In Whose Best Interests?

Sometimes I think that parents are stupid, but then I see how much worse shrinks are. Child therapist Ruth Bettelheim writes in a NY Times opinion column:

Although the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have a right to meaningful participation in decisions affecting them, adults, from some misguided notion of protection, often seek to keep children from making choices in custody matters. ...

Once children have reached the age of reason — generally agreed to be about 7 — they should be recognized as the ultimate experts on their own lives. ...

To remedy this, all parenting plans should be subjected to mandatory binding review every two years. The review should include a forum for children to speak privately with a mediation-trained lawyer. ...

The lawyer should meet with all family members, individually and as a group, to ensure that the child’s wishes are respected in the next two-year parenting plan. Children’s wishes should be decisive, in place of those of experts and judges, as long as at least one parent agrees with them. ...

New York became the last state to adopt no-fault divorce. But children’s rights are still routinely ignored.

Wow, a 7-year-old child should tell his parents what to do because of a UN declaration of child rights? And because NY now has no-fault divorce? But it is all okay because some lawyer is going to supervise those decisions? She displays the naïveté of a 7-year-old child herself.

The current system is so crazy that I guess I should encourage anyone who wants to change it.