Its has taken me many years to finally establish a pattern. Alienation, a word most people would never associate with children. Alienation, I have learned has many faces. It can be in the form of texting, e-mails and the most difficult to see face to face and via phone calls. I have a very difficult time wrapping my brain around the thought of a parent alienating their children from another. I am in a very unique situation, I have lost one child to cancer and now I can only sit back and watch as my ex very effectively uses her skills in the art of parental alienation to remove the other children from my life. I refuse to play into that behavior, the problem is if you do not figure out how to thwart this behavior you watch your relationship with your child deteriorate and it is a very heart wrenching process. This is where I ask for help, as of yet I have not figured out how to deal with this situation. As I have said before, these are my crazy ex files.
It is hard to figure out where to start because as I look back this behavior has been ongoing for many years in many different forms. The marriage ended 7 years ago, thats when the behavior started. Sit back and enjoy some examples at times the alienation is hard to identify and sometimes it just stabs you right in the heart, but remember it is a process. You can't just come out and tell the children to hate your ex, you have to twist and manipulate their innocent minds one comment at a time.
I will start with one of the most recent situations, the children were at their mom's, they are all in the same house mind you and my daughter is e-mailing and texting her mother from one room to another. It was Sunday night around 10:30, Monday was a holiday and the children were due to return to me Monday afternoon and my daughter was not feeling well and e-mailed this to her mother...
Wait first let me give you the link to a website that my ex sent me, I was told that I could use a lot of the tips that are listed .http://www.helpguide.org/mental/coparenting_shared_parenting_divorce.htm
This link is a fantastic reference for you as you read through this and future blogs.
Ok back to the e-mail-
Mommy i will miss you when i maybe go to school on tuesday
love (name left out)
The Response from mommy(who by the way is about 30 feet away in the other room, a blog for another day)
I miss you each and every day that you are not home with your mother where you belong!!
I love you!
Refer to the above website link please:)
Let me translate for you- you belong with me not your father and I am so sad when you're not here with me{so you should feel bad about that and worry about me when you're at your father's}. I maybe wrong, but I don't think so.
I'm looking forward to reading more from your blog! It's funny -- my ex sent me a similar post about co-parenting and likes to point out when I'm bad at it. I find it fascinating that when two people divorce, it's like they speak different languages. I could much more easily find common ground with a person half-way across the world, of a different religion, with a cultural bias against me than I could with either my own ex or my significant other's ex. Very odd. And so, so sad.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading, The blog is funny until you stop and think how all this affects the kids.
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