To Tell The Truth

[bravhart1]

SD6 has been distant and angry for the last few weeks. It's been building up and today it finally came out what's been eating at her.

Apparently she has been told by BPDm that everyone (me, her dad, her therapist, the court system) are all liars. We make up lies about her poor mother and tell them to the judge and try to make it so SD6 never gets to see her mom again.

I won't go into the obvious that "we" aren't doing this, but will clarify that when we finished the evaluation it came out in the report that not only had dad and bravhart not said bad things about mom but asked said evaluator for help getting mom on the right track to spend more time with SD6. That is in a report that she has and has read, and still felt the need to tell this poisonous lie to her child.

Some of you know from my posts here the hell we've been put through and the money we have spent. She got her second chance, she has to get therapy and show progress for one year to ask for 50/50.

She has told her daughter that we are all liars not to be trusted and that the ONLY person in the world that any little girl should EVER trust is her mother and no one else.

That's a pretty scary world where you can only trust one clearly unstable person.

Unfortunately SD6 for some reason has hooked onto it line and sinker. I tried to "validate" her feelings, I asked her how that made her feel when mom said that. She said, "fine, I know my mom is telling the truth, and you are going to say she is the liar, she told me you would say that, but my mom would never lie to me, I don't belong here anymore, I only belong with my mom, the ONLY one I can trust". Then she asked to go to her room.

I'm pretty scared, she is like a different person. This kid had been subjected to alienation for years but has still been able to find her balance after being back with me and dad for a day or two, but this time is different. She is defiant, shows no manners, she seems like she could care less about us. She used to say that she knew her mom told a lot of lies and stories, but it's like that has all been washed away, there is no sense of reality. Only moms "truth".

What could mom have said or done to have swayed her six year old to believe the stable people she has lived with and grown to love  and trust are unloving liars and mom bashers in a couple of days? We have 80% custody, but mom has had a bit more time lately because of the spring break from school.

I'm so confused and worried about SD6. She is getting in trouble at school and has been bullying her classmates.

Is there some upping of the ante that I'm unaware of in the alienation game book?

[livednlearned]

Of the books and DVDs recommended here about alienation, both for you and for SD6, have any of them been helpful in understanding what's going on, or offering solutions?

Validation is simply acknowledging and accepting that someone has a different point of view. With an alienated child, it can take a lot of patience to keep hearing her out. The temptation to "correct" the bogus beliefs is hard to resist, especially if you're angry and fed up. Richard Warshak does a good job in Divorce Poison of describing how to deal with difference situations that involve alienation. Has his book given you any insight that's useful?

[Nope]

Yes, there is an upping the ante. I've seen it with my own step kids since DH got 95% physical custody. But I think it's a mix of several components.

1) When BPD mom has less time she can hold it together better and be Mom Of The Year. Kids are prone to convincing themselves that their mom had always been the living, easy to be around, attentive person they are now only spending short periods of time with. Essentially, she's given her mom a blank slate and the only things that have ever happened are the things that are happening now. So SD6 feels like any threat to her mother's version of events is a threat to SD6 having the idealized perfect mother she desperately wants to have.

2) Yes, the BPD mom is upping the ante because she's in victim mode. She sees herself as nothing but a victim of you guys and the courts. She can't look inward so the things that hurt her are external only. She needs to believe that and she requires that SD6 believe that as well. The only other alternative is accepting that she is a bad mother, and that would be ego destroying. So from SD6's perspective, her mother is being unfairly persecuted and she needs SD6 to fight this fight for her. This makes SD6 feel powerful as a protector instead of helpless.

3) I was listening to a lecture by a prominent researcher who said that children actually want to bond more closely to parents who are abusive because they so desperately need a bond with each parent and the bond with an abusive parent is less reliable. So a child, seeking the safety of that abusive parent, will fight to stay close to them at all times instead of a healthy bonding where the child is free to go out, explore the world, and then come back.

[bravhart1]

Nope and LnL

Thank you so much for your responses. I always get so much insight from you guys.

I have to go back to divorce poison book, it's been years since I've read it and I thought we were doing a good job of righting our little ship(SD6) but I haven't been here before.

Nope, I got so much from your post, I want your permission to copy and send to SD6's therapist! You are dead on.

We haven't watched welcome back Pluto because from what I understand it's for a bit older child, but I think we are going to try it anyway.

I feel like we got an alien back the last time she went to moms. It's actually pretty scary how unexpected and out of the blue this was.

[Nope]

Go right ahead and use my post for whatever it's worth. The one thing I can't do is offer solutions. My SD12 and SS10 have only been back with their BPD mom for three days so far and we're already getting rude and dismissive language from them. I'm sure they'll both be such little boys to be around when we get them back on Saturday.   

[livednlearned]

It's probably a losing situation to try and correct what S6 thinks. Her mom has covered all the bases -- she has anticipated that you will present a different perspective.

My ex did this too, although I had a leg to stand on, so to speak, because I had majority time with S13 and could apply the anti-alienation techniques I learned with greater effect. I had to learn the hard way that S13 went into an automatic shut down mode if he detected that I was disagreeing with his perception of things, especially if it had to do with his dad. It sometimes felt like I had to detonate a bomb, using careful language to diffuse S13. Not that he would explode, but more that he would disappear on me, and go into some alienation bunker.

SD6 is too young to understand how complex the truth is, and what lying is, how there are many ways of looking at something. She's young, so things are black and white, just like her mom sees them. So healthy parents have to begin teaching kids how much there is to learn when it comes to figuring out the truth. I did this with S13 by having a game where I would mention a scenario and he had to figure out if it was an example of lying, secrecy, privacy, forgetting, or withholding information. I think Warshak recommends this in his book.

This has come in helpful, not only because of N/BPDx, but for middle school! And he seems a little more mature in this area, when it comes to situations, because he can see there are different perspectives. His guidance counselor at school will pull S13 out of class, telling him he needs to go over test results, and S13 knows that this is a white lie told to protect S13, and that it's a form of shielding his privacy.

I'm also wondering, since SD6 is your step-kid, if you can shrug it off with her when she says her mom told her this, or that, or whatever. "I guess that's between you and your mom. Want to come down and watch a show with me?"

What would happen if you were less invested? My SO has an alienating ex-wife and his youngest has an intellectual disability, so is easily persuaded by his mom. He tells his dad "LnL doesn't care about us because she doesn't ever come over." That trips a lot of triggers for me.  :'(  

I'm also determined to stick with my values and boundaries, and not engage with SO's son if it's something that feels like a hook. Both N/BPDx and S13 did the "you love the dog more than me" stuff, and I now have strong boundaries about whether I'll engage when someone tells me how I feel. If they want to know how I feel, great. If they tell me how I feel, or what I think, then I make a decision case by case how I'll engage. SO's youngest has kind of given up trying to engage me using his mom's accusations. There is no reaction, no power trip, no drama, no nothing when he tries to do this, so he's losing interest. He seems happy to see me and if he tries to engage, I shrug my shoulders and focus on being with him, doing something fun. One time he made a sly comment about why I didn't go over to his mom's house for Christmas  ( Because wow, spending Christmas with my SO's ex-wife... .) and I said, "It's hard for me to tell if these are your feelings or your mom's." He had had a big smirk on his face. And then he looked confused. He's 14, so old enough to understand what's going on, but intellectually disabled, so younger than his true age, and then emotionally stunted even more because of his mom. It's hard to tell where's he's at developmentally sometimes, but it also makes it easy to see what he's feeling because he tends to wear things on his sleeve more than my son (almost 14). He seems to know that he should have his own thoughts and feelings -- your SD6 might be too young for this, but anything you do to encourage her to recognize her own thoughts and feelings will help her individuate from her mom.

[bravhart1]

Yes, she tends to over identify with mom even in the silliest ways. The other day I asked her if she wanted some grapes. We had both kinds, green and red. I said "do you like red or green grapes?" And she answered well my mom likes green so I better have green. I gave her some and after she took a bite, I said. " how does mommy like them, oops, I mean how do you like them"? She actually thought it was funny, but I was trying to get her to see that she has her own opinions and feelings and that choosing something because her mom likes it is not being true to herself.

Maybe a bit petty for me, but I am hoping she will open her eyes that you can love someone and care about what they think without having to choose their preferences over your own.

Sometimes this particular BPDm that we deal with reminds me of a friend I once had who got involved with a pyramid scheme. When I told her I choose not to purchase her products, she said we couldnt be friends any more, I wasn't supportive enough.

[livednlearned]

My SO's middle daughter is like that -- you ask her what she wants for dinner, and she can't answer. She doesn't feel safe having her own opinion about what she likes to eat 

I grew up like this too. It's common in a home with lots of conflict to feel unsafe about expressing who you are. Cue validation. I think where we get discouraged is thinking that validation is going to fix everything right away, in the moment. Sometimes it does, but when it's about more complicated things, it takes a while. After I figured validation out -- really figured it out (for a few months I was doing some things wrong) -- I noticed that S13 was started to have very strong opinions. What he liked, didn't liked, how he felt, what he wanted. My T told me that it can be a little messy when a child begins to individuate and develop a stable sense of self. I'm grateful she told me that because it felt like I created a bit of a monster. Other things have been going on, plus developmental changes, and I'm learning that some of my responsibility is being patient and staying grounded, otherwise I start to feel anxious that the train is headed for a cliff, and S13 is sensitive to my moods and tends to get caught up in the feelings.