Dwayne Wade and his Miami Heat may have lost the NBA championship to the Dallas Mavericks, but he won a teachable moment with his sons and a victory for fathers’ rights.

Wade recently was awarded sole custody of his two sons, ages 9 and 4. He stated in a column he wrote for Newsweek that he didn’t know what he would do this Father’s Day, but he felt like “every day has been like Father’s day,” since his sons began living with him two months ago.

Hope here is that Wade can use his recent basketball experiences to teach his sons humility and respect for the opposition. He and LeBron James failed to display these two virtues in both the aftermath of “The Decision,” and in mocking Dirk Nowitski when he played with the flu in Game 4 of the finals.

James is 25, Wade 29, so their immaturity can be forgiven. Wade, in particular, deserves a free pass. He has displayed uncommon maturity in his fight to maintain a relationship with his sons during his bitter divorce and custody battle with Siohvaughn Wade.

Both sought sole custody and the contentious divorce proceedings included claims of infidelity, sexually transmitted disease, wacky religious views and abuse. In the end Cook County (Illinois) Judge Renee Goldfarb ruled in Wade’s favor and in part, stated the following, according to the Huffington Post:

“This court finds that (Siohvaughn Wade) has embarked on an unstoppable and relentless pattern of conduct for over two years to alienate the children from their father, and lacks either the ability or the willingness to facilitate, let alone encourage, a close and continuing relationship between them.”

Fathers rights advocates are calling the Goldfarb ruling a cautionary warning that if you alienate your children from your ex, you risk losing custody. There have been a few like cases in recent years. In one this May, the New York Post reported that a Long Island father was awarded sole custody when a Suffolk Supreme Court Judge ruled the mother tried to brainwash her four kids by lying about their father. The Judge cited such outrageous behavior as a scheme that involved plastering stickers at their apartment complex alleging the father was a deadbeat and their kids had to eat at the food pantry. The father had never been behind on child-support. Judge Carol MacKenzie ruled the mother would only have limited visitation until she undergoes psychiatric help.

In the Wade case, Judge Goldfarb was also swayed by Dwayne Wade’s assertion that he wanted his sons to have a “healthy relationship” with their mother and will work with her to establish a visitation schedule.

This is how it should be. Spouses divorce each other, not the children. A few courts are now sending malicious and vindictive ex-spouses the message that they need to compartmentalize the hate and spite they feel for their ex in order for their children to benefit from a positive relationship with both parents. Naturally, courts must restrict contact if there is evidence of physical or sexual abuse or self-destructive behavior like excess drug and alcohol use. But, there have been so many cases of one spouse poisoning a child’s attitude toward the other parent by false accusations of physical or sexual abuse that a new term in the child-custody lexicon has been coined—Parental Alienation Syndrome.

PAS is a disorder in which a child’s hate and denigration of a parent has no justification, but rather stems from brainwashing by one parent. Some fathers’ rights activists want this syndrome added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders which would allow for insurance coverage for counseling and systematic research.

Dwayne Wade was recently named to President Barack Obama’s Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative, a program designed to encourage personal responsibility in fathers. He can be not only a highly visible role model for children because of his basketball skills, but also a role model for single and divorcing dads. He states as much in his Newsweek essay, “I just want people—men and women of color in particular—to hear my story and know that their children need them and that it’s their responsibility to be there for them. We have to step up as men and do our part. There are no excuses.”

None.

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