BPDFamily.com

Hi, I am currently raising a 4yr old with my BPDw. While I can kindof disseminate some information about how to navigate raising a non-child with a pwBPD, I feel there should be some type of board for non-parents. There is a board for siblings and children suffering from BPD but it seems like there is hole. There is a "co-parenting after the split" but nothing about parenting/raising a child with a pwBPD before the split. There are some great lessons about parenting with a BPD parent but I find myself sifting through posts in different forums looking for posts with nons having parenting issues with their BPD wife or husband.   

Hi Concerns,

Welcome to the Coparenting board  :)

You're in the right place -- this board is for you.


I agree that there are many more posts about coparenting after the marriage has ended. Unfortunately, that is often when things go from bad to unmanageable, at least until new skills are learned and applied. I wish I had learned some of these skills during the marriage, like you mention, to help my son develop emotional resilience.

Is there a topic in particular that we can help you navigate?

Everything is just hard. I try to find other who parent young children and how they cope together when one parent has their own mental issues.

Everything is hard when you are trying to raise a child with a BPD parent. 

Have you had a chance to look at some of the materials to the right?

The stuff under Lesson 5 on raising an emotionally resilient child when one parent has BPD helped me immensely. Since we can't control what our BPD partners do, we have to take control of ourselves. Fortunately, we can use emotional resilience skills with our kids, and teach them by modeling. Not just to help them cope with the emotional disorderedness, but also to create a strong emotional and psychological connection with them based on validation so they have a sense of what it feels like.

Validation feels good. Kids like to feel good. They will love the parent who makes them feel real because feeling real feels good!

We have a problem with my wife being unable to truly be emotionally giving. And my son senses this. Instead, she will buy things for him as a substitute. But that leads to different problems. I feel bad because she doesn't actively seek help for herself. You would think she would but she cannot get past herself. Instead, she moves to something new.

That's tough. It sounds similar to my son's father's emotional limitations. At times (maybe all the time?) it seemed that S14's father saw S14 as an extension of himself and not a separate person, which was very invalidating and painful for our son.

When your son seems hurt by his mother's emotional limitations, how does he respond? Does he talk to you about how he feels? And if so, what do you usually say?

He responds by goading her: getting in her face, pulling her hair, laying on her, even hitting or pinching her. He is four. At this point, she's triggered. She is no longer the parent now. She becomes more like his teenage sister with "don't touch me, leave me alone, stop it... ." He will keep at her. It only escalates to "leave me the f*** alone". The same responses only pickled with curse words and increased volume of her voice. I will step in as the parent and explain how mommy doesn't liked him climbing on her, etc... .In the back of my mind I'm saying to her "your passivity is only confusing him and you're sending him mixed signals by being angry and not providing him with a solution." In that moment, I am redirecting him. He doesn't really talk about it. He understands what he is doing is something he is not supposed to do. I feel it's more my wife's responsibility to learn how to cope and parent. He's four. He needs direction and parenting. So he will continue to get a reaction out of her albeit produces the wrong reaction he wants. I think he just wants attention from her. It's this type of interaction that I worry about for him. You can see his internal hurt and confusion just a little in his eyes when she reacts this way towards him. Seeking love and affection being met with frustration and anger is really hard to witness in this type of interaction.

That sounds awful. The part about acting like a sibling -- that happened between my son and his father, although in a slightly different way. It's hard to explain to people what it's like. My son's father was jealous of S14 when he was young, and then when S14 started to develop his own ideas, had his own wants and desires, his dad would say things like, "You're selfish and all you think about is yourself." So instead of encouraging him to become his own person, he made S14 feel like that was a bad thing.

Have you thought about talking to a child psychologist to help you manage the blow-ups between S4 and his mom? My T helped me with a lot of parenting skills tailored to the specific challenges of having a mentally ill dad, and she also encouraged me to talk to a child psychologist which was very helpful. You have the gift of time on your side because your son is still young and interventions can be very powerful. Otherwise, he will start to tangle like this at school and it gets exponentially more complex and difficult to manage.

I am wondering if your wife's relationship with her son might improve if she was educated about the 5 primary love languages.  It may open her mind up to different ways to show love to him other than the gift of gifts. 

Are you familiar with the 5 primary love languages or do you have the book you could leave for your wife to read?  Information vs correction is usually more readily accepted.  Maybe you can talk together with her about what your son's primary love language is (the gift of acts of service, the gift of quality time, the gift of affection, the gift of gifts, the gift of words of affirmation).  Discovering what each of your primary love languages are while understanding that they all have value could change the family relationships in a positive way.

lbj

I'll try the five love languages. I know about it but have never tried it before.