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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Even after a divorce, parents should never criticize or degrade the other parent in front of the child, because every child is entitled to both a father and a mother. The story of a seven-year-old shuttled between parents illustrates how a child's need for both parents does not end with the marriage.
Key Points
- A child's need for both parents does not disappear after divorce; the speaker says a child needs parents, not therapy, according to marriage counselor Dr. Wickler.
- The speaker says he would never have said this ten years ago, but considers it important in today's day and age.
- Custody arrangements in the story split the week: the boy stayed with his mother Sunday through Friday and with his father on Shabbat.
- The boy's repeated crying for each parent shows that a child can want both parents at the same time, regardless of the custody schedule.
- Divorce is acknowledged as sometimes necessary, but the speaker says the marital conflict is the parents' problem, not the child's.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: Do not criticize or degrade your ex-spouse in front of the child, and do not break the security every child is entitled to have. Keep the child's relationship with both parents intact, and if the child cries for the other parent, do not treat it as a reason to stop the relationship. The transcript does not give step-by-step procedures beyond these principles.
- In the story, the mother called the father to pick up the boy when he cried for his father on a Tuesday night; the father then returned him when the boy cried for his mother.
- The father left the boy's bedroom after the boy asked him to stay and say something; the boy cried himself to sleep.
- The story is presented by the speaker, R. Paysach Krohn, who attributes it to a marriage counselor friend, Dr. Wickler, a psychologist.
- Dr. Wickler's advice to the mother was that the child needs parents, not therapy.
Bottom Line
Children need both parents present in their lives, and shielding them from parental conflict matters more than the custody arrangement itself.
