BPD obstructing medical/mental health

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

I am frustrated and wanted to ask how you guys go about getting medical and mental health for you children with a coparent who is BPD.

The mother of my children has uBPD. Both of my children have special needs. My youngest, S6 has ADHD, ODD, and Anxiety. Their psychiatrist is now suspecting Autism. He was sent to alternative school for assaulted students, school staff, and destroying school property. I have been trying to get help for over a month and she keeps on playing the stops.

The psychiatrist is the onlyone that is still seeing us. His therapist fired us becuase "you guys need to have a fix schedule on both houses." Sure, in an ideal work former spouses can come to an agreement. BPD's idea is my schedule or the high-way. She to pick them up after school every day (this means her 17 year old, their half-sister, would take care of them), wants to do no homework with them, let them play mature-rated video games, and lets them sleep whenever. I try to build a schedule proper for their age with homework time, set bed time, and restricting video games to age-appropriate games. What am I supposed to do? If I yield to her, I will have endless frustration picking up their belongings, getting their homework, getting clean clothes, etc.

I am tired. My son just had another incident where he hurt 3 students and 2 teachers during after-school care. He is expelled and they recommend one-to-one support. I tried making appointments with therapist and psychiatrist, but the ex cancelled them saying I didn't give her proper notice. I emailed her as the decree states and asked her to waive the stipulated waiting time for appointments due to an emergency. She says I didn't give her notice and cancels them, despite the recent event. She blames me telling me it all happens on my time. Sure, I bet it does. I try to give them stability, not caos and free rule.

Please, can someone share how they deal with issues like this situation?

[trying2coparent]

I am frustrated and wanted to ask how you guys go about getting medical and mental health for you children with a coparent who is BPD.

The mother of my children has uBPD. Both of my children have special needs. My youngest, S6 has ADHD, ODD, and Anxiety. Their psychiatrist is now suspecting Autism. He was sent to alternative school for assaulted students, school staff, and destroying school property. I have been trying to get help for over a month and she keeps on playing the stops.

The psychiatrist is the onlyone that is still seeing us. His therapist fired us becuase "you guys need to have a fix schedule on both houses." Sure, in an ideal work former spouses can come to an agreement. BPD's idea is my schedule or the high-way. She to pick them up after school every day (this means her 17 year old, their half-sister, would take care of them), wants to do no homework with them, let them play mature-rated video games, and lets them sleep whenever. I try to build a schedule proper for their age with homework time, set bed time, and restricting video games to age-appropriate games. What am I supposed to do? If I yield to her, I will have endless frustration picking up their belongings, getting their homework, getting clean clothes, etc.

I am tired. My son just had another incident where he hurt 3 students and 2 teachers during after-school care. He is expelled and they recommend one-to-one support. I tried making appointments with therapist and psychiatrist, but the ex cancelled them saying I didn't give her proper notice. I emailed her as the decree states and asked her to waive the stipulated waiting time for appointments due to an emergency. She says I didn't give her notice and cancels them, despite the recent event. She blames me telling me it all happens on my time. Sure, I bet it does. I try to give them stability, not caos and free rule.

Please, can someone share how they deal with issues like this situation?

[Rubies]

Take documentation of the issues with your son from the school and from MH professionals, documentation of her cancellations and her lame excuses, package it and put it before the judge as soon as possible for custody modification.  Or at least for the judge to explain what her parental duties are and what "putting the children first" means.

For me it was a $12 filing fee, half a day getting to and being at the court house, and great satisfaction in having boundaries, actions and consequences explained to a BPD by the judge.

[livednlearned]

My son was dx'ed ADHD/ADD combined type, ODD, and depression/anxiety when he was 9. My ex stonewalling and obstructed in very sly ways.

My lawyer gave me confidence to do what was best for my son, even if N/BPDx made every step of the way difficult. I documented all of it.

If your child is assaulting people, there is a very good chance that a court would back you up if you made some unilateral decisions. The tricky part is that mental health professionals may not work with your son without consent from both parents. I found that child psychiatrists are very familiar with BPD and high-conflict personalities, and are worried about getting dragged into a law suit.

One thing you could do is to ask the guidance counselor at school, or school psychologist, to recommend someone. Then write your wife an a email stating the severity of the problem, listing the number of times she has denied your son access to mental health services. State what you are going to do, and make it clear that you are doing this based on the severity of the problem.

When your child is struggling with serious issues, it's going to be a matter of time before this has to go before a judge. It just has to. Whether you ask for sole legal custody, or medical decision-making, or whatever it is -- it's inevitable. These issues with our kids don't get better, especially when puberty hits. They need these services.

I ended up with sole legal custody because of this very same issue. The judge was disgusted with my ex -- I had more emails than I needed to show a pattern of stonewalling and obstructing. Meanwhile, N/BPDx had no solutions of his own, and did nothing to counter what I was proposing. It was all no, no, and no, plus a lot of abuse and name-calling. When your kid is seriously struggling, and a parent is making it impossible to solve the problem, there is a better than good chance that the court will look favorably upon your actions.

The key is to talk to a lawyer and find out what judge you would get. Mine was truly focused on what was best for the kids. He could've been a stickler for the language in the order, but he wasn't. That's the kind of judge you want.

[trying2coparent]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm beyond frustrated  :'(. I just got word today that the psychiatrist that was seeing him is cancelling this week's appointment and any future appointments due to parents not being in agreement of treatment. I'm literally back to square one. This is 2 psychiatrists wasted, 3 therapist wasted (about to waste another one in 2 weeks, I know she'll put some breaks again). Why? She is feeding from a dumb therapist that was made the off-mark letter stating our houses have to be stabilized before any treatment can be made. No ___! She has 15+ tardies and 15+ absences on average the past 3 years. She doesn't do homework with them on her house. A member of her household had to call the cops on January because of Domestic Violence. Yet, she is crazy enough to say we need to work together to stabilize our households. What the heck? How am I supposed to work with that if everything she does goes against stability? Not to mention, she did not took the coparenting (stabilization) course that was court ordered in December!

Sigh, S6 hit 6 students, 3 staff members, and his brother last week. No one is willing to help and everyone has cancelled due to her BPD tendencies. Time to get the lawyer to take this to court.

[livednlearned]

You must be very tired, trying2coparent. It is hard to take care of our kids when they are struggling, only to discover our greatest adversary is the other parent. And all the legal headaches that go with this. It's important that you take care of yourself, otherwise this will burn you out. Even if it comes at someone else's expense, taking care of yourself has to be a priority right now.

It is doubly exasperating that psychiatrists won't work with your S because of conflict between parents. I am almost certain the psychiatrist my son is seeing would never have taken him on as a client if my ex was involved. They don't want to get sued, and know that treatment is all but impossible. Meanwhile, the kids suffer.

Are you planning to ask for full legal custody?

I'm also wondering if your son would benefit from an IEP (individualized education plan) at school to protect him? Is his behavior causing his grades to suffer? If so, and he is not meeting grade level, the public schools are legally obligated to have him assessed by a school psychologist. Every school has a different process, but he would be evaluated by a team of people in the school and then they would go through a rather slow and bureaucratic process to see what kinds of support services he needs, whether an IEP (legal protections that include services), or a 504 (accommodations, no legal protections). There is usually a special needs coordinator at the school that you could talk to. We also have a section here on bpdfamily that might be helpful: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=114267.msg1125531#msg1125531