REQUEST NO #18

“Be nice to my grandpa and grandma, despite they were standing at divorce proceedings more on the other side. You would defend me also when I am at troubles. I don´t want to lose my grandparents.”

As lawyers and mediators, we are very often witnessing battle of parents, supported by close relatives. Let´s look at the reasons closely.

Intergenerational living is not so often now as it used to be. The family live mostly as a family unit: in a model of parents and their children. Nevertheless, despite we are adult and we have our own families, we carry models of behaviour and burden of our generations.

Generation burden, patterns we bring from our ancestors and we give to our descendants, plays considerable role at our behaviour in the family. Mainly in highly emotional situations, when we are not able to think rationally, we copy what we saw when we were young. Especially pathological troubles, like aggressivity, alcoholism, are transmitted to our descendants. So, if we are aware of these patterns in our family or in partner´s family, we have to be particularly careful.

Next area of conflicts is made by different styles of raising up. Family keys like faith, culture, religion, life attitude, values, do not have to be same. This is visible especially at international families.

It is natural that close family members watches the conflict or interfere to the conflict. Not because they want to harm the second parent, but mainly because they try to help the partners. If this is not possible, they stand at the side of their child. They fight for their own values, for their patterns, for their style of raise-up.

Our children hardly ever feel these fights. For them, both parents are great, and also both grandparents. Do not deny our children from maintaining contact with close relatives only because we have nothing to say with them. The grandparents in most cases do not talk to children about how bad the parents are, and they can be a calm harbour for the children and a strong base in time of fight of the parents. With this consciousness lets maintain contact of the grandparents with the children.