Increased alienation of child aftert restraining order put in place

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

I am really struggling with a relationship with my 11-year old daughter. I feel like thse things come in waves depending on what else is going on between my ex and I. My daughter is consistely being poinsoned against me and now it's getting worse. 3 weeks ago a restraining order was put in palce so my ex cannot communicate with me in any way (I would receive hundreds of hateful messages every day). After that, he is not able to lash out at me anymore and I think he is trying to hurt me throughour daughter. I noticed that my daughter has been pulling away from me. Right now I dont know what to do anymore because she wont let me hug her, kiss her or even spend time with her. She claims she is tired and goes to her room and that's where she stays the whole day. I'm heartbroken, I almost prefer that he harasses me on everyday basis but lets me have a relationship with my daughter. It's so painful I just wnat to cry. I dont have any energy to fight for her anymore.

I have a therapist appointment with her this Wednesday but I have not told her yet. I'm worried she will react badly and will refuse to go. I also worry that he is going to poison her against the therapist and tell her not to speak at all.

[newlifeBPDfree]

I am really struggling with a relationship with my 11-year old daughter. I feel like thse things come in waves depending on what else is going on between my ex and I. My daughter is consistely being poinsoned against me and now it's getting worse. 3 weeks ago a restraining order was put in palce so my ex cannot communicate with me in any way (I would receive hundreds of hateful messages every day). After that, he is not able to lash out at me anymore and I think he is trying to hurt me throughour daughter. I noticed that my daughter has been pulling away from me. Right now I dont know what to do anymore because she wont let me hug her, kiss her or even spend time with her. She claims she is tired and goes to her room and that's where she stays the whole day. I'm heartbroken, I almost prefer that he harasses me on everyday basis but lets me have a relationship with my daughter. It's so painful I just wnat to cry. I dont have any energy to fight for her anymore.

I have a therapist appointment with her this Wednesday but I have not told her yet. I'm worried she will react badly and will refuse to go. I also worry that he is going to poison her against the therapist and tell her not to speak at all.

[livednlearned]

I'm so sorry, newlife    I experienced PA and was then able to terminate visitation, and that put an end to it. I do remember how devastating it felt to experience the toxicity -- it was one of the reasons I created the boundary I did. It is still very hard for my son to talk about his dad with me. He is so sensitive to even the slightest tone in my voice, and it doesn't matter if he asks my opinion -- he still doesn't want to feel that he is somehow in the middle.

Dr. Childress recommends ending contact with the parent who is engaging in PA as a first step to healing for the child. I've only read a handful of books about PA, so I'm certainly no expert. I do think, tho, that Childress is the first doctor to treat PA as a form of child abuse and to advocate for the courts to treat it as such.

I do think validation is important, in parallel with whatever you do, even if it doesn't feel like it's solving things right away, you have to practice and get good at it, to really understand what it is and how it works.

It sounds like you do not have a lot of hope for how the therapy appointment will go. Is the therapy for your D? Or is it for both of you?

[newlifeBPDfree]

The therapy is for my daughter but from what I understand the therapist will want to bring me in here and there.  I talked to her about it last night and right away she said she doesnt want to go. I am afraid i'm going to somehow force her to go and that may only make her more resentful toward me.

There was also an interesting development recently. My daughter is turning 12 in a month and I had this feeling that the control that her father has on her is going to end or deteriorate as soon as she starts getting interested in hanging out with the opposite sex. I suspected that he was going to have a really hard time with it and will see such friendships as a competition of sorts since he kind of treats my daughter as a adult and confides in her and tells her everything that's going on with our litigation and so on.

Anyway my suspicions seem to be true. The other day my daughter seemed to have a complete 360 degree turn with her attitute towards me and then she asked me if she could invite a friend from summer camp to our house on Sunday. I asked her who the friend was and it turned out it was a boy from camp. At first I was not sure how to react and I did not want to say no because to me it's always been a natural thing to spend time with opposite sex and when  I was a child I only had guy friends because there was no girls in my neighborhood. So I asked her what they were going to do and she told me they were going to play outside. I told her it's ok and then I asked her if her dad knows about this friend. She immediately asked me not to tell him. I said I wont but I'm going to have a follow-up conversation with her telling her I dont believe in keeping secrets from parents and that she should tell her dad about her new friend.

What are your thoughts on any of this. How would you handle the opposite sex friendship? This is a scary territory for me. Having a strained relationship with her, I really worry about this stage in her life.

[ambivalentmom]

Hello again,

     I am sorry to hear that your relationship with your D is still strained.  I get a lot of 180's with my daughter, but I can't imagine getting continuous negativity.  I hope she won't have too many reservations about T, but T probably knows how to work with kids who don't want to talk to them.

I am also very glad that we are all able to post on this site and bounce ideas off each other.  It's always hard for me to tell how much of this relates to PD and how much is tween girl stuff (I also ask a couple of friends to bounce ideas off of that aren't in my situation).  My daughter is uncomfortable with anything to do with girl stuff with her dad and I've read that it is common.  That might be good to talk about with T with both of you.  It shows that you want to communicate with her dad, but also want to respect D's boundries.  It is also modeling good behavior on how to handle conflict that you can't work out for yourself: talking to a professional, third-party, unbiased observer.  My ex would say everything needed to be kept and handled in the family and no one needed to know our buisness.  That should have been my signal to run.

Maybe you can consider it a little win that your daughter opened up to you and asked you not to tell her dad.  I agree that he will see your daughter's relationships as competition, but it's frustrating because you can't tell your daughter that.  You hope that D will see through it all, but also don't want her to be hurt.  Maybe you can side bar with the T a little bit to let T know how her dad might react.

Let us know how it goes.

[newlifeBPDfree]

Hello again,

     It's always hard for me to tell how much of this relates to PD and how much is tween girl stuff

That's exactly what I struggle with - to determine how much is actual alienation and how much is regular preteen rebellion. I think it comingles and my ex uses it effectively to his advantage. I'm curious to see how things pan out with the therapist and the new friendship. In the meantime I continue providing consistency, stability and predicatbility for her and I hope it will show her something when she is old enought to see it.

And btw LOL at my 360 reference. I guess I had a little math problem there. I dont want a 360 turn, 180 is much better! I know it's going to be a long road to that and I hope I get enough strength to endure the negativity and not give up on her. Sometimes she makes me want her to say " You want to be with dad, go live with dad, i'm done, I'm going to find a new man and start a new family" Of course i would never say that to her but it really gets so depressing.