Divorce & Kids: Why Strict Alternating Care Harms Children | Psychologist Advice

“I used to applaud this possibility – twenty years ago, there were fathers who have not seen their children for several months. (…) until we saw it,” says psychologist Katarína Hatráková.

“Because I wouldn’t even think that there could be someone who, without communicating with the other parent, will agree with the lawyer that you would bring a child with a briefcase on Monday at eight and you will pick him up the second week on Monday at eight.

According to available data, the decisions of the courts on alternating care have a growing trend and further growth is expected in the future. While the nationwide average is more than twelve percent of all decisions, it is estimated to be more than twenty percent in Bratislava. We talked about what impacts have these decisions for children, as well as why the state and its system fail in this area.

Katarína Hatráková is dedicated to married and couple counseling, in the past she worked in the Children’s Diagnostic Center, she also worked in this area at the headquarters of the work of social affairs and family, where she was thrown away in June 2017 after talking about the circumstances of the Clean Day. She is a former deputy, candidate for the OĽaNO movement.

Almost twenty years, alternating childcare after divorce has been operating in practice. How do you evaluate this care model after years, is it successful?

I think not. But it is necessary to say that in the form we have in our country, it works rarely in the world.

In what sense?

In the 80s to 90s of the last century, when divorce rates were radically increased in civilized countries, of course, reflections on how to deal with the developmental childcare. There were voices that parents wanted to take care of children together. In different countries, different models have been formed on the basis of this way together.

While in other languages it together It sounded like reciprocity, ie mutual care, in our country it was translated as alternating care, ie quantitative adherence to time – strict alternation at absolutely uniform intervals.

This is not the enacted anywhere, although there are courts in the world that make decisions. The term alternate care also got to Czech and after 2000 in the Czech Republic and in the Czech Republic, a law was adopted, which has already spoken about alternating personal care of both parents.

How does alternating care work abroad? There, parents do not take the child after a week?

There is no alternation week after a week. For example, the Benelux model was that I think, the thirteenth year of the child’s age, when the parents break up, the child must not leave their residence: parents must alternate with it. It was also preferred in England or France.

What I knew cases in Germany or Italy, it was that the child went to two households, but not at such strict regular intervals as we have in our country. I registered the strictness of the week or two weeks only in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic. But I admit that I do not know the form of this institute around the world.

Photo: attitude/Andrej Lojan

So how was this strict substitution originated in our country?

The pathology that became practice in the finals was brought by reality when this law encountered a completely functional system of social and legal protection of children, in which competent people did not always work. I am talking about Boome ten to twenty -five years ago, when graduates of quick -fermented schools came from the Department of Social Work, but unfortunately, IZ rights and psychology.

These people brought a relatively large dose of inexperience. And in an informal conversation, people from within the justice will confirm that the prolonged things are in charge of the “B” judges, that is, those they considered less capable or who received this agenda for disciplinary action, a punishment. Let’s understand that the trustee things are going to do people who do not consider themselves experts.

This all joined the pressure from the opposite side – strong lawyers and aggressive parents fighting for the child – and the destruction was complete. About 2010, this created the horrors of alternating children at school with a briefcase in their hands. From my point of view, a generation of damaged children has really grown up.

Why did we admit this extreme form? Didn’t experts be alarm that we were going against children?

We beat the alarm, but about a few. I haven’t remembered some big wave of resentment of experts over the past fifteen years, rather we said it at conferences, some workshops that this is not good, but it never happened that someone would oppose it directly. Unfortunately, even from the experts who came into contact with these children.

Human things are going to be done by people who do not consider themselves experts.

Today, adult parents of young children who are disintegrating in the counseling are often the advice of the relationship and have exactly this development – the extremely difficult breakup of their parents, separation from one of the parents to his erasure from life or “incomprehensible” alternating care: this is how they call it themselves. They come up with pain inside they don’t understand. However, it is certain that its roots are in a disrupted relationship of childhood.

Even for this experience, it was from the beginning, as I got into parliament, by my effort to amend the Family Act and to incorporate “common care” into it. However, it is a direct philosophical change, a completely different view of parenting after the break -up of the partnership. Perhaps that is why she met so much in dislike, especially at the Ministry of Justice.

Finally, after many negotiations, we managed to enforce it, although not in the proposed form, and I think it will last for many years for the law to implement. Today, we have common care and alternate care as two equivalent forms of care, which should not be at all and it has not been meant and desired.

So judges can also choose joint care? What is the difference?

I think it is necessary to completely return to a change in thinking about postpartum care. We are disintegrating a lot of relationships, it is half of the families, that is, nearly half of the children grow up in incomplete families or in families that are at some stage of disintegration.

In this sense, we should separate partnership or marriage and parental relationship. The parental relationship is a key and formation for the child’s personality and for its developmental stages.

We have admitted consideration that a bad partnership will be transferred, of course, to the parental relationship, ie it is pathologized, and thus the pathological parental relationship affects children and creates a bad environment. And we have to protect the child before. Protecting means that we need to find the more pathological parents.

So we have come to the plane that one parent is an “angel” and the other “devil” and we must identify the devil and limit his impact on the child. This was the struggle of our parents, because one tried to prove to the other that he was not a good parent, and the other was defined against it and tried to prove the opposite.

And here the decision on alternating care could help, right?

But it often happened that the courts decided on alternating care precisely in cases of pathological parents, when the two did not communicate at all. They alternated the child at school on neutral soil, this idea arose around 2010 to 2013 that it will be so best that non -communicating partners do not even have to see.

And so the environment in which the child lived were not connected in any way. Indeed, since they mirrored the value difference between former partners and the current experience of worrying about the loss of impact on the child, they are often carbonated by the emotion of ignoring the other parent to hate to him. And this atmosphere was suffered by the child. It was created by the child’s defense mechanisms and in the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty could not be other than unhealthy.

However, we have many cases where parents did not hide such deep hatred, rather anger and concern, and so when the court decided here to take alternate care and when the process was finished, the “lights went out”, those people had to live it. And they usually understood after a month that it could not be – that they could not work at strictly regular intervals.

Naturally, there were natural situations that had to be addressed by searching for an agreement, and ended up with the fact that, despite the decision on a uniform time, a child with one parent was longer, with another shorter – according to needs and context – and focused on the quality of care. Thus, many of these court decisions remained unfulfilled, which again raised questions – for example, about law enforcement. But that’s another topic again.

Photo: attitude/Andrej Lojan

So if parents were able to communicate with each other, the reality of themselves led to the fact that alternating care is not a good model?

Yes. As I say, I know a lot of parents who had a decision to take care, but in the finals the child remained intersection with one parent and either see the other on weekends, or even every day, but did not sleep with him and the like.

Although they had a decision on alternating care and division into even a week, after a month or two of this strict substitution they abandoned themselves. Thus, despite the judgment, they naturally went to the above -mentioned care, where parents share their education by agreement and the needs of the child.

In the beginning, for alternating care, mainly the various civic associations of fathers fought, who could not recover contact with their own child. Many of them only got to their child thanks to her. Isn’t alternating care in such cases useful?

It is very sad that in the beginning men, but today they are also women, had to put together and had to substitute the state and point out that the state is fatally hurting them. For there was a group of people who could not enforce the basal parental right they were granted to them. So it was first of all a huge mistake of the system that he allowed it to happen. And they were hundreds of cases, today they are thousands.

Desperate people do desperate actions, so I understand that they did this in their despair, and it was really the only way to get to the child.

But for me, it is primarily a failure of the system and it is ill that it happened in this way, because they in the pain that the partial relationship destroyed them, but eventually the state, often did not see that they hurt the child’s hard duration to enforce contact with the child. But they cannot be reproached, because in that situation and in the horror they experienced, everyone would do the same.

In recent years, this phenomenon has also moved to mothers, we have many mothers who cannot reach their children because they are hindered by fathers.

Recently, the story of a father was a publicized story in the Czech Republic, who, despite the decision to take care, has not seen his child for years. How is it even possible?

This is quite common. Also in Slovakia we have very many decisions of the courts on alternating care, where one of the parents does not see the child at all. There are so fatal stories and the state puts his head in the sand and supports this illegality. Since the Ministry of Labor knows about it, the Ministry of Justice knows about it, the Judicial Council, the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Prosecutor General’s Office knows about it. I know because I talked to representatives from each of this office.

Everyone in this state knows it. I do not even know whether there is an office in Slovakia who did not have such a case. So, it happens not only in the Czech Republic, it is also happening in Slovakia, it is such a pandemic and it is the despair that those people experience. It was once more massive fathers, today it is almost one to one, they are experiencing mothers, and they also establish civic associations and try to recover the rights granted. And why is that? Because the system fails.

How is it possible that these parents have a court decision in their hands, but they cannot recover? After all, time goes against them.

Yes, it’s terrible, because the child is growing and no one will return that time. What can they do about it? It is difficult to find an answer, those people know that the system will not help them because they have already turned to all institutions.

Because when they have a court decision that is not made in their hands, because the other parent is defending it, they naturally refer to a higher court, submit various types of complaints to the Public Defender of Rights, give suggestions to the Commissioner for Children, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Labor, many of them are in the presidential office.

This is what people can do about it and they do it. The problem, however, is that the institutions do not answer at least half of the cases and in the other half of the answer, but so they wash their hands with Pilate: the most common answer is that it does not fall into their competence. However, they will not say, the competence of who it falls, or have a few complaints about decisions of different levels of courts and the answer of the institution is “let them confidently to court” and similar mockery.

It is clear from the many responses of the authorities that the authorized workers do not even read – the understanding of the complaint itself. In short, most of the answers to complaints and suggestions are that the institution you have turned to can do nothing.

And he really can’t?

Minimum Children Commissioner, Public Defender of Rights, Social Services Inspection – and ministries have the competences and could intervene.

So we have a group of parents who cannot recover their parental rights and nothing happens?

In the legal level it is toothless and desperate. Already today we have many clients of the system who, when they have the power and go on, file complaints against the European Court of Justice. From there they will be answered that their rights are violated, but at the same time they have an answer from our human rights institutions that their rights are not violated.

From how many of these cases I know, I can say that these parents remain relying on the natural passage of time that their lives move and change their situations. By ripening, children grow, someone is healthy, someone is sick, on various occasions and fateful meetings the situation can change after years.

It is extremely sad and it is very demanding stories that never solve the system, always solves only life. But then I ask what the system is here at all? Because it employs a lot of people, many unnecessary people costing extremely a lot of money.

So far, we have looked at alternating care more from the parent – where is the child? Are there children who can work in this model without any problems?

They can, if the most basic condition is met, if parents have a good parental relationship: they communicate together, support, perceive the child, spend some time together. Then the child can handle it.

But this is rather an idealistic model. If such parents are, then they do not actually live in the alternate as we know it. They get it into something normal and natural that the child is center of charge with one parent, then with the other, because in the meantime it grew up and the secondary school is closer to the other parent and so on.

Doesn’t it come out that alternating care is more of a kind of partner revenge?

Yes, even at some time it was that alternating care did not pay alimony, so it was often a purposeful decision. Often it was a kind of penalty of fathers: I will not pay you for children and we will have a substitute.

However, such cases have ended over time by taking care of the children, and over time they remained with her, because it turned out to be what appeared to be purposeful from the beginning. But today it is no longer so, alimony is already paid even with alternating care.

Photo: attitude/Andrej Lojan

What does a child who has become an object of handling accounts between partners carries in life?

The development of personality goes through phases. A child of younger school age, in the period of kindergarten and first degree, has perceived basic emotions, learns to work with them, but learns it in the social context that his parents create.

At that time, the child lives not only from relationship custody with her mother and father, but also from the common relationship of his parents. He perceives the communication of parents, so perceives the female and male pattern. When they receive this pattern, they create self -esteem in a healthy way, which is the spine of the personality.

And this is exactly what children whose parents have a pathological parental relationship and zero communication.

Even an adult is hard to imagine how he could manage to work in the mode that one week lives elsewhere, with another kind of relationships, with a different style of education, another working environment, and another week elsewhere with completely different people and different quality of relationships. Can the child process it?

This was a frequent argument in discussions about alternating care: Try it. Let’s try it as adults. However, we cannot even try it, because even if we did, it would be a level that we decided for it ourselves. We decided to try it and the moment of the decision is crucial because the child will not experience it.

It will not decide so much. It is decided. Now you will be with your mom, now you will be with dad, pack up things, and if you forget the textbook, we will equip you two. Those children who come on Monday morning with a suitcase to school are so vulnerable. They are often victims of mockery and bullying. Here you can see that impossibility of adults instead of getting to the essence, we are still looking for some great mechanisms that will help.

They discover are the view that alternating care is the most fair solution after the divorce.

What is justice? And for whom? For children? For parents? These views are a theory without knowledge, without the perception and feeling of the issue. Twenty years almost a day in the counseling, I meet people who live. Experience with them leads me to the belief that the most important thing in addressing this issue is humility. Humility to life, the story of others that is also theirs. I can only accompany them in their own way to handle the intersections they hit and find the right direction.

Children who come on Monday morning with a suitcase to school are so vulnerable. They are often victims of mockery and bullying.

And especially, I am on their journey through the voice of a child who often do not hear there in their pain. They will find the most fair solution on the road. If it is a substitute for them, okay, I accept it. But those for whom it would be the alternation after a week, I haven’t met such.

Although I used to applaud this possibility: twenty years ago, the fathers who had not seen their children for several months were the center of gravity. When alternating care came, we thanked God for the great idea. Until we have seen how it is done.

For I wouldn’t even think that there could be someone who, without communicating with the other parent, will agree with the lawyer that you will bring a child with a briefcase on Monday at the eighth and you will pick him up the second week on Monday at eight. Without imagining a small seven -year -old child with packed things in the school corridor.

Did the child and his ability to handle this?

When the first decisions came and we started to ask judges and collision guardians, the answer was that it would be seen over time. But the baby doesn’t even have to cry, it will click that it will last a while, and then it bursts.

In principle, no one is seriously interested in the issue of the suffering of children, the institutionalized violence we commit.

For years I have a little girl in front of my eyes, one of the first brutal stories, when my parents who had a daughter in alternating personal care enjoyed at the beginning, as their seven -year -old daughter handled, what is fine and is still a unit. The girl went to one school in the city, the other school in the village, everywhere other classmates, in one household she had siblings, she had no one in the other. Everyone was happy, the little girl was honestly packed every week.

And when she was eleven, she started smoking marijuana. Today she is an adult young woman who told me about her personal disclosion that she never belonged anywhere, that she was just visiting everywhere. He asks what home it is, he doesn’t know what it is when someone really likes someone.

At the beginning, everyone was satisfied. Parents replaced several lawyers, the situation of the child knew several judges who decided, knew about it by collision guardians, three psychologists. They employed a whole team of people, and the child itself was employed by another number of people who helped her get out of mental problems.

Basically, we were making new clients.

We produce them for other systems. The girl came into conflict with the law for the first time at thirteen, so she got into the system of the Ministry of the Interior, in the meantime she was threatened with Reedukačka, so she would be in the system of social affairs.

By being under the supervision of psychiatrists, she employed a health system and now the question is how it breaks up or will be disabled for psychiatric disorders. The girl will be a whole life in the social or health system and we pray not to be in Justice.

Photo: attitude/Andrej Lojan

I now think of the issue of children in the autism spectrum, the number of which is growing. We know that, for example, in schools they experience overloading and need to relax at home in a safe environment. How can they find it if the homes have two? Do the courts take into account the health of the child?

No, they don’t take into account. But the parents caused it a bit themselves. Because in the crazy time after 2010, when many lawyers were completely broken down, they advised clients everything and many children were pathologized in this way. The child responded to the disintegration of the family with sadness, fear, fear, escape into himself, so he was immediately diagnosed that he was autistic. It was not so, it was a normal reaction to the pain it experienced.

And so different types of paper, diagnoses were produced, looking for psychologists who write the right diagnosis. The courts were overwhelmed and stopped taking into account it. They are rather judges of individuals who have studied this issue, they are interested in it, they know more about it, but it is rather exceptions, certainly not a rule.

We talked about smaller children – as is the case with older children? To hear the argument that we wanted to go from each other earlier, but we waited until the children were older. Comes with age and better managing the breakup of parents?

From my experience, the breakup of my parents is a problem regardless of age. Parents’ communication is important – how they let the child know. There are small children who can do it and who can not handle it are the great children who understand, perceive it, and big children who have a huge problem. It is important to communicate the situation and the dignity of the parental relationship.

If we accept that alternating care is not a successful project, why do we continue to stay in it? Isn’t it better to end it?

I hope for that. And when we presented an amendment to the Family Act in terms of common care with the public defender Robert Dobrovodsky, this was exactly what the intention was: that alternate care in the brutal form we have in which it is over.

I hope that there will be a reform, and when it gets common care into reality over time and gets into the decision -making practice of the courts, we will be able to amend the Family Act again and to completely abolish the AC -Care Section.

The fact that this is not happening now is because the issue of the suffering of children, the institutionalized violence we commit on them, is basically nobody seriously interested. We are dealing with a boulevard – when a child jumps under the train, or when the Prosecutor General’s Office accidentally finds out that children suffer from re -education centers. But even in such a case, there is nothing more serious except for two presses.

The theme is constantly characterized by sliding on the surface, declaration. Maybe because there is no applicant yet. Children grow up quickly, the suffering they have experienced is rather quiet, hidden, if they solve it, so discreetly. When the first lawsuits of such children come to childhood destroyed by the system – more precisely by its nonsensical, duplicate and redundant processes – to the state, it may already move someone.