As parents, it’s our job to teach our children how to be good, moral, honest and caring people – a huge responsibility for which our longer life experience hopefully kits us out for the task, but occasionally the tables are turned and despite their tender years, kids end up teaching us something profound instead. That recently happened to me.

I used to be amazed at my friend Bella’s incredible selflessness when it came to dealing with her ex and what she told her children about him. Although she had plenty to gripe about her life with him to me, she never ever said a bad word to her children about him. He stopped seeing them when they were small, but she never told them about any of the bad times she’d endured with him. I asked her why she never told them the truth, and she said that they didn’t need to know any of that – that that bad period had been between her and her ex, and she didn’t want any of that vindictiveness in her children’s lives now. As I said, I was amazed, because I’d been doing exactly the opposite.

I decided that my children’s father was an asshole and they had a right to know. I justified my bitching about him because I felt that they needed to know that he behaved in a manner which I didn’t want them to emulate when they grew up with their own children. Looking back, I can see I was bitter because my idea of a perfect family had been ruined, and I blamed him. Furious at him for not being the perfect father, I tried to redress my sense of being a victim by trying to get my children to ‘take sides’. It wasn’t a deliberately planned scheme – I just whinged occasionally about his inadequacies as a father, as a husband, as a person. I taught my children how to hold a grudge. I modeled a lack of understanding and sympathy for his problems – he suffers from bi-polar disorder, and his family life growing up was hardly a good situation for learning how to be an expressive parent. I showed them how to disregard the good things about him – and concentrate on the bad. I was bitter and depressed about how I’d been ‘duped’ for 12 years of my life. I could only see my side of things, and forgot that invariably there are always two sides to the story, and I selfishly disregarded that they were children, and didn’t have the life experience to make an unbiased decision about people themselves.

My children, however, are amazing people, and despite my bumbling parenting skills, they did come to their own conclusions. I was depressed for years, and I think I made a couple of years of their lives pretty horrible with my bitterness over my ex. They were quite angry about that for a while. I remember Ben telling me that people should be forgiven for being depressed – that depression was an illness and holding a grudge against someone because they were depressed and their behaviour wasn’t up to par was the same as holding a grudge against someone for having cancer and not being able to do the normal things. This really helped me to forgive myself for not being the perfect mother.  I told my kids what he’d said in an effort to say sorry and explain my behaviour, and it really helped – I think they started to understand.

Sadly, Ben’s own children aren’t talking to him any more. It’s awful to see how heartbroken he is over this, and it makes me all the more grateful that my children have overlooked both mine, and their father’s own faults, forgiven our foibles and focused on the good things about us. They know that we both love them in our own imperfect ways, and that’s what’s important. I’m proud of them for disregarding all the horrid things I’d told them about their father in the bitter feud between us, and for giving him a chance. I’m proud of them for understanding that life and parenting are tough and we don’t always make the right decisions or are able to be everything they want. I may still remember the bad times between my ex and me, and he may still tick me off now and again, but it is nothing in comparison to knowing that my children have become free-thinking, fair-minded people who can take people for who they are – faults and all.

My battles with my ex were between me and him. My children have taught me a great lesson about forgiveness, fairness, about seeing two sides of the coin.  I realise now that they have a right to be proud of each parent and should be allowed to make up their own minds about how they feel about someone. Children aren’t weapons to be used as ammunition to score hits over someone with whom you hold a grudge. I wish I could take back the years when I was guilty of doing this. Life is all about learning though, and I’ve learned my lesson – a lesson delivered by my four very wise children. I am one incredibly proud and lucky mum.