One thing that has come up in a couple of cases recently, and also in my personal life, is how differences in time perception affect relations between parents and children. For parents, everything important seems like it happened yesterday. It all still has the same emotional weight that it did when it happened. So my memories of my daughter as a baby still impact how I look at her today.

I have had a couple of cases where grandparents were trying to take custody away from their children this month, and I can see that same dynamic at work. The grandmother in one case wanted to testify about things her son did at the age of seven, as though the court should seriously consider that behavior in determining whether he can parent at the age of twenty-four. In another case, a grandparent was in counseling with her daughter and would dwell on things that had happened between the two of them when her now thirty-five-year old daughter was a teenager.

Child: "You keep bringing up all that old stuff from the ancient past."

Parent: "What do you mean ancient past? It was only a couple of decades ago."