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We are on a 3-2-2-3 schedule. On my 3 day weekends, their mom has ben calling me to check in in the afternns because she misses the  kids. The kids and I go out of cell range to go hiking on saturdays. I don't call her back, despite her requests. One phone call per day to DD1 and DD4. I've been letting her talk to them twice a day the past few weekends though, lingering FOG.

Yesterday, she called around 11am. I didn't call back when I heard the message. She called around 5. She was worried when she heard from her brother that we were go in hiking. She called back around 5 and talked to our son. Our daughter was napping. Today, she called around 2. I answered and said we were on our way to the park. I could have let her talk to the kids, but as my T says, she needs to live in her own reality (that she created). She didn't ask to speak to the kids then, though they were in their car seats and I certainly could have. I think she got the idea that I wasn't going to let her talk to them...

She called back later. I let her talk to them. DD1 wasn't much interested. She was very clingy to me all weekend, which worries me since she's at the critical attachment stage. DS4's taking this in stride. He's past the critical attachment stage where most PDs are formed, but I worry for our daughter. She knows both of us love her, but her clingyness worries me...

Hi Turkish,

I am rushing to get my boys ready so have to make it very quick...

I have the same kind of worries, especially for my two year old. I am reading this book The Emotionally Absent Mother: A Guide to Self-Healing and Getting the Love You Missed (www.amazon.com/The-Emotionally-Absent-Mother-Self-Healing/dp/1615190287) and finding it useful as a guide as I take on the role of both mother and father as a single dad. Perhaps you will find it useful too.

- A Dad

Thanks A Dad, I will put that on my list. Talked to the kids and their mom tonight. She said her mom (who babysits the kids), said our daughter was in a bad mood all day. DD1 was clinging to me this morning when I dropped her off like she didn't want me to go to work. Her grandma sent the kids to go awake their teenage uncle, and I slipped out. I'll see how she is when I get them back two nights from now, poor baby. I don't worry about Parentification or covert incest on my side (perhaps the latter from their mother... . her crying when talking to them on the phone is an early sign of it), but I wonder if it ever starts from the kids, like the become overly emotionally dependent on a parent no matter what you do? At least she seems to go to sleep at might easier, not screaming for me at night as she was the first few weeks, it was heartbreaking and frustrating.

Turkish, what are her object constancy issues?

Her calling the kids twice a day?

Your kids are so little, Turkish. I still talk to my kids once a day to check on them when they are with their Dad - and they are 15 and 18. He calls them at least that much too. *)

I still worry about long trips out of town and my poor 18 year old had to call me upon arrival to a town that was only two hours away.

I just wonder how much of her calling is in the "normal" range of a mom being worried? We tend to overreact a lot in these first stages of divorce.

I get what you are saying, and that mom's in general are more worriers. It's the crying on the phone when she talks to them (even after having seen them the previous night). It's the texting to check if we are ok multiple times a day, like the over texting she did with me while we were together. She heard from her brother that I was taking the kids for a hike, and said she was worried something would happen to us.

She gets a lot of this from her mom, who is a mother hen who keeps the kids close out of fear that something will happen to them. Her mom wouldn't even let her youngest son go to friend's houses out of fear something would happen to him, which resulted in him being far less mature for his age than his peers. I met him when he was 9 and my Ex, the proxy mother for both of her youngest siblings, was still cutting his pancakes for him (DS4 already cuts his own pancakes). I commented on it, his 13 year old brother chimed in and agreed and from that point on, he cut his own food. She needed that dose of "reality" to change that dynamic. I wasn't mean about it.

Two of my Ex's brothers still live at home, at 24 and 35. Some of this is cultural. I have, however, observed how her mother and she interact with our children at parties. They literally follow the kids around to make sure they don't get hurt, while the other mothers (same culture) seem to be more "normal." The intersting thing is that after a while, even my Ex was frustrated by her mother's anxiety, and commented upon it. She even admitted to me in the past that her over protectiveness and clingyness is going to raise overly dependent and fearful kids, but that what was ingrained into her by her mother was something she couldn't overcome.

After my initial frustration for the first 6 months after DS4 was born (I was accused later of not being as involved as I should have, but I was literally forbidden from doing a lot of things like giving him a bath), things did get better. This was me gently prodding her to default to what I viewed as more healthy behaviors. I don't know if it was mirroring me, per se, but I did lead her to be less of the helicopter mom than she was initially. It wasn't just the newborn situation, which I would have given latitude. It was how she was in general, directed towards the kids. Her constant texting of me, worrying that something had happened. Constantly texting me to see if I was ok, if I wasn't home ten mins earlier than I said I would be (and I'm a consistent, "on-time" person). Passively, always sharing recurrent dreams she had of someone bad coming after her and her family (sometimes I was there to protect them, sometimes I left, so I abandoned her even in her dreams). Object constancy. A parent's anxiety likely will affect the kids, as it did her from her mother, in addition to the parentification that happened to her as a little girl (her "lost childhood" as she put it).

On some level, she appreciates my balance, and says I'll be the one to "toughen them up." Not as a disciplinarian, but as a stable, constant, rational (though loving) force in their lives. The sad thing is that we did support each other on many things, and never discussed disagreements in front of the kids. I thought we did the parenting thing well as a team, and she came more in my direction than the other way around. I'm trying to keep it that way.

OK. It's my understanding that object constancy ties into the abandonment fear - is she afraid the kids won't ever come back? Is she asking for reassurance from them when she's crying on the phone?

The pwBPD in my life loves her kids. She struggles as a parent, but the love for them is real and valid. She also tends to fluctuate in this area, this helicopter parenting, that you're dealing with - it's not something she's very good at regulating. For instance, she does not want her younger daughter (12) to walk the one mile to school, even when her older step sibling (my son, almost 15) is with her. They love to walk to school and my son is very protective of his little stepsister and I trust them very much to stay safe. So here's mom with a valid emotion (fear) exasperated by the BPD (terrified she will be kidnapped) and in comes the BPD reaction, forbidding that she walk to school (even though its my responsibility to get them there meaning I get to drive them everyday :) ).

I also have a choice in my own reaction to her valid fear and her overreactions... .

1.) Set the "boundary" that SD12 can walk to school based on my own beliefs and my control over the situation

2.) Appease mom and drive her to school

3.) Try and help soothe mom's fears, coming up with solutions that will help her feel less afraid.

 

They are all feasible and reasonable solutions, one will cause a lot of drama, the others won't. :)

I'm OK with helping mom in this because like you said, I think we all are able to balance this stuff out. I wonder if as much as you are trying to diagnose what she's doing to make sense of it (lack of object constancy, mirroring, etc,) you were able to use some of the tools offered here to maintain the co-parenting relationship that was actually working for you two?

When the girls mom gets in these manic states where she really misses the girls, feels lonely, is depressed ~ it's not the girls' responsibility to cheer her up. It doesn't hurt them to call her though when they first get up in the morning. It doesn't hurt them to call her again before they go to bed. I also find when they call her, it helps the incessant phone calls when we get busy during the day. Just a suggestion?

I also wonder how much of all of this is about your fear of her parenting skills affecting your children? Is it a completely grounded and rational fear? Should it be your driving force in this?

What helped me a lot in this was accepting that she's a person with a mental illness and that I can't change that. It's about Radical Acceptance when it comes to the other parent. She's BPD traited and she is going to struggle in motherhood, Turkish. If I had to place a statistic on mother's who make mistakes? It comes in around 100%. Borderline moms around 107%. :)

She's still your kids mom and she's the only one they have. It's about being well equipped to deal with this person who will forever be a part of your life. You worrying about her worrying can be just as damaging to you as her worrying is to her. If we teach these kids to take these things in stride - it helps a lot. If we teach them to accept mom's issues with grace - it helps them. You're better equipping your kids then your ex-wife was equipped against her own mother. It's the exact same as my stepdaughters are better equipped. It's how my stepdaughter and I came up with a solution to the walking to school dilemma and everyone walked away satisfied and validated.

Hope that makes sense to you. I just see your [valid] fear for your kiddos just as prominent as moms fears.  

She's telling them she misses them and loves them very much, often crying while she is doing it. It goes overboard, like melodramatic. I don't think the kids are picking up on this... . yet, but they will. I don't want them to think they are responsible for their mother's emotional state later on. The reaction is like she hasn't seen them in a month instead of often the evening before.


Against my lingering anger over this, I am open to using the tools. Our father/daughter dynamic was unhealthy, and she still kind of looks to me like this (when she isn't trying to be the Mother when lecturing me about certain things, which I just listen and don't bite).


That's what I fear. Perhaps I'm too much in this "punishing her for what she did" mode. At this age, the kids don't ask. DS4 used to ask "where's mommy?" sometimes, and I'd dance around the truth, and hated lying to my own son to cover for her juvenile behaviors. Maybe I'm still wrapped up in that. He hasn't asked questions thus far, because she wasn't that engaged in the home that much for the last months she still lived with me, so in a way, there wasn't much change from a pattern that slowlyiwove itself together over a year. I can certainly have them call her when they get a little older. Right now, she's still compartmentalizing her life and on one phone call I could tell I was talking to the "other" uBPDx. She didn't seem to care that she called too late to talk to the kids (I surmised she was with her bf). Maybe I do need to read the thread on Radical Acceptance and realize on an emotional level myself that this is who she is.


Maybe it shouldn't be my "driving force." I think my fear is real, however. She's mostly doing well now, but when her r/s blows up, I fear the worst. I just hope she has the sense to bring the kids to me when that happens. She's repeating an old pattern from before me. She was nearly suicidal the last time this happened, based on things she told me and also her friend told me about it. She was only like that once with me on Christmas Day, 2011, the event which prompted me to have her "come out" to her family about her diagnosed depression (it actually helped defuse escalating tensions between her and her family). I read the note that she left on our computer to my T and asked what he thought about it. He replied, "it sounds like she needs to be hospitalized." Whoah.

She has this potential within her. She's said publicly that the kids are the reason she is "here." In 2011, she wrote that the only reason she went on living was due to her son and then unborn daughter. That is a heavy burden to lay on an adult, much less a little child. It's deep down there somewhere, and has the potential to be triggered.


Thanks. I know she is, and while I don't gush to the kids about what a great mommy they have, I encourage them to engage with her on the phone in a nice way, and we pray for her safety every night when I put them to bed.

I downloaded An Umbrella For Alex, but it unfortunately mentions BPD by name, so I can't ever read it to the kids since she is undiagnosed. I can, perhaps, take some of the insights from it and pass it on. I know things will get worse later as they become more autonomous. I have my childhood as a guide... . DS4 is overly emotional like his mom and easily triggered. He's a people pleaser like me (not necessarily a good trait). DD1 is the stoic one (from me), but extremely stubborn (like mom). I think she and her mom will have the most problems in the future, but I shouldn't worry about that at this point and take the days and weeks as they come.