What Happens to the Enmeshed Child After Divorce?

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

Not sure this is the correct board to post this question, but I was wondering what will happen to my enmeshed grandchild after a divorce.  Specifically, once they become a teenager and should be growing towards independence.  Since the parent with BPD fears abandonment, and tries desperately to hold on to relationships, what happens when the child gradually no longer needs them.  Does the relationship become more and more volatile?  Do enmeshed children ever fully separate from their BPD parent's grasp and become independent?  The lives of our grandchild and daughter-in-law are completely intertwined.  It is apparent that mom views her child as an extension of herself.  DIL often sleeps in the grandchild's bed, dresses in matching outfits, wants to be the child's best buddy, never disciplines them and when our son attempts to discipline she rages and locks herself with the child in a bedroom.  I imagine therapy is the answer, but can't help but wonder whether our grandchild will ever develop her own sense of self.  Will the grandchild also develop BPD?  If BPD is caused by childhood trauma, the childhood of someone with a BPD parent would certainly qualify as traumatic.  

I read "The Borderline Mother" a few years ago, and I know that many of my questions are likely answered there, but I wonder what everyone here has experienced.

[zachira]

You are wondering what happens to an enmeshed child after divorce. Whether there is a divorce or not, the BPD parent never gives up on seeing the child as an extension of herself/himself and views the child becoming a healthy separate adult as abandonment. My mother had BPD and she is deceased. I could write a book on having a mother who did every thing she could to prevent her children from becoming adults. What was helpful to me as an enmeshed child, were the adults who did validate me and saw me as an individual. Some children stay enmeshed and never grow up, some ending up with BPD and/or other mental health disorders. Other children stand up to the enmeshment to the point, that they completely sever ties with their disordered parent/parents and/or limit their contact sometimes eventually severing the ties. How often do you have contact with your grandchild? What are your son's concerns about his daughter? Is individual therapy for the child a possibility? The court deciding custody could order therapy for the child.

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

Zachira - Your post gives me hope.  My mom was also BPD.  I was the child that was painted black, because I was stubborn and fought back.  I couldn't wait to leave home, and when I finally did my mom would call me several times a day crying and asking me when I was going to move back home. I stopped answering her calls for a while, because the guilt she played on and just the stress of hearing the agony in her voice was too much to handle.  Any time I had success in life as an adult she would try to diminish it.  When I graduated college she said that the only reason I could get a degree was because people were nice to me, totally discounting the hard work it took on my part to achieve my goal.  I had to work 2 jobs to pay my own way through college while taking a full load.  I didn't get much sleep back then.  When I got a good job she said that she had different plans for my career and I should have listened to her.  When I bought my first house she found every reason she could to tell me why I made a mistake buying it.  She never could be happy for me, and I think that falls in line with your statement about doing everything she could to prevent me from becoming an adult.  

Our DIL doesn't really allow us to have a relationship with our grandchild.  She has alienated the grandchild against us, and the grandchild more than likely thinks we are bad people, because mom says so.  Our son is a great dad, but DIL is always criticizing him in front of our grandchild.  At this point I'd say that our grandchild has been brainwashed to believe that only mom cares about her and protects her.  I think it will take a court order to get therapy for our grandchild, because I'm sure DIL would be afraid of what a therapist might say about her.  

[zachira]

I agree with you that it will likely take a court order for your granddaughter to get therapy. How much custody does your son want? It could help him to get more custody and put the child's wellbeing first if he were in therapy himself. How enmeshed is your son with his wife? Family courts generally have a very positive view of a parent in therapy and like to order therapy, especially when requested to help the child, whether it is therapy for either one parent or both or for the child. Your son would likely benefit from reading Bill Eddy's book on divorcing a spouse with BPD and/or NPD. What is your relationship like with your son?
What you are describing about your mother always putting you down for succeeding in endeavors that help their child to be a healthy responsible adult is like what happened to me with my mother with BPD. When I was a young teenager, I cooked a tasty dinner for the whole family. After dinner, mom told me how terrible the food was. When I got me first job as a waitress, mom had me wait on her, and then called the boss to tell him right in front of me what a terrible waitress I was. The look of sorrow on his face said it all! I am sad for you having these experiences with your mother. A parent is supposed to be proud of their child's accomplishments.

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

Son has been in marriage counseling with DIL in the past, but has never had individual therapy.  I think he is afraid that seeing a therapist might make the judge think that he is the problem.  DIL will definitely try to convince the judge that this is the case.  DIL wants full custody.  She thinks if she can get full custody, she will be awarded their house in the divorce.   Son is hoping to get the majority of custody, with supervised visitation for the DIL, since her behavior is so impulsive, erratic and emotionally abusive towards their children (hers, his, and theirs).

It's hard to gauge enmeshment in my son.  He seems totally disgusted by her at this point in their marriage, and says he can't take it anymore.  They both have lawyers on retainer, and have filed their initial requests/counters.  I'm a little concerned that she might try to charm him back in, especially if it seems she isn't getting everything that she is requesting (Which is basically everything they have).  

I have given him a copy of Bill Eddy's book.  My son and I have a great relationship, even though the DIL has tried to separate him from his family for years.  He holds his emotions in, as I suppose most men would in this situation, but he is open to advice and frequently asks for it.  

[zachira]

Your son needs to learn how to legally document how his wife treats their daughter to have more credibility with the family court. He should ask for the court to order an evaluation to help determine what is the best custody arrangement for the child. Your son may fear having his part in all of this exposed, yet allowing his wife to sway the court with whatever stories she exaggerates or invents could really hurt your son's chances to get the custody that is in the best interests of your granddaughter. People with BPD and/or NPD can be incredibly convincing in court while skillfully hiding their disordered behaviors. No doubt your DIL will do whatever it takes to get what she wants, including trying to convince your son to change his mind about the divorce.

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

I'm sorry for your experience with your mother too, Zachira.  A mother's greatest job is to nurture her child and help them to become self-confident and independent.  My siblings and I often talk about how our mom was the perfect example of how not to raise our children.  It must have been very humiliating to be criticized so severely in front of your boss.  Your mom should have been proud of you in that moment.  I'm glad that you had adults in your life who affirmed your worth and encouraged you to succeed.  

[livednlearned]

Son has been in marriage counseling with DIL in the past, but has never had individual therapy.  I think he is afraid that seeing a therapist might make the judge think that he is the problem.  

That's the opposite of my experience. Your son is probably projecting some of his own feelings about therapy onto the family court system. Maybe it's different where your son lives but where I was, courts and judges are big fans of therapy. It's seen as a positive. Might be worth discussing this with his attorney.

As far as enmeshment of his daughter with her mother, your son has two battles. One battle is for custody and the other is to win the heart and mind of his daughter. There is probably already quite a bit of alienation happening because it tends to be an extension of BPD traits.

The one thing BPD parents cannot do is validate their child. BPD parents reverse the natural order and expect the child to provide them with validation. This is pathogenic parenting, what Dr. Craig Childress explains is the root of parental alienation, and a form of child abuse.

Therapy is not going to be enough for your grand-child and mom is probably going to fight it unless she picks the therapist and bamboozles that person.

Your son must learn how to communicate in a different way with his daughter. Divorce Poison by Richard Warshak, Don't Alienate the Kids by Bill Eddy, and Dr. Craig Childress's work are all excellent. So is You Don't Have to Make Everything All Better by the Lundstroms. I can't say enough about these books. Alienation is so insidious and hard to combat using regular communication. The skills to handle it are not intuitive and must be learned.

My n/BPDx husband used to say "You love me more than the dog."
I would say, "That's not true. I say hi to the dog first because she runs to the door." (invalidation)

Then my son started to say it. "You love the dog more than me."

I would say, "That's not true. I love you so much." (invalidation)

What I learned to say is, "O wow, that has to hurt so much to feel that way. Tell me more." (validation)

People with BPD struggle to validate others because their need for validation is bottomless. Your daughter is enmeshed because individuation is dangerous. To do so would invalidate her mother and jeopardize what she probably thinks is love. Your granddaughter is probably starved for validation and may be extremely receptive when she receives it. Validation plants a powerful seed because it's essential to the natural development of self. It is oxygen to a child.

The reason it's the other half of the battle is because your son could get 50/50 and his daughter becomes an extension of mom, rejecting him and his love when she so desperately needs him. Feeling validated by her dad may not cure things immediately, but a validating environment will feel essential if she is not permitted to feel this way with mom.

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

Alienation is already blatant.  DIL has been making divisive comments to our grandchild in front of our son.  I am considering finding a therapist who does child custody evaluations and would be willing to testify in court regarding ongoing alienation, hoping to nip it in the bud before it gets worse.  

If the court orders therapy will my DIL be allowed to pick the therapist?  Since my son will be claiming that she is the abuser, it seems like a conflict of interest to allow her to pick the therapist.
 
I think you are spot on about BPD moms being unable to validate their children.  The times that I have gone to my grandchild's basketball games, and complimented her after an especially good game, her face lights up and I can tell that the compliment means everything to her.  DIL usually finds aspects of her game to criticize without praising her for what she has done right.  It seems like DIL views grandchild's performance as a reflection of her, so she expects perfection.  I have already seen the parent/child role reversal in action.  It is distressing to see my DIL make my grandchild feel responsible for DIL's emotional well-being.  I found this to be the case with my own BPD mom too.  I became very adept at reading her emotions, and would often wonder which mom I was going to encounter when I arrived home from school.  

I'll order the books you recommended for my son to read.  Thanks for the recommendations!  I think, like most men, my son feels that he is supposed to be the strong provider and can't show any weakness.  There also might be some embarrassment that he put up with the abuse for so long.  
 

[livednlearned]

If the court orders therapy will my DIL be allowed to pick the therapist?  Since my son will be claiming that she is the abuser, it seems like a conflict of interest to allow her to pick the therapist.

There are workarounds for this. For example, your son selects three child psychologists that he finds reputable, then his wife chooses one from those three. I also recommend that anytime your DIL is given a task that there is a deadline for it to be completed and a consequence for non-compliance. "Father selects 3 child psychologists by day/date; mother chooses one by day/date. If mother has not selected a child psychologist from this list by day/date, father may select one and proceed."

This is a painful lesson I had to figure out on my own after 4 years in family law court with a n/BPD former trial attorney ex. Lawyers tend to not pay attention to loopholes and don't share tips on how to save money and time (and aggravation). There is some magical thinking even with good lawyers (and maybe sheer exhaustion since this is not a fun kind of law to practice) that what a judge orders will be followed. PDs make that all but impossible so we have to find ways to get around PD stonewalling and obstruction.  
 

It is distressing to see my DIL make my grandchild feel responsible for DIL's emotional well-being.  I found this to be the case with my own BPD mom too.  I became very adept at reading her emotions, and would often wonder which mom I was going to encounter when I arrived home from school.  

I just want to say I'm so sorry you experienced this. This must also make your heart ache for your granddaughter, knowing what she's experiencing.

I think, like most men, my son feels that he is supposed to be the strong provider and can't show any weakness.  There also might be some embarrassment that he put up with the abuse for so long.  

I wasn't fond of therapy myself for similar reasons. What changed for me was reaching out to a child psychologist when I started to be alarmed by my son's behavior in elementary school. He was not handling the dysfunction in our home well and he had behavioral issues at school that were impacting him socially and academically. The child psychologist was a godsend but I only went a half dozen times or so before things at home started to unravel and other fires had to be put out, which led to divorce.

Later, my boss recognized that the wheels were coming off. She had met my ex and alarm bells went off because she recognized the type. Her recommendation to see her therapist changed my life. I had tried therapy a few times in my life before but either I wasn't ready or they weren't good. This therapist was the right person at the right time and I'm not sure my life would've ended up so well without her insights and guidance. Same for this site.

Maybe your son would be open to talking to someone who does custody evaluations, like you say. If he goes into an evaluation suspicious of therapy, he might find himself unprepared. Even just something as seemingly benign as, "My wife is making it hard for my daughter to have a relationship with her grandparents. What do I do."
 

[ForeverDad]

I agree with you that it will likely take a court order for your granddaughter to get therapy. How much custody does your son want? It could help him to get more custody and put the child's wellbeing first if he were in therapy himself. How enmeshed is your son with his wife? Family courts generally have a very positive view of a parent in therapy and like to order therapy, especially when requested to help the child, whether it is therapy for either one parent or both or for the child.

My lawyer was very adamant, "Courts love counseling!  We're all imperfect, we all can benefit from the objective perspective of an experienced counselor.  If nothing else, his counselor would be objective documentation that his issues are not overly problematic.

If he seeks to start his child in counseling and his spouse refuses, court would almost surely order counseling.  The big concern is that his spouse should not be enabled to choose the counselor because she would surely pick one who is either inexperienced, gullible or biased in her favor.

Often recommended, if entering a court scenario, is that the stable parent be proactive and vet a short list of experienced counselors for the children and then the other parent would be forced to choose from among that vetted list.  A judge would be happy that each parent has a part in choosing the counselor.  The key is that your son has to be first in order to limit the choices to vetted counselors.

Son has been in marriage counseling with DIL in the past, but has never had individual therapy.  I think he is afraid that seeing a therapist might make the judge think that he is the problem.  DIL will definitely try to convince the judge that this is the case.

And I bet she would refuse to start personal therapy for herself.  Or fake herself in sessions.

[Notwendy]

I am sorry you are dealing with this. My mother has BPD as well. I am the painted black child who couldn't wait to leave home either. Rather than treat me as a child and not want me to leave, I was parentified and expected to relate to her as an emotional caretaker.

My sibling, her Golden Child was the one she was invested in and enmeshed with. While I thought it was difficult being the child she didn't show much interest in, I think it's harder for the enmeshed child to differentiate and can see now that my sibling had the more difficult time doing this.

I think the outcome depends on a lot of factors as well as the child's individual resiliency. I don't think it's a given that the child will develop BPD although there is a genetic tendency, it's not a strongly prevalent pattern. We kids, don't have BPD. However, I can recognize some learned behavior that have similarities- I think that is inevitable. Parents are our role models for behaviors. Counseling has helped me to replace these with more functional behaviors.

One difference between me and my Golden Child sibling is that we have had different relationships with our mother. These two have some good memories together and have a more emotional bond. I am more objective about her while GC is more emotionally attached. Interesting in that she is verbally and emotionally abusive to both of us.

I think one can say that it isn't good for a child to be enmeshed with a parent. I don't think it fits a criteria that would be seen as child abuse though and so legally might be tough to intervene. This was our situation as well. We were well cared for in general- food, clothing, education. Our parents took good care of us. Verbal and emotional abuse aren't always obvious.

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

Livednlearned - Thank you for the suggestion about finding 3 therapists who are versed in child alienation and other issues with BPD parents, and letting DIL pick from that list.  That is a great workaround.  I'm sure DIL will still balk at this.  She likes to be the one in control, but surely a judge would see this as a great compromise.  
I just want to say I'm so sorry you experienced this. This must also make your heart ache for your granddaughter, knowing what she's experiencing.
I appreciate your understanding.  Seeing my grandchild going through this definitely brings back a lot of painful memories, and I just want to do everything I can to protect her.  I have been doing a ton of reading, trying to educate myself and my son the best I can.  I found the "Five Factor Model" for determining alienation, The "Eight Distinctive Behaviors that Differentiate Between Alienation and Abuse," and the "Seventeen Different Alienating Behaviors."  I think all of these models and lists of behaviors will be helpful in determining the extent of DIL's attempts at alienation.  I'll share them in another thread, because I'm sure they can help others fighting child custody battles with a BPD ex.  Although our entire family has been attacked at one point by my DIL, it is different for me.  She triggers me in ways the other family members cannot understand.

 ForeverDad - I'm going to start researching child custody evaluators/therapists this week, and put together a list that I'll give to my son.  
And I bet she would refuse to start personal therapy for herself.  Or fake herself in sessions.

DIL has made it clear to the family that there is nothing wrong with her, so there is no need for her to attend therapy sessions.  She says they are a waste of time, because our son is 100% at fault.  She can be very convincing, when playing the victim, but I can see through her act (having had a BPD mother and also having witnessed DIL's behavior first-hand.)  Thank goodness for text messaging, emails, and iphone videos.  Not sure the videos can be used in court, but at least my son's lawyer will get a better idea of what he is up against.    

NotWendy - Thank you for your support.  It's nice to have people who understand, but at the same time I'm sorry that you have had the same childhood experiences that I have.  Nobody should have to grow up that way.  A psychology professor once told me that he was amazed at my resilience; that many people would be debilitated by this type of upbringing.  I am not completely unscathed, but I agree with you, I think that being the painted black child gave me the strength to escape.  I had a sibling who was the golden child and they never left home.  It makes me sad to think about how different their life could have been given a different childhood.  

[zachira]

There are free therapy programs in some schools, and if the parents are not divorced, sometimes only one parent needs to give permission. An older child can sometimes sign for their own therapy. A common requirement for therapists when working with children, is the therapist cannot share with parents what is discussed with the child in therapy if it will be damaging to the relationship between the child and the therapist. How soon do you expect for there to be a custody hearing?

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

Zachira - An at school therapist might be an option, but I would have to know that they are familiar with personality disorders and the affect of a BPD parent on an enmeshed child.  I have found a couple of well respected BPD knowledgeable therapists in the city where my son lives that I'm going to suggest to him.  Not sure when to expect a custody hearing.  They have just filed their initial claim and counterclaim.  Do they usually start custody proceedings at the beginning of the divorce or towards the end? Never dealt with it personally, but it seems like child custody has been the last thing settled in my friend's and family's divorces.  

[livednlearned]

I don't even remember the official date for my divorce decree because, like you mention, the custody stuff can go on and on, sometimes for years, and that's the piece that often matters most to many of us.

School counselors (usually therapists) or family specialists (usually social workers) in our case didn't need to know about BPD. They primarily gave my son a safe space to just be. A lot of kids try to make sense of their toxic family dynamics through friendships so those become the topic even though they may point to problems at home. It depends on the age of your kids.

In middle school, I met with the guidance counselor and family specialist to let them know our family was in a high-conflict divorce. The guidance counselor was also in charge of proctoring different tests so used the guise of exams to call my son to his office and that's how they established their relationship. Or, my son would go to the nurse and slip into the guidance counselor's office once they developed a bond. Sometimes, he would just go there to blow off steam and talk about kids in his friend group.

In elementary school, the day I picked (then) S9 from school to move to an apartment and start the divorce, we met with the family specialist to let her know what was going on. She gave my son a stack of cards he could use to get out of class at any time, no questions asked. He could go to her office and sit and do nothing, or play a board game, or chat. He did that a lot for a month or so and then kind of evened out, but he always felt supported by her and when he had a dust-up at school with a friend, she and the teacher had context and diffused the situation quickly by whisking him to her office and helping him understand what was happening at an emotional level.

Just that safe connection during the day helped my son. He was so validated by the support and felt understood.

Mind you, we had a well-funded public school system. Not all schools are so lucky