Kids have gone NC, too. What to expect?

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

Divorce is in progress, STBX moved out 4 months ago.  Teenage kids have spent almost no time with STBX, temp orders establish their residence as status quo.  They refuse to spend time with STBX, and seldom accept calls or return text messages.

Anyone had similar circumstances?  What can I expect?

Sorry to be so vague, but STBX has a history of stalking and has followed me to this board.  Grateful for any help.

[Tansy]

Divorce is in progress, STBX moved out 4 months ago.  Teenage kids have spent almost no time with STBX, temp orders establish their residence as status quo.  They refuse to spend time with STBX, and seldom accept calls or return text messages.

Anyone had similar circumstances?  What can I expect?

Sorry to be so vague, but STBX has a history of stalking and has followed me to this board.  Grateful for any help.

[Slate78]

We are in a similar situation, kids are young teenagers. One has cut all contact with her, the other has some limited contact. We leave it entirely up to the kids, we have no choice at this point. They both came here one day and refused to go back, after several years of escalating volatility. In our case - she bombards the kids with texts/ emails, telling them how much she loves them, misses them, wants them back. Sends baby photos of them with her. Shows up at their sports with their friends (arranges to collect the friends without the kids' knowledge) to be 'part of their lives". Gets puppies/ exchange students, all kinds of things to entice them over, and goes crazy when it doesn't work. If they do ever see her, she spends a great deal of time talking about how she now has to sell her house (she doesn't work) because she was living off our huge child support payments for 14 years. She tells them that we have bought them off with all our money (!). Every visit is pressure and guilt laden and SS won't go at all now.

                                                                                                                                     

She recruits family, teachers, and friends as negative advocates. Since she lives in the neighbourhood and we don't discuss it, many of our neighbours and the kids' friends' parents and teachers ignore us. BM is great at painting herself as the victim. We receive abusive emails and phone calls from her father and husband. At least once a week, she escalates with DH - gets increasingly hysterical via text or email, begging to know what went wrong, why her kids don't love her, when they will come to see her. He father sent a really nasty email to SS last week that he had written off his family and SS was in tears. We get frequent legal letters saying that we are perpetuating Parental Alienation, that we stop the children from seeing her or answering her contact (we pay for their cellphones and they have no restrictions, she knows that but has no problem lying) and that there is no other reason the children would reject such a loving parent. She is insisting they go to therapy with her but the kids are refusing - that is our fault as well. She hasn't paid a dime for them ever in her life. We mostly try to ignore. When she asks repeatedly how to fix this, we sometimes point out that if she cooled it with this behaviour the kids might be more comfortable with her. She screams about how it's all our fault, it's so sad that they have lost their real family etc etc. Has no boundaries, no insight, no capacity for change. I live in fear and am counting down the days till the kids go to college. She stalks our home and frequently walks/ drives past, her H does too. The kids are much happier being away from her, but I worry that maybe it's true, maybe they will suffer from losing her.

She is really working the parental alienation angle and I am really frightened of that. We can't get SS to go there at all. SD will go once in a while but very much on her own terms. We have tried to force them to go, or to answer her texts occasionally just to stop her from being able to pursue this angle but I've realised that's wrong for the kids. I really hope yours doesn't go down this route - I've lost 60% of my hair with the stress of the last six months!

[Panda39]

My SO's D14 & D18 are also VLC with their uBPDmom.

D18 (Golden Child) is essentially N/C after her mom told her she would be paying for her first year of college at a private college on the east coast.  Mom told D18 that the "family trust" would pay for tuition.  Instead over winter break D18 was asked not to return to school due to non-payment.  D18 now owes $15,000... .Really?   Meanwhile mom continues to send D18 information about other colleges that she wants to send her to      D18 has since had her first semester at her local State College and has 3.75 GPA! She will succeed in spite of her mother putting her financially behind the 8Ball.

D14 (Bad Child) has been in low contact with her mom, who as recently as last week failed to show up to D14 school choir concert  :'( .  D14 has been setting and enforcing boundaries regarding what she will put up with from her mom. 

Mom has essentially alienated her daughters and she just doesn't get it.

Meanwhile we all wait to see if uBPDmom heads off to jail for fraud.

[Tansy]

STBX has not pushed the issue, but is likely plotting something with the attorney.  Seems at this point to recognize that the kids are making their own choices, but does not have a history of making well thought out decisions.

I'm concerned that the actuality of being abandoned by the children may prompt some kind of extreme reaction.

[livednlearned]

Tansy,

Any chance the kids are in therapy? No matter what (whether they spend time with BPD parent or not), the relationship they have with the other parent is going to impact them in serious ways. Typically it will start to show when they begin to date. It's a loss. Ideally, they would learn to set boundaries and deal with difficult people in a slow drip kind of way, helping them build up immunity. Of course, after a lifetime with a BPD parent, sometimes it's too much and they go NC because it's easiest. In the long term, I think it hurts them though, although I certainly understand why NC seems like the best choice.

My son is not in contact with his dad (by choice, followed soon after by court ordered termination of visitation). He has a lot of issues that will take a long time to work out. He holds people at arm's length, even though he wants to be close. Doesn't reach out to do things with friends and has spurned so many friends so many times they stopped calling.  :'(

Also suffers from depression that he tries to mask.

If you can get your kids in to see a good T, that could help them deal with the feelings that will follow them to their next relationships with significant others.

[Tansy]

Kids are in therapy, and have been for years.  It has been a long, dark time and I am still in the process of realizing just how bad things were for them.  The improvement they have shown since the separation is amazing.  I understand that their choice to go NC/VLC is not necessarily a great one for them, but I think it's better than the alternative right now.

They are both already dating.

[livednlearned]

I hope you don't end up needing an attorney to defend you. 

The little I have read about parental alienation, it is not easy to prove. There used to be this thing called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) based on work that Richard Gardner did back in the 70s (I think that's when it started to surface?). But academic psychologists rejected it because it was not based in any known psychological theory, so expert witnesses could be called in to shoot it down. Courts are aware that there is something going on in high-conflict custody battles when a child rejects a parent, but they have had a hard time proving what it is, and then recommending a way to fix it. Recently, Dr. Craig Childress started to write about an attachment theory basis for parental alienation that seems scientifically sound, but his research is very recent and hasn't made a wide-scale impact in the courts.

That's bad for parents here who are experiencing real parental alienation, but maybe helpful for you if your ex tries to take allegations of PA to court. Lesson 6 to the right has a whole bunch of posts and articles on PA if you want to sift through.

When a parent decides to take things to court, there isn't a whole lot you can do to stop that from happening. You'll need a lawyer who should give you 3 or 4 things you need to do to show the court that it's the kids who don't want to see their BPD parent, not you trying to prevent visitation. For example, if there is documentation of her abusive behavior toward them in texts and emails, you may be asked to keep that evidence. Or, you may need documentation (text, email) of you asking the kids to contact their BPD parent. Or, the kids' therapist may be subpoenaed. Or, the kids will get a forensic psych eval by a custody evaluator.

I recommend consulting with a lawyer or two to gather information about what will be needed to counter a PA claim. That will give you some time to prepare to protect yourself. Not all courts will let kids testify in the judge's chambers, but some do. If your state does that, it could be as simple as the judge listening to the kids say what they want and why.

Another scenario is that she files a motion for contempt, alleging PA, and your L talks to her L, and says, "Hey, we have x number of emails where she is pretty abusive and disparaging to the kids. Do you really want to take this to trial? Your client is blowing smoke."

And then, if the L is reasonable, may explain how things could go down in court. She may pull her behavior together long enough to create a favorable track record, and try again when the kids are older when the courts typically think teens have a choice in where they live.

[Panda39]

Our approach has been to let the kids handle their time with mom as they wish or not. We focus on what the kids need.  My SO talked to his older daughter this week about her going back to therapy because we worry about how much she stuffing.  Some of D14's behaviors also trigger D18 because they are reminiscent of some of their mom's behaviors.  She is considering the idea.

"Hey, we have x number of emails where she is pretty abusive and disparaging to the kids. Do you really want to take this to trial? Your client is blowing smoke."

This is just the philosophy we have regarding my SO uBPDxw... .does she really want to explain to the court about D18's college tuition/debt or D14's hospitalization last year and PTSD?  I don't think so!