The malls in Trinidad have out­done them­selves this year. The dec­o­ra­tions are beau­ti­ful and can eas­i­ly put even the Grinch in­to the hol­i­day spir­it. The ex­cite­ment on the chil­dren’s faces when they see the lights, trees and even San­ta’s work­shop is worth bat­tling the traf­fic and thou­sands of shop­pers.

There are so many things to be done as the hol­i­day draws clos­er, let­ters to San­ta to be writ­ten, gifts to be bought, bak­ing to com­plete and cook­ies and milk to be left out. Sounds like we are al­most set for the most won­der­ful time of the year, but not every­one shares this joy.

I know sev­er­al par­ents who will not be able to see their chil­dren’s eyes light up at the sight of all the amaz­ing dec­o­ra­tions. There are some who will not wake up on Christ­mas morn­ing to the ex­cit­ed shouts from lit­tle voic­es as gift pa­per is ripped open and San­ta’s wish list comes alive.

In­stead, they will sit sad­ly, won­der­ing what their child is do­ing, what presents they got, whether they are hap­py and most im­por­tant­ly, whether their child was think­ing of them as much as they were think­ing of their child.

Sad­ly, it seems like these par­ents are few and far be­tween but these par­ents are grow­ing in num­bers and are more com­mon than we re­alise. I per­son­al­ly know so many fa­thers who grieve dur­ing these hol­i­days and very few un­der­stand or ap­pre­ci­ate the heartache that the hol­i­days bring.

There is a grow­ing mis­con­cep­tion that the par­ents, par­tic­u­lar­ly fa­thers, who do not get to share spe­cial oc­ca­sions with their chil­dren are “dead­beat dads”.

John Pub­lic is led to be­lieve that these fa­thers do not pro­vide for their chil­dren, do not make them­selves present to spend time with their chil­dren and could not be both­ered about the well-be­ing of their chil­dren.

Agree­ably, there are a few that are very fit­ting of that de­scrip­tion. But the ma­jor­i­ty are not. No one talks about the fa­thers who pay their month­ly main­te­nance on time, who show up dili­gent­ly for ac­cess arrange­ments and who even at­tempt to fight the sys­tem for more ac­cess than they cur­rent­ly have.

There are fa­thers who are work­ing two jobs to en­sure their chil­dren have ex­act­ly what they need, but these fa­thers are not on­ly fight­ing a le­gal sys­tem; they are fight­ing moth­ers who are will­ing, able and hap­py to use their chil­dren as pawns.

The grow­ing trend is the abuse of the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act. Sud­den­ly, fa­thers/hus­bands who were nev­er vi­o­lent are now a threat to­wards their for­mer spous­es and their chil­dren.

Pro­tec­tion or­ders are no longer used as a shield against vi­o­lence but rather a sword for a par­ent to in­flict the max­i­mum amount of dam­age. Yet, seek­ing pro­tec­tion or­ders by ex­ag­ger­at­ing and cre­at­ing sce­nar­ios of abuse is just the be­gin­ning.

Par­ents are al­so will­ing to con­di­tion their chil­dren in­to be­liev­ing that the oth­er par­ent doesn’t care about them, doesn’t love them, has moved on with their life and is over­all a bad par­ent that they need­ed to be pro­tect­ed from. In some in­stances, chil­dren are forced to take the side of one par­ent over the oth­er. No one con­sid­ers the long-term phys­i­o­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al dam­age this be­hav­iour does to a child.

The gifts un­der the Christ­mas tree, the trips to malls, the bribes of end­less fast food and sweet treats may work as short-term bribes when it comes to chil­dren. Yet, whether chil­dren are able to speak up or not, chil­dren do wor­ry about the par­ent they do not see, they wor­ry about whether they are loved and cared for, they wor­ry about the es­trange­ment in their re­la­tion­ship with the par­ent. The most un­for­tu­nate part of a child’s wor­ry is that they have no one to share it with.

With Christ­mas in the air, per­haps par­ents can at­tempt a more mean­ing­ful gift this year. The abil­i­ty to have both par­ents share parts of the hol­i­day with their chil­dren, mi­nus the re­sent­ment, an­i­mos­i­ty or guilt trips that chil­dren usu­al­ly have to wit­ness. Give a Christ­mas gift that al­lows chil­dren to un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate that de­spite di­vorce or sep­a­ra­tion, both par­ents are a team when it comes to their chil­dren, and that their chil­dren are deeply loved and cared for, even though they no longer live un­der the same roof.

Par­ents should be able to talk and de­ter­mine a sched­ule that al­lows both to en­joy the hol­i­days with their chil­dren and have mean­ing­ful con­tact hours. In­stead of the usu­al ap­proach, which is thou­sands of dol­lars paid to lawyers to ex­change tense and ag­gres­sive let­ters de­bat­ing ac­cess arrange­ments.

Chil­dren do suf­fer from di­vorce or sep­a­ra­tion. They are dragged in­to adult sit­u­a­tions in which they have no con­trol and very of­ten are not en­ti­tled to any opin­ions or thoughts.

Yet, adults ex­pect that chil­dren will adapt to the changes with lit­tle re­sis­tance. Adults are al­lowed to be­have poor­ly, throw tantrums and act pet­ty dur­ing di­vorce pro­ceed­ings or child-re­lat­ed ap­pli­ca­tions in court. Chil­dren, on the oth­er hand, must be prop­er and well-be­haved at all times, even though the de­ci­sions tak­en by the adults throw their lit­tle worlds off-bal­ance.

For peo­ple go­ing through di­vorce or sep­a­ra­tion, the best Christ­mas gift this year may be con­sid­er­ing what makes your chil­dren hap­py and cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where the chil­dren can have mean­ing­ful re­la­tion­ships with both par­ents.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com