Unsupervised

[Gettingthere]

Not sure to put this here or parenting section, please move if needed.

Quick recap. ExNPD/BPDh was abusive to ds now 10 especially. Predominantly emotional abuse, some physical. Trial last year judge refused to make findings. Said short period of supervised to re intro the children as had been 1year gap. Unsupervised was originally due in Dec. The CE resigned, said she was out of her depth and we now have someone new. He has extended the supervised, with a move to supported, then supervised handover, followed by unsupervised then back to court.

Neither ds10 nor dd6 want unsupervised. Ds10 looks physically ill when he goes in, but happy when returns... .  tho I'm not sure how much of that is relief. DS 10 has said repeatedly that he doesn't trust him, and he's only being ok because someone is watching him. If we discuss unsupervised, he will sleepwalk or wet the bed that night. He has been referred to psych and allocated a play therapist,but not had appt yet.

Last night Ds10 told me that dad would frequently bad mouth me to him. Dad speaks another language that I barely speak, ds10 is bilingual. Apparently if ds wouldnt do homework for example, he would say to him "you're a big ugly monster", and would refer tome as " your mums a big fat lazy cow". Now I am shocked as he would never use that language in English, and liked tone seen as "whiter than white". What concerns me however is the alienation tht was happening literally in front of me in same room that I was unaware of, and the way he uses ds10 to divide loyalties. He used to play all 3 children off each other. I'm thinking to ring CE and let him know this... .  to me he just became even more calculating and dangerous. What do you think? I know they cant put unsupervised off forever, but dd6 and ds are both extremely anxious about it. Ds2 has started settling with him now.

I know he will project his alienation attempts on me, and unfortunately I was alienated by my own BPD NPD mother, so will seem " plausible" to courts... .  which so far he has manipulated as he wishes.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance

[Forward2free]

 sorry to hear you are in this situation Gettingthere. My kids were supervised for 12 months after 9 months of no contact. The kids loved the supervisor and didn't want to stop seeing her. I got the feeling the visits were more with the pseudo grandmother than their dad.

Onwards 12 months, the kids have settled in to unsupervised with a facilitated changeover at the end of the visit. Initially the visits were good, fun, easy. So different to what I expected and N/BPDxh was seemingly on his best behaviour. The closer we are getting to the court dates for his 50/50 custody request, the more the cracks are showing.

There is no telling what the courts will decide in any of our situations. All I can do is educate my kids on being strong, independent and resilient. My DD7 stayed with her brother 6 when N/BPDxh tried to separate them for a talk. They wanted to stay together and they were skeptical about what their dad told them. Both of them told me the conversation and felt comfortable sharing their feelings with me. They both think that dad doesn't tell them the truth and that he tries to make them not like me very much. All in 4 hours contact a fortnight!

Have you spoken with your kids about protecting themselves and listening to their inner voice? (not in those words). I guess you need to be prepare them for both outcomes. You don't want a third party to think you were behind the ill feelings and it's important to not encourage their apprehension. It's so much easier said than done, I know. Do DS10 and DD6 stay together? Can you unite them so that they feel more confident?

[livednlearned]

For me, the best defense was to validate S11's feelings and, after reading Divorce Poison, I learned how to deal with some of the more blatant aftereffects of N/BPDx's alienating tactics. For example, when S11 says, "N/BPDx said xyz, I will say 'What do you believe?' instead of telling him it isn't true. The goal is to get your kids to trust their own intuition and instinct about what is real and not real. If you get in the habit of telling them their dad is wrong, then they really do end up in the middle. The only way I've figured out how to parent S11 is to show him how he has the ability to remove himself from the middle, and that's a skill that will hopefully help them with this stuff their whole lives, especially when we aren't there to help them.

I read Power of Validation -- that books changed my son's life because it helped me parent him in a way that built a strong sense of self. A lot of middle school kids don't talk to their parents, but S11 talks to me. When N/BPDx does something troubling, S11 will tell me, knowing that my response is usually comforting, hopefully sometimes helpful. And therapy has been important for him -- I told him it was important to have a grown up in his life that he could talk to, someone that wasn't his mom or dad.

[Gettingthere]

Thankyou both for your replies. Im sorry you're in a similar position kormilda.

The eldest two have been fortunate enough to have some trsauma recovery work with a local project which finished in feb, and this did emphasise warning signs and safety behaviours etc. You're right, i need to keep reminding them of this.

Divorce poison is a very good book, and i guess this weekend has just confirmed what i feared that the book is definately talking about my situation. i have not heard of the other book before, but have downloaded it on kindle and will start reading toninght, so thankyou! DS10 is due to start with a play therapist in a couple of weeks.