IT is odd how two people who were once intimate, sufficiently so to bring forth a child, can grow to dislike each other immensely. When love turns to loathe, children become trapped in warfare that can affect their development and sense of well-being.
In these highly emotional circumstances, most adults do not care how their decisions, emotions, words, deeds and actions affect their children. They might even use their children as pawns to distress and frustrate their ex-partner without thinking about what the child is thinking or feeling.
‘Access cases’ are handled by social workers and other welfare officers in Guyana. It can be difficult to decide how children will get access to their parents when they separate. The officers guide parents, and arrangements are made in the best interest of the child. When parents cannot come to a decision, the matter goes to court, where a judge sums up reports and may award primary control and custody to one parent and regular access to the other.

Many access cases brought to the Childcare and Protection Agency(CPA) have parents on both sides wanting to be heard and supported. This fact makes some cases challenging because parents fail to understand that access is not purely for their benefit. They criticize each other, turn up when they please for the child and cause disorder, argue about how much access is allowed or denied by one parent to the other or they get upset about situations they cannot control such as their ex’s new partner. The list of complaints is endless.
However, access is negotiated between adults to enable children to continue (or build) their relationship with their parents. Most adults overlook this salient point, and CPA officers have to explain that access is in the child’s best interest, not the parent. Every child deserves to know and spend time with both parents, unless a parent is mentally ill, proven to be unfit or a paedophile. Therefore, parents must show a united front and communicate openly and peacefully. The welfare of their child is at stake if they behave hostile, belligerent, aggressive or unreasonable.

When parents separate, it is tough on children; even if they do not seem to be affected physically — emotions could overwhelm them that they do not understand. They may feel their parent has separated from them and harbour the pain of rejection or abandonment or blame themselves for the separation.
Some children feel loyalty towards one parent more than the other, and some adults instigate where such loyalty should lie, through their actions and words.’ You father don’t care about you; he gone his way and left you. He having his fun’. Or, ‘You mother ain’t got time for alya children, look how she does treat you? When last you see she? What she bring and give you? She’s a waste of time, believe me’. It takes two adults to make a child, and the child is half of each parent. Children love and need both parents in their lives. They do not know how to divide their loyalty, and parents should not expect them to choose between them.

The younger the child, the more they will be affected by parents separating. Depending on age (5 to 17) and access arrangements, it would not take long for a child to learn what to say and what not to say to each parent. Or to work out how to play one parent off against the other. Children should not be placed in these precarious situations or need to develop skills to manage the complex terrain created by two feuding adults; adults who were once closely connected and supposedly in love.
The love that brought forth a child or children should ensure a stable upbringing for them, despite the separation – why not co-parent sensibly? Children deserve the best of both parents, not the worse; they strive better, are more confident and secure with positive input from both sides. Parents should decide on a set of rules and regulations that suit their circumstances and comply to them in each household. This will allow their child to feel at ease between them and confident about the arrangement.

If a child is studying for an exam, he/she should do so in both households. Not study in one home and sit down for the whole day watching movies in the other. Consistency and communication are essential to successful co-parenting as well as having an interest in what the child is doing when he/she is not in your care.
The Covid 19 pandemic has caused an influx of cases (at the CPA) where access is denied to one parent by the other. Measures were not implemented and working well beforehand, and now they have reached an all-time low. As usual, it is the children who bear the brunt of this breakdown in communication. They are missing out on a balanced childhood involving both parents. Each parent brings a unique quality into a child’s life, but jealously or leftover pain from the separation blurs clear vision and stagnates progression. In some cases, it affects child development.

Parents need to be less selfish when it involves their children’s lives and well-being. They need to see their emotional hang-ups for what they are, well-placed obstacles. The child’s welfare must come first, and all problems are resolvable if adults choose to resolve them.
If you are concerned about the welfare of a child, call the CPA hotline on 227 0979 or write to us at childcaregy@gmail.com
A MESSAGE FROM THE CHILDCARE AND PROTECTION AGENCY,
MINISTRY OF HUMAN SERVICES AND SOCIAL SECURITY