Cool Mum Super Dad

I read a compelling article with the above title in The New Sunday Times, 6 December 2009. The writer, Abigail Hunter, shared the heart-wrenching story of how her 12-year-old son was abducted by her former husband. The boy’s father went one step further. He engaged a psychologist to ‘treat’ the boy, not before briefing the psychologist that the boy needed to be protected from his mother. By the time the boy met his mother after a prolonged separation, he was extremely confused and no longer warm towards her. And mother and son could only meet when the father was around, for the briefest of time. In three years, she only managed to see him a few times.

This story struck a chord with me because I know of someone dear who is facing a similar situation. My heart bleeds whenever I meet this particular person because I have known her for years; she’s one of my oldest friends.  Her depths of despair, the days and hours she spent imagining how things ‘could have been’.  How I wish I could do more than just be there and listen. My plea: If you know of someone who is keeping his/her children from his/her former partner, see if you can talk sense to this person. Of course, this doesn’t apply if the other parent is an abuser. But as another long-suffering parent in the same situation says, God works in mysterious ways. The harder his former spouse tried to distance him and his children, as they grow older, the kids themselves searched for him to find out the truth of the matter. So if you are a kidnapper of your own children, BEWARE. Your own devious actions might eventually alienate your kids from you in the long run. They might hate you for whatever you have done … the irreplaceable years lost with the other parent. Credit goes to Ahmad Fakhri, who alerted me to the above article.