“Well, after conducting all the interviews and carefully weighing her findings, the assessor will render an opinion concerning the parenting of your children.”

“I’m sorry. How the—”

I was gobsmacked. Since even before my children were conceived, I had done everything within my power to be the best possible mother, and now a cog in the machinery of a system I could no longer trust was going to determine their fate based on a handful of interviews.

We were no longer dealing with mere financial assets. These were my children, and a total stranger was going to decide what was best for them. Who knew what sort of baggage and biases the assessor would bring to our situation?

In the real world, when you hire someone and you’re paying the bill, you’re allowed to question their tactics. You can take measures to ensure their biases don’t hinder their judgment. You have a right to make sure you’re getting what you paid for.

But not in the world of third-party assessments. There, I’d have to surrender total control to an intruder in my life, stand by silently as she pried into my life, and foot the bill at the end of it all.

I felt suddenly disoriented; my vision became fragmented and droning filled my ears—a panic attack.

“I can’t talk about this right now,” I said. The cordless phone fell from my clammy hands and I ran to the kitchen sink, where I bent forward and shut my eyes against the rush of nausea.

Why was this happening? What had I done to deserve this? Everything in my life was slipping away, and just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, there was this.

I have no idea how long I stood at the sink, sweat-soaked and trembling, before the telephone rang again.

“Karen? Are you okay?” It was Sandra.

“No, Sandra. I’m not okay. In fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never been worse.”

“Please don’t worry, Karen. This’ll all turn out. You just need to put your trust in the system.”

“I see. And what has the system done for me lately, Sandra? Has it held Tom to his promise to sell me the company? Has it excused me from challenging his ridiculous attempt to force me out? Has it moved me any closer to a settlement with Tom?”

“These things take time, Karen.”

“Time? Time is money, Sandra, and your precious system is burning up my money like there’s no end of it. Tell me, how much is this assessment going to set me back?”

“It’ll be about $20,000.”

“Total?”

“Each. Twenty thousand for you, $20,000 for Tom.”

“Great. I’m hoping that’s the last of the bad news. So what’s the good news, Sandra?”

“Well, the assessment, of course. Sure, it’s kind of expensive, but it’ll make sure we get the best outcome as far as the children are concerned. I just can’t imagine anyone not finding in your favor.”

I could feel a swell of anger beginning to rise in my temples. Once again, my fate was in the hands of a system that had let me down time and again. As I’d already seen, professional titles and designations offer no guarantees of wisdom or common sense.

With my fragile life in her hands, my lawyer was running amok. She sure didn’t seem to have my best interests or those of my children at heart. She couldn’t have. If she had, surely she would have found the wisdom to put an end to all of this.

No stone unturned.

By all indications, that was the guiding philosophy of Mary Anne Doolittle. She seemed relentlessly determined to find any aspect of my being that could be cast in a negative light.

I vividly recall our first conversation:

“Please remember, Mrs. Stewart, that it’s best for everyone involved if you answer each of my questions truthfully.”

I had felt fearful and timid in the first place. Her accusatory tone simply made matters worse. “I’m not a liar, Mrs. Doolittle,” I said meekly.

“It’s Ms. Doolittle, and I wasn’t implying that you are. But I’ve done enough of these assessments to know that each parent tends to do a fair amount of posturing. And when they lie, it usually comes back to bite them in the behind. If one parent lies and the other tells the truth, my decision usually becomes pretty clear-cut.”

I wanted to defend myself against her insinuations. I wanted to tell her boldly that I was a good mother, and what right did she have to question that fact? I wanted to tell her exactly how I felt—bullied and intimidated and entirely distrustful of her and the system in which she operated—but I knew better.

Furthermore, I was full of fear. This woman—this stranger—held incredible power over me, and I’d never before felt so vulnerable and afraid.

In addition to interviewing me and Tom time and again, Ms. Doolittle spent some time (though surprisingly little) observing and interviewing our children.

She also talked to friends, teachers, principals, counselors, neighbors, the nanny, the parents of the children’s friends. …

And by the time she’d written up her first 50-page report, it seemed as though everything I’d ever done was out in the open, printed up in black and white for the entire system to peruse and to take out of context.

I pride myself on being a good mother. To be critiqued by a stranger is a horrible, horrible feeling.

I felt violated. So did my children, especially Matthew, who suffered greatly through the assessments.

“I’m going to be asking you lots of questions,” she told the kids (as Matthew later told me), “and some of those questions might be scary to answer. But it’s important you tell me the truth. That’s what your Mommy and Daddy want.

“Just remember your secrets are safe with me. I need you to trust me, okay?”

Among the things Matthew told her was that Tom sometimes had a bad temper—that when he was over at Tom’s apartment, his dad would sometimes fly off the handle over the littlest things.

Imagine my disappointment (and Matthew’s dismay!) when Ms. Doolittle included his confidential disclosure in her written report, which ended up in Tom’s hands and precipitated a very upsetting conversation with Matthew.

With remarkable effectiveness, Ms. Doolittle destroyed my children’s trust not only in her but in the system that should have been protecting them.

The report also took some potshots at me—some accurate, and some completely out to lunch. During my legal battles, this kind of misinterpretation and misrepresentation labeled as fact seemed to go on and on. To see it now happening with my kids was devastating.

Amazing, isn’t it, how in the hands of the system, a victim can be made to feel like such a criminal! Is it any wonder so many victims in our society remain silent? Between letting their perpetrators go unpunished and prostrating themselves to a system that can’t be trusted to hand down real justice, the former often seems the lesser of two evils.

The thing is, people who get divorced aren’t criminals. They’re usually good people going through an unpleasant journey in their lives.

With her report, Ms. Doolittle merely prolonged my agony. Rather than render a decision, she called for a follow-up report. In the meantime, as a standard part of the bilateral assessment, Tom and I were compelled to undergo psychiatric analyses.

All at our own expense, of course.

In his horrific imagination, Stephen King couldn’t have conceived an eerier place.

The driving instructions provided by Mountain View Psychiatrics’ receptionist brought me to an old hospital building in the city’s east end, a deteriorating gray edifice with grimy tinted windows and a liberal dusting of paint chips along the perimeter pathways.

As instructed, I entered through the south doorway. This bypassed the reception desk and took me straight into a long, dimly lit hallway lined with closed and windowless wooden doors.

Taking my leave of the daylight, I took a deep breath of the corridor’s musty air.

I followed the doorways to number 112, which stood slightly ajar. Interpreting this as an invitation to enter, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

With surprising nimbleness, a lean and ancient figure that had been sitting behind the desk sprang suddenly to his feet.

“You must be Karen.” He extended his hand. “I’m Dr. Grey.¹¹ Come in. Make yourself comfortable. Coffee?”

I stepped forward and shook his hand. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

Dr. Grey. How fitting, I thought, as I scanned the room’s decor. Gray walls, gray floor, gray ceiling. Dr. Grey didn’t have much color, either.

In all, I had three meetings with Dr. Grey.

I spent the first one just filling out forms, signing releases, and sharing a nutshell summary of my life.

That was the easy part.

As I drove to Mountain View the following week, I became suddenly enshrouded in fear.

I started thinking, “This could ruin everything. If I screw this up, I could lose the most important things in my life. I could lose my children.”

The scariest part of the psychiatric analysis was the shocking subjectivity of all the tests. For example, we started day two with some inkblot tests, Rorschach’s classic windows into the human psyche.

For some reason, I answered each of Dr. Grey’s What do you see?’s with an animal.

I see a zebra.

That’s a butterfly.

Elephant.

Walking stick.

Unicorn.

Unicorn? That’s when the second-guessing started.

What did it mean that all I could see were animals? Was I emotionally immature? Did I have problems relating to people? Did I hate my father for not letting me have a puppy when I was six?

On the last day, Dr. Grey showed me six illustrations that depicted men and women in various situations.

“Look at each picture and tell me what’s happening,” Dr. Grey said.

The first picture showed a woman in business attire standing before a desk. Sitting at the desk was a man in a suit. I thought he looked angry.

“She’s his boss. She’s come in to tell him he’s underperforming and he’ll be fired if things don’t improve.”

Picture number two showed a man handing a woman a bouquet of red roses.

“He’s trying to get out of the doghouse. He made her mad somehow and thinks he can fix it with flowers.”

So it went, with me describing the pictures and Dr. Grey scribbling his observations.

Though I tried many times to see what he was writing, his handwriting was tiny and cryptic. The only thing I was able to make out was something he jotted following my response to picture number four: “issues in her love relationships with men.”

Duh! After everything I’d been through with Tom, I’m pretty sure that went without saying.

The last illustration in the series showed a man sitting on the edge of a bed. A naked woman lay spread-eagled beside him. Her eyes were closed, and his back was toward her.

The first thing that sprang to mind was the obvious: They’ve just had great sex.

But all of a sudden, I was clutched by an irrational fear: What if I say that? Will he write me up as a sex addict?

So I lied. I said, “I don’t know. It looks like maybe she’s dead. I guess he strangled her and now he’s leaving.”

Nice one, Karen. So as not to appear “abnormal,” you twisted a perfectly happy sexual afterglow into a scene of murderous violence!

The results of my assessment came back two weeks later. In every respect I was normal, normal, normal, except for Dr. Grey’s footnote: “She appears to have issues with sex.” My one white lie came back and bit me in the behind, just like Ms. Doolittle predicted it would.

To minimize who you are as a person to what you see in an inkblot is completely unfair.

Even more unfair is having a third party with no vested interest in the outcome determine your fate.

In her second assessment of our situation, Ms. Doolittle concluded that “parallel parenting” was the best answer for our family. That meant any major decisions concerning the children would have to be made jointly by Tom and me.

It sounded great in theory, but I wonder if Ms. Doolittle considered this: How can you make major decisions with someone you haven’t spoken to for years, and someone who has vowed never to speak to you again?

Unless you have two communicative, amicable parents, successful co-parenting is difficult at best and can cause stress for all involved, especially the kids. You simply can’t force two people to get along, even for their children’s sake. And you can’t apply a template model to a singular situation with its own unique dynamics. Some kids are best with Dad, some with Mom, and most with both. Each family’s perfect scenario is unique, a fact that parenting and custody plans need to (but generally don’t) respect.

Ms. Doolittle’s recommendations were otherwise acceptable. I would receive primary care and make day-to-day decisions on the children’s behalf, and Tom would enjoy liberal access to the kids.

As such, we agreed to accept her report. Mercifully, then, the matter of child custody never had to go to trial.

I was immensely relieved a decision had finally been made and that the outcome, for once, was positive. Because ours had been such a high-conflict case, the final custody report laid out in very specific detail all of the logistics and parameters of Tom’s visitations. As such, it has proven immensely valuable as a roadmap for Tom’s and my future as parents.

I’ve become a big fan of detailed parenting plans, which can be invaluable for families trying to map out roles, responsibilities, duties, and schedules. Unfortunately, when they are ordered by the system, the process of arriving at a plan is unnecessarily painful and expensive, and it is grounded in fear. Had Tom and I gone to Ms. Doolittle on our own accord, she would most likely have arrived at her plan much more quickly with input from both parties.

Nevertheless, I was thrilled beyond words that Matthew, Sarah, and Alexandra would live with me while seeing a lot of their father.

At the same time, my resentments toward the system festered. These assessments had for the most part been a waste of time and money because the arrangement at which we finally arrived was no different from the one Tom and I had originally discussed, and because of the manner in which it was conducted, the process inflicted irreparable damage upon the children it was designed to protect.

THE INNOCENT VICTIMS

Looking back on my journey through divorce, I can see that soon after Tom’s fateful pronouncement, I became a textbook case of classical conditioning.

Every time the phone rang, my throat would tighten and I’d feel a sudden rush of anxiety.

I was just like one of those lab rats that receive random electrical shocks: Their systems remain on high alert, and their over-the-top stress levels never subside.

Naturally, I jumped in my skin when the phone rang at 3:45 on the afternoon of Friday, February 13, 2004.

I’d come home early from work to prepare for Sarah’s sixth birthday party the next day and to decorate the fairy princess cake she’d been asking for for the past several weeks.

Swallowing hard, I picked up the phone on the third menacing ring.

“Hello?”

“May I speak to Karen Stewart, please?”

The voice was unfamiliar. I swallowed again. “This is Karen.”

“Hi, Mrs. Stewart. It’s Kathy Tanner,¹² Matthew’s teacher.”

Instantly, my body let go of its tension. “Mrs. Tanner, hi. I’m sorry, I thought it might be someone else. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping we could talk about Matthew for a bit. Do you have a few minutes to spare?”

“Yes, certainly. Is Matthew all right?”

“That’s why I’m calling. I’m a little concerned about him.”

“Why? What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Stewart. He’s not hurt. I’ve just been noticing a few things I thought you should know about.”

“Things? What things?”

“When Matthew changed schools a few months back, you mentioned that you and Matthew’s father were going through a divorce, and you wanted me to let you know if I noticed any changes in him. Well, I have. He doesn’t have his usual spark, and he gets distracted easily. He also seems sullen, and a bit angry. I think the divorce is taking its toll on him.

“Today in Phys. Ed. he got quite emotional over an incident with a classmate. It took me quite a while to calm him down.”

“Matthew’s been going through a lot lately,” I said. “A lot of stuff at home.” I wasn’t trying to defend his behavior. Or maybe I was. After all, Matthew didn’t create the problem. He was an innocent bystander in all of this.

“I appreciate you letting me know, Mrs. Tanner. I’ll talk to Matthew,” I said. “A real talk.”

My concern for the children was a frequent topic in my discussions with Dr. Dennis Sinclair.

“If you remember nothing else,” he told me, “remember this: Your children need at least one stable parent in their lives. If they have that, they’ll be all right in the end. So your job at all times is to be the best mom you can be.”

“I try, Dennis. I really do. But sometimes things get so crazy with work. And with Tom.”

“Nobody’s asking you to be perfect, Karen. Everybody makes mistakes, and everybody falls down sometimes. The important thing is to be present, to let them know they’re an important part of your life and can depend on you always, especially when the going gets tough.”

I kept that advice tucked away in my mind and pulled it out whenever I felt myself slipping too far into myself—into the “poor me” place where I felt completely overloaded.

So many times, Dennis’s words and my kids kept me from going off the deep end. They inspired me to be the best I could be at the worst time of my life.

Todd was a big help too. For both me and the kids, he was a stabilizing force and a reliable reality check during a time of unpredictable, unavoidable chaos.

While I knew I couldn’t protect my children from the turmoil of my divorce, I was determined to do everything within my power to help them to get through it with their self-esteem and sense of security reasonably intact.

My thoughts turned back to my conversation with Matthew’s teacher, and I took stock of all Matthew had been through.

He had witnessed firsthand the fallout from Tom’s affair—my emotional shutdown, my days-on-end sobbing, my catatonic stupors as I sat and stared blankly at the walls.

Children know when something’s going on. We, the adult players on this stage of life, play our sordid, twisted roles, and they, the audience, take it all in. To hope or to think otherwise is simply naive.

When the kids spent time with Tom, they tended not to share what he said about me, and I tended not to ask. From the bits and pieces I picked up, though, it was clear his contempt for me was thinly veiled. I badmouthed Tom at times as well, though I tried my hardest not to because I know how harmful it is. Residing within a child is part of each parent: When you attack the parent, the child feels the sting.

If all that wasn’t reason enough for Matthew to feel insecure, there was the recent change of schools and the frequent juggling of the children between caretakers, an inevitable consequence of my trying to manage as a working single parent while going through a messy, all-consuming divorce.

Yes, I could see how Matthew might require a little more stability in his life. No wonder he was showing signs of stress at school. What kid wouldn’t? But even if things were tough and messy, I was determined to ensure that my children came out the other end confident and empowered. To make that happen, I needed to commit that much more to being there for them, to being the best I could be and to showing through my actions (and reactions) that what happens to us is far less important than how we handle it.

Immediately after his teacher’s call, I resolved to have a heart-to-heart with Matthew the very next day. While we chatted often and had a very open relationship, I knew this time I needed to delve much deeper. I needed to reach him at the very place where he was keeping all his pain bottled up.

Once Sarah’s Saturday birthday party was over, I left the girls with Bram and took Matthew to the mall.

We poked around a few shops for a while, looked at model cars in the hobby shop and Star Wars Lego sets in Toys ’R’ Us, and then we stopped in at Starbucks for a quiet chat.

We sat in the corner, as far removed as possible from distractions. And while Matthew jabbed a stir stick at his hot chocolate’s whipped cream topping, I asked him how school was going.

“Okay, I guess.” He shrugged inside his hoodie and looked completely unconvincing.

“You guess? You mean you’re not sure?” I spoke gently, with an air of lightness. I didn’t want Matthew to feel any pressure or any hesitation.

“Well, it’s kinda boring. Mrs. Tanner’s nice. She talks a lot, though. Sometimes it’s annoying, all the talking. I think I liked my old school better.”

“Yes, St. Michael’s was a good school. But you understand why you had to change schools, don’t you? You know Mommy just couldn’t afford St. Michael’s anymore.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s because of the divorce.”

“Let’s talk about that, Matthew. About the divorce. I’d like to hear how you feel about it, and what you think has been going on with Daddy and me.”

Matthew spent the next 20 minutes articulating his seven-year-old perspective on what was going on. And it was clear from his first sentence to his last that he knew everything.

“Mom, I’m scared. I love you and I love Dad and I don’t want you to not be together anymore.”

Tears began streaming down Matthew’s cheeks and mingling with the hot chocolate ring around his quivering lips.

I reached over with a tissue and dabbed his cheeks, then I gave each corner of his mouth a wipe.

“I need you to know, honey, that none of this had anything to do with you or with Sarah or Alexandra.” I felt, at that moment, a profound sadness not only for Matthew but for all children of divorce, so many of whom feel they are somehow to blame for their parents’ inability to resolve their differences.

“Then how come when I ask you what’s going on, you pretend everything’s okay? It’s like you don’t want me to know it was all my fault.”

“Matthew, please listen. If I didn’t tell you what was going on, that’s only because I didn’t want you to worry about me and Daddy. None of this was your fault. I need you to believe that.”

I had stumbled inadvertently into a trap laid with irony. In an effort to protect my son, to not burden him with the problems of his parents, I had denied his own intuition, an even greater burden that becomes more difficult to shed the older we get. It’s little wonder so many adult children of divorce are out of touch with their intuition: Their parents failed repeatedly to validate their children’s suspicions, and they repeatedly denied their children’s right to know what was going on.

Mind you, it’s just as important not to tell children too much. With Matthew, it wasn’t my place to fill in the blanks. All I needed to do was let him know that what he believed to be true really was true.

After the hot chocolate and the heart-to-heart, Matthew seemed happier. He became more comfortable sharing what he thought the truth was, and I tried at all times to validate his perceptions.

It’s so easy for us adults to get so caught up in our own pain that we lose sight of how profoundly the kids are affected. Sure, they’re resilient, but they need to be reminded of how much they are loved, and they need our reassurances that they are not to blame.

In the current system, there’s nothing that can help kids fully understand divorce. But the statistics aren’t likely to get any better, and divorce isn’t going to go away.

All of my children, especially the older two, have been changed for life because of me, my ex-husband, and the agents of the system, which victimizes children, cannibalizes their innocence, and turns a blind eye to their vulnerability.

The time has come to empower them so they do not bear the negative brunt of their parents’ divorce.

REFLECTIONS:

Your Children’s Emotional Welfare

Especially within the traditional system, divorce can be a very disempowering process. This is true for the husband and wife, particularly after they relinquish control of their destinies to matrimonial lawyers and the system of family law.

It is especially true, though, for the children who must watch their parents’ divorce unfold from the sidelines. From that vantage point, divorce becomes a breeding ground for fear, insecurity, self-blame, diminished self-esteem, a profound sense of powerlessness, and any number of other negative emotions that can take root and grow within your children’s psyches, often for life.

In the two chapters that follow, I share my Reflections on why the traditional system of divorce fails our children . . . and how a new model can help protect them.