Many years ago when I was a home health nurse I meant a very beautiful and loving woman. She was a mother of four beautiful daughters and two step children.

She and I became very good friends while I was tending to her father in her home.

She had a story to tell regarding her second marriage. Apparently her ex had molested her daughters. She had married a man who had an ex-wife who had done the same to his children.

His divorce was very high profile because he was in television. Hers may have been too because she had been a model and the molester ex had been an airline pilot.

Despite all of the nasty her ex had done with her daughters this lady was an amazing woman and mother.

I remember one day when she talked to me about her step daughter. She said her step daughter had been trying to connect with her Mom and she wondered why someone would try to connect with a mother who had molested her.

After what I have gone through with my children I have realized one thing and that is that in a broken family there is many times one safe parent and one who is not safe.

The safe parent takes the majority of the responsibility for raising the children. Many times doing so with little financial support from the unsafe parent.

The safe parent sacrifices many things and never mentions the sacrifice because they sacrifice because of love. The unsafe parent always keeps a tally of every sacrifice they make to use it for leverage.

The safe parent has a home which always has an open door for their children and open arms to extend a hug. The children’s friends are always welcome in their home.

The unsafe parent makes money stand as a gate keeper to their home and if the child is not working, or the child support is not excessive, the child is no longer welcome in their home.

The safe parent loves and forgives. The unsafe parent screams at the slightest thing that is out of place in their home because it isn’t about love, it is all about things for them.

The child inherently realizes that the love of the safe parent is assured. The unsafe parent is not seen as a bastion of acceptance.

So which parent does the child try to impress and which parent does the child constantly try to establish a bond of love with?

The unsafe parent.

If you are a safe parent you may think this is crazy. I know because I am the safe parent in my family. My children know without a doubt that I love them. They know that I will continue to do so.

They have doubted that of their Dad because he left when they were young.

He was excellent at one thing. He left me but he never left them. He continued to see them each and every weekend even when I begged him to let them stay with me.

Nonetheless they still doubt his love and they probably always will because an unsafe parent may love but they don’t love in a way that children understand.

It is this misunderstanding that children keep trying to figure out and that is why many times they choose to go live with an unsafe parent.

If you are a safe parent and can not understand why your children keep loving the unsafe parent just love your children anyhow. Eventually when they get older they start figuring it out and the love will come back.

The best part of that is by the time the grandchildren come they know who is the safe parent to babysit the grandchildren.