Court Trumps Parenting but at what cost?

Add this to my pile of concerns over the intelligence of our courts and judges that preside therein: A Quebec judge trumps a father's grounding of his daughter because she disobeyed him. WTF? Seriously, How bleeding stupid is this judge to take away the powers of parenting?

Court quashes dad's grounding of 12-year-old daughter: "A father plans to appeal after a Quebec court ruled that he didn't have the right to punish his 12-year-old daughter by banning her from a school trip."

The ability to guide children, directing them from the harms of life and teaching them the right path is certainly the parent's job and when the parent is incapable of this I can see the courts or a CAS agency step in, but this is utterly ridiculous!

What becomes more damaging is that the father, who has custody was not supported in role by the courts as the child then opted to live with her mother, thereby removing her from his ability to ground her. The judge said "there was no reason for the punishment to stand, since the girl was now living with her mother, even though the father has custody." This undermines the parental right to dicipline the daughter, if the mother doesn't have the maturity to forbid the change of custody, the courts should have at least realized this child was setting the family up for future control issues.

Using your children is not cool!

It's surprisingly recent that I posted about this sort of thing, but I guess my ex-wife doesn't read my blog. I can't say I blame her, it might piss her off to see I use lessons I've learned from our experience as education towards others.

DO NOT TRY TO INFLUENCE OR MANIPULATE YOUR CHILDREN TO DISLIKE THE OTHER PARENT!

DO NOT TRY TO INFLUENCE OR MANIPULATE YOUR CHILDREN TO DISLIKE THE OTHER PARENT!

DO NOT TRY TO INFLUENCE OR MANIPULATE YOUR CHILDREN TO DISLIKE THE OTHER PARENT!

Do you understand?

I was recently told by my daughter that my ex-wife showed her some "evidence" of the breakdown of our relationship. It was a photo/graphic that I had created for a friend that expressed love for them. Love has many forms, a friendship can have a significant amount of love and expressing it, telling the friend is not a bad thing. I did just that and my ex-wife went as far as to invade my privacy by snooping my e-mail and computer to discover this image. That I have forgiven her for, and while she may never understand the context of the message (image) the idea that she showed this to her. My daughter's belief is that my ex-wife was trying to influence her opinion of me, discredit me. She is likely true and I am proud of my daughter for reacting with contempt for the effort.

Why? The marriage ended "officially" in January 1999. The "evidence" has been kept for nearly 10 years as a manner of tearing open the wound as she sees fit. I will not re-iterate the real reason I walked away, but the reality she will never accept is that it was never for another woman. It was for my own self-respect.