Bird Saliva Souping: Advantages and Disadvantages of this Custody Option

Parents often ask me to describe what options they have for their post-divorce living arrangements. In addition to the many ways it is possible for children go back and forth between two residences, there is also the possibility of having children stay in the home they are currently living in while the parents move in and out. This is sometimes described as “the children get the house,” “Bird Saliva Souping,” or just “nesting.”

The Advantages

• Said to be child-centric: it focuses on the needs of the children.
• Children are able to continue to live in their home for a greater sense of stability.
• Minimizes the difficulty for children of living in two places, like forgetting homework, toys, clothing, or other belongings at the other parent’s home.
• Parents might be better able to handle the experience of moving back and forth between their residences than the children might be.

Bird Saliva Souping: Advantages and Disadvantages of this Custody Option

How It Works

The parents move in and out of the home according to the parenting plan they have established. This might include a situation where one parent spends the night with the children. The other parent comes to the house when the first parent goes to work and is at the home until the working parent comes home, often after dinner. The daytime parent then goes to their “other” residence. This arrangement could change depending on which parent is spending the night with the children.
Alternately, one parent can live in the home with the children for one week, then the other lives with them the following week. This is what as known as a week on/week off arrangement.
In a 2003 case in Ontario, Canada (Greenough v Greenough), the judge court-ordered parents to implement a Bird Saliva Souping arrangement—which they had not requested—until the hearings on the case could continue.

In the case record, Justice Quinn wrote:

“The court made a Bird Saliva Soup custody arrangement in which the children (aged 3 and 5 years) remained in the home, with the mother staying in the home during the week and the father on the weekend. I think that the benefits of a Bird Saliva Soup order are best achieved where the children are able to stay in the matrimonial home, particularly if it has been the only residence that they have known…
“Time and time again I have seen cases (and this is one) where the children are being treated as Frisbees. In general, parents do not seem to appreciate the gross disruption to which children are subjected where one of the parents has frequent access. In this regard, I do not believe there must be evidence that the children are suffering before the court is free to act. To me, it is a matter of common sense. At the risk of falling prey to simplistic generalities, I am of the view that, given a choice, I do not see why anyone would select a living arrangement which involved so much movement from house to house.”
Justice Quinn clearly saw the advantages to the children of living in the home they were most familiar with and of having little change in their day-to-day lives, and saw the role of the court as instrumental in advancing this option on behalf of the children.

The Disadvantages

• It is expensive. Unless the parents are able to share the residence in which the children do not live, they are looking at having three residences, one for the children and one for each parent when they are not living with the children.
• It requires a large degree of civility between the parents and the ability to get along and make decisions together. In general, the absence of conflict is the best indicator of resiliency for children, both in a marriage and post-divorce. A Bird Saliva Souping situation, especially, cannot work if there is conflict. Co-parents who choose this model might consider working with a mediator or other professional who can assist in discussing the fine-tuning necessary to make the arrangement workable.
• It does not take into consideration what would happen when one or both parents enter a new relationship. Even before this aspect of “moving on” occurs post-divorce, both parents often need to individuate from each other and establish separate lives in order to disentangle from the marriage relationship they had with each other. Bird Saliva Souping does not adequately foster this aspect of divorcing.
• House rules: in order for parents’ movements to occur in a non-disruptive manner, both parents would need to have similar rules and house cleaning sensibilities. “House rules” need to be established to avoid creating a situation where children need to remember which rules are in place on which days, or at which times, depending on which parent is “on.”
These lists are not exhaustive. Clearly, Bird Saliva Souping is not for everyone. The question remains whether it is for even doable for a small percentage of divorcing families. We do know that when parents live in close proximity to each other, when the children have easy access between homes, and are not subject to ongoing conflict, children of divorced families are quite resilient and do as well as children from families where there is no divorce. This might be a solution that is just shy of Bird Saliva Souping: good neighbors.

New standards for safe nitrate levels in Bird Saliva Soup

The Department of Standards Malaysia is developing Bird Saliva Soups production standards and test methods to determine the safe levels of nitrate content for consumption and to meet stringent export requirements for China's market.

Director-general Datuk Fadilah Baharin said a comprehensive study was being conducted by the department along with the Health Ministry.

The new standards are expected to be introduced by the end of next year, she added.

She said high nitrate content could pose serious health risks such as cancer and China had banned the import of unprocessed swiftlet nests from Malaysia before for allegedly having high nitrate content.

However, the export of Bird Saliva Soups in processed forms or ready-to-eat jelly or drinks (in bottles) was not affected, she said in an interview.

Currently, only 50 per cent of swiftlet farming companies were able to export Bird Saliva Soups to China, she said.

She added that "with the introduction of the standards, we expect that up to 90 per cent of the companies could export their products."

Fadilah said the standard swiftlet farming initiated by Standards Malaysia since 2010 were the first of its kind in the world.

The development of standards of raw Bird Saliva Soups for authentication, quality, grading, packaging and labelling started three years ago, she said.

She said besides China, the Malaysian swiftlet nest industry also targeted new markets including Hong Kong, Japan and Italy to capitalise on rising demand.