Battling parents should not put kids in line of fire

My parents are getting a divorce, and I’m really upset. I’m a junior at (a local high school). I have good friends, and I’m an honor roll student. My sister and I don’t know who to believe. My mom says it’s my dad who wants the divorce. My dad says she wants the divorce. My dad moved out. We hear my mom arguing with him on the phone, then she just cries. I love my parents, but I wish they’d fix this or get a divorce and leave each other alone. But we’re tired of hearing them fight and then watching my mom cry. What can we do? — N.W., Las Vegas

First, I’ve been writing this column since 2005, and this is only the second time I’ve received a letter from a high school reader. Thank you for trusting me with this question.

In my postgraduate training and work, it was once my privilege to serve a team at Arizona State University on a research project, "Dads For Life," headed by my supervisor, Dr. William Griffin. I helped write pieces of the curriculum and supervised the fathers who participated in the program.

One entire chapter of the curriculum was titled "Out of the War Zone." It’s exactly what the title implies. The research is pretty clear: While divorce is a loss for kids — sad, painful, disappointing, confusing — it is not divorce, per se, that injures children. What injures children is watching/listening to their parents fight. What injures children is being pulled into the conflict, subtly or not so subtly being asked to choose sides. Especially ghastly is asking children to be the arbiter of who is correct or right — who has the proper and complete view of what’s going on.

My message to divorcing parents comes down to this: I’m sorry your heart is breaking. I have true compassion for the path of hell you are walking. You may in fact be experiencing a terrible injustice. But almost nothing excuses you from making your children a part of this hell!

I say "almost." The only rule that sometimes must trump the Don’t Bash the Other Parent rule is when lying or dodging a truth must cost you credibility with your child. I’m saying there are some cases when divorced/divorcing (or a married parent) is obliged to tell an unlovely truth to a child. For example, if it was the child who walked in on or otherwise discovered a parent’s infidelity, then trying to hide or lie about this would not be a good thing. If Mommy or Daddy is on the 5 o’clock news getting arrested for a crime and later going to jail, I cringe to think that you’d try to convince your child he/she was going to Europe for a year on a study grant.

But those are extreme cases. In virtually every other case, the specific misdeeds of the spouse you are divorcing should only come from the mouth of that spouse, and then only when every specific truth is due to the child(ren).

What can you do? That depends on the norms and qualities of the relationship you have with your respective parents. Let me explain:

If you have a quality relationship with your mother/father of good faith, then it’s time to ask for a meeting. Let this meeting be individually with your mother, then again individually with your father. Tell them, simply and straightforwardly, that you have a request: While you understand that they don’t like each other very much right now, you’d like the courtesy of not having to listen — live or over the phone — to them argue or fight. Ever. You claim that right.

Or … if you don’t trust a quality relationship, that is, if you think making the above claim outright would provoke their ire, then try it a different way. Tell them that you’d like to see a therapist! Yes, you heard it right. That will drop their jaw. Tell them, "This divorce is so hard on me, and I’d like to go to therapy." Use those exact words. The therapist, then, can help you talk to them.

In the meantime, I offer you the following link: www.divorcenet.com/states/texas/txart32. It was written by a Texas family lawyer named Rob V. Robertson. I use it with my patients all the time. It’s a Bill of Rights for children whose parents are divorcing.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns also appear on Sundays in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Contact him at 227-4165 or skalas@reviewjournal.com.