BPDFamily.com

The Co-parenting Board Pledge  

Please take the pledge (check the items in the survey) and tell us your near term goals.

For members who are co-parenting a child of a BPD parent and who want to raise emotionally resilient kids while minimizing stress and conflict in our lives.

• My child's parent has a mental illness. They have real and legitimate impairments to their social skills.

• I will learn about the disorder so that I may emotionally detach and navigate around their dysfunction.

• I have a role in any “cycle of conflict” between me and my child's parent. I will abandon that role.

• My child's welfare is a higher priority to me than achieving fairness or justice with my child's parent.

• I acknowledge that parenting can be a stressful and I commit to taking care of myself so that I have the strength to be there for my kids.

• The social environment in which my child is raised contributes to their long-term emotional, psychological, and social well-being. I take responsibility for my contribution.

• Parenting skills requires love, motivation, validation, boundaries, and structure.

• I will help my kids develop healthy boundaries and coping skills for when difficult situations arise.

• Role-modeling is the most powerful tool available to teach my child or children positive ways to become an emotionally resilient and healthy person.

• To be a role model requires strength, commitment, patience, and self-awareness. I accept the responsibility to examine and advance my own life and parenting skills.

• I welcome challenges from bpdfamily.com members, even when the question and challenge may be emotionally upsetting. I commit myself to speaking the truth in love when challenging other bpdfamily.com members.

I would add to the last pledge item... .I think it is important to take in feedback, even challenging feedback; but I also think it is important to steward our own values, as feedback may not be appropriate to our situation.  For example, as a step-parent, I have encountered a great deal of judgement and "rules" around my close and communicative relationship with my SDs.  Now that enmeshed SD14  is almost 15, it is clear that this has not harmed our relationship.  I have one of the best relationships with a teen "daughter" of any of my step-parent friends or moms, and I think some if that is due to the fact that I have set boundaries rather than shrinking back as many have advised me to do as a stepmom; some of it is due to the fact that while I never badmouth mom, I answer my SD's questions honestly (in an age appropriate way) most all the time; and I work hard not to judge their mom, but avoid hiding my feelings entirely.  If mom yells at me, I tell them that hurts my feelings, even if that is uncomfortable for them--but I also do my best to let them know that I see she is doing her best I can work through what is difficult for me. 

If I had listened to and strictly adopted advice given here (often by mom's who were very triggered by my close relationship with the girls, partly due to the fact that have a BPD mom and not a non mom!), I think I would not be in the pretty good place with the girls I'm in. 

I would summarize this by adding a pledge item that is something like:  I pledge to take in and give feedback with the recognition that each of our circumstances is different, and that we can only know so much about each other from the brief words we report.  As such, I trust myself and others to use what is useful in our feedback, and to do my best not to impart or take in feedback as absolute truth or moral imperative.

Good  post.

Another website page well worth printing out.

THANKS... !

Good list!

I'm trying