. It is probably one of the most over-used words. But I am pretty sure my mom hated my dad. It isn’t something I am proud to admit but it is how it always appeared in my eyes. My dad, on the other hand, tried to keep his mouth shut. During the divorce, after the divorce, and for years and years the only thing I ever heard was how terrible my dad was. My mom, regretfully so, used her anger and hurt to destroy my dad. 

Before the divorce, I spent nearly 100% of my time with my dad. I was riding horses, doctoring cattle, holding the flashlight while dad searched for a bolt he had dropped…I was falling asleep in the tractor as he swathed the summer hay. I was camping in the hills and finding “mini sausages” in the pancake mix…they were weevils, by the way. I was always with him. He taught me my love for animals and strong animal husbandry. I have his eyes and his nose. 

My sister on the other hand was busy with mom. Cooking, canning, learning how to sew. She was 7 years older than me but somehow assumed the role of “mom” while mom was working. Our dad spent many years working at our local sugar factory in Idaho. Mom was a florist and probably the best seamstress anyone could have. But I’m pretty sure my mom hated my dad. 

During the divorce, my dad’s mental health hit the bucket. My sister and I were forced to move to town…a place neither of us was fond of, growing up in the country. My sister eventually went to live with our dad. He would still go to work, but he would buy beer on the way home and be drunk before dinnertime. My sister took care of him. I didn’t see him much and that was my mother’s plan. I can’t tell you if the drinking started before my mom denied my dad access or it was the other way around. Either way, I didn’t see my dad much. Mom and I ended up moving to Wyoming and occasionally I would fly to see him. 

I remember much of my dad’s wisdom over the years. Like when you get tears in your eyes, just tell ‘em it’s dirt. Just because you have mastered the art of riding a sheep forward-facing does NOT mean you should try to ride them backward…I can still see the break in my nose. He taught me all I know about animals. How to help them and what to do. Although all of that wisdom has taken me many places, there was one thing my dad said to me that I will never forget. 

While sitting in the airport in Idaho eating dinner after my flight from Wyoming, my dad asked how my mom was doing. Mom and I never had the best relationship. She spent many years trying to keep me away from my dad by buying me the things he could never afford. She knew how to keep a child under a spell that very few would understand. She spoke nothing but anger and hatred about my dad for years. It was something I just became “used to,” not realizing the damage it created. 

When dad asked about mom…I responded with how terrible she had been to me, and I called her a name. He put his fork down. Looked at me and took a deep breath.

“Jessica Lynn, we don’t talk about your mother that way. She is your mom.”

As I write this, I can literally see him sitting in front of me, holding on to all of the hurt, anger and immense sadness, telling ME to be a better person. It’s true. I never once heard my dad say an ill word about my mom. Sometimes he would even tell me stories about how things were between them before things got bad for them. Or he’d tell me, ‘Oh, you get that from your mom,’ never anything that made me feel I shouldn’t love my mom…nothing like my mom said about my dad. 

Relationships are hard. Being a child caught in a divorce is hard. Shoot, you don’t even have to be married. Co-parenting is hard. 

Now to my point, over years of personal therapy, research and even more therapy, I am nearly 100% sure what I experienced in my childhood was parental alienation.  

Richard Gardner, an American child psychiatrist, developed the term “parental alienation syndrome” or PAS in 1985. He defined PAS as, “a childhood disorder that arises almost exclusively in the context of child-custody disputes. Its primary manifestation is the child’s campaign of denigration against a good, loving parent—a campaign that has no justification. It results from the combination of a programming (brainwashing) parent’s indoctrinations and the child’s own contributions to the vilification of the target parent. When true parental abuse and/or neglect is present, the child’s animosity may be justified and so the parental alienation syndrome explanation for the child’s hostility is not applicable.”

But really, PAS isn’t just in child custody cases. 

Truthfully, parents have the ability to direct a child’s way of thinking, even about their immediate family.

Most of our children’s likes and dislikes come from what we, as parents, have engrained in their little minds. For example…cooked carrots. I have taught my kids from day one that I love cooked carrots. Matter of fact I love them so much I want to give mine to you so you can see how wonderful they are. My adult son just realized all of this time; I have absolutely hated cooked carrots. I just never wanted to pollute their little minds with my personal opinion of cooked carrots. 

The same goes for people. If we, as parents, are sitting around talking poorly about the Jones’ our children will develop a dislike of the family…even if they have had no issues with them personally. 

The same goes for our children’s family members. If we, as parents, are being hurtful toward one another, our children feel it. Our children ingest those poor words we say to one another. Our children hear our anger when we speak negatively about the people we “love”. 

And in return, we create a cemented opinion of a person, place, thing, belief, etc., taking the ability to make a personal decision away from our children. We take away our children’s personal autonomy. And without personal autonomy, our children will be unable to form their own decisions…not just today, but for years to come. 

Sure, there are some cases where I want my child to have a specific belief on a topic, but teaching my child to dislike someone or something just because I do doesn’t make much sense. 

“What’s in the best interest of the child,” is often said in most custody cases but what does that mean? 

Sometimes what is in the best interest of the child is that parents separate or never progress their relationship past sharing a child together. Sometimes, unfortunately, two people can’t love each other in healthy, nontoxic ways and they are better off apart. 

Sometimes what’s in best interest of the child isn’t what looks the best. Sometimes it isn’t what society thinks it should be like or look like. Or what our neighbors think it should look like, or our church, or our friends…what’s in the best interest of the child is seeing mom and dad happy. And sometimes mom is happy over here and dad is happy over there. Happy people love harder than they could ever hate. We should encourage our children to have a relationship with the other parent. Not discourage it and make them feel ashamed of seeking the parental connection.

We loved that person so much at one point in time that we created that child. Our child shares half of the DNA in his/her body with the other parent. How on earth can we possibly hate half of our own children?