I love the passing of time

Let me tell you how I feel about parents who try to alienate their children from their other parent.

I think that they should be tried for perjury if they lie to a court. And, I think that they should be supervised with their children until they can prove that they’ve learned how detrimental that can be to their child and prove that they care enough about their child to stop doing it.

During their divorce, my husband’s ex filed for a restraining order, saying she feared he would harm her. The judge threw it out of court. There were no grounds for that. She had no evidence. He had no prior history of violence against her or anyone. Why wasn’t she at least reprimanded for wasting the court’s time? Why didn’t the courts see that she was willing to lie to get her way & disbelieve her every word from that point on? And, she still claims at every turn that he’s stalking them, even now, over 10 years later, with no proof at all. She says it to their daughter, who knows very well, now, that her father is not following her. She accuses him of it directly at least once a year.

After my stepdaughter was in school, my husband did the regular parent things. He went to back-to-school night. He met her teachers. He signed up as a classroom volunteer. You know. Regular parent stuff. His ex-wife, by the way, has never been at any parent/school event during my stepdaughter’s entire school career, so far, except for 8th grade graduation. When his ex-wife found out that he was volunteering in the school, she started keeping her daughter out of school on the days that her father was going to be there. She claimed that the thought of her father being at school made my stepdaughter so frightened and embarrassed that she became ill. :rolleyes: You see, my husband is a man and his ex-wife didn’t think that father’s were a regular sight at elementary schools. And, perhaps they aren’t in her neighborhood. Additionally, my husband is a white man and his daughter is multi-racial. His ex-wife stated that their daughter was embarrassed to have a white father.

Well, my husband knew that, if his daughter *was* having these kind of problems dealing with the reality of her racial identity, then she would have to learn how to deal with them. He suggested that their daughter attend counseling (and offered to pay for it). His ex-wife refused, but still kept their daughter out of school on the days that my husband volunteered, still claiming that she was too ill to attend. He stopped volunteering, so that his daughter wouldn’t miss any more school. But, he petitioned the court to add mandatory counseling to their parenting agreement.

During the many months waiting for the court case to come before a judge, my husband was, one day, required to pick his daughter up at school (something that her mother always refused to allow him to do) in order to bring her to an appointment with the Guardian Ad Litem. The GAL insisted that he get her directly from school. When my husband approached his daughter on the playground, as she stood amongst her schoolmates, the ones that she was so embarrassed to let know that she had a white man for a father, so embarrassed that she became physically ill, she ran up to him, held his hand & introduced him to her friends as her Dad.

:rolleyes:

I guess it is possible that she became physically ill at the thought of her father coming to her school. But, not because of her father. Rather, because she knew she’d have to face her mother, listen to her spit out her hatred of her father, be forced to agree with her as she knew she had to continue to live there. That’s really, really sad.

The courts did mandate counseling, but my husband’s ex demanded that the counseling not start until after my husband’s summer parenting time, as she didn’t want him to be able to influence the counselor against her. And, she insisted that she be the one to choose the doctor and to take my stepdaughter to her appointments. She never did. We never pushed it. We knew she didn’t have an issue with her race or with her father. She just has one with her mother. And, we try to do everything we can to give her the strength, confidence and unconditional love she needs to deal with it all.

Her mother still makes unilateral decisions regarding what school my stepdaughter attends. And, she doesn’t tell my husband about them until well after my stepdaughter has started at the new school, or until she’s already made the change, anyway. But, all she does now is complain about him being involved in his daughter’s education. She doesn’t try to hide her from him anymore.

I know so many divorced parents who do crap like this to their kids. Some are more subtle. Some are much more extreme. There are the parents who take any hesitation from their child and encourage it until the child realizes s/he can please his mother/father by saying bad things about their other parent. There are the parents who tell their children adult things about their adult relationship. There are parents who lie to their children about what happened in their adult relationship. There are parents who see their children feeling sad because they miss their other parent and turn it into ’s/he was so mean to leave us/you - he hates us/you’. There are parents who lie about sexual abuse and manipulate their children to lie along with them. Even worse, there are parents who lie about abuse and *convince* their children that abuse happened, when it didn’t.

Imagine being inside that child’s mind & living in it for the rest of your life.

All of these alienation attempts just scream out
“How dare s/he do that to me? I’ll show him/her. I’ll make my child hate him/her.”
Or, “I’m feeling sad & lonely now without him/her. I need to know that my child shares my misery, too.”
Or, “It hurts my feelings if my child loves someone that I hate”
Or, “How dare you leave me? If you leave me, I’ll hurt the child!”
Or…

And, no matter what they’re emotional issue is that’s making them fuck with their child’s psyche in order to feel better about themselves, that’s just not mature, responsible, loving parenting.

It isn’t.