S4 Wanted to Stay With Me Again

[Turkish]

D2 fell asleep on the way home, and slept through the night. I had a few hours with S4. At the dinner table, he was a little scared of it getting dark outside, and the house was quiet without his sister awake. We were sitting at the dinner table and he wanted to come sit in my lap. He leaned on me while eating his sandwich and I said, "I miss you when you're not here, buddy."

Question: am I FOGing him or passively alienating?

He said, "I want to stay here with you." This is her weekend with them, and I dropped him off at school this morning. I asked him why. He replied, "because mommy hit me." (cant' remember if he said "hit" or "hits". I asked why did Mommy hit you? "Because I was hitting D2." I couldn't get any more of him than that. We talked a bit about hitting his sister. I wasn't sure how to tell him to respond to his mom. I'm careful of the alienation.

I am not too concerned since I don't sense agitation or outright rejection of going back with his mom (unlike that week when he and his sister were acting out when she literally brought my replacement to their dinner table soon after she moved out). Is he trying to triangulate me? Possibly... . I'll keep an eye on it.

uBPDx and I have an ok r/s over email and occasionally on the phone (over a month since I've had to see her in person... . I'm going for a record!), but I wonder if this is something I need to share with her. She is still anxious over whether or not she is doing the right thing as a mom, but I don't want to push it. She does love the kids, and is far from a "horror story" as many BPD or NPD spouses I read about here.

When "The Replacement Dad" incident happened, she was concerned that I didn't share that S4 all of a sudden didn't want to go home with her (she heard that he said that from her mom), and tried to get me to agree to share such behaviors with her. Two days later, it got worse, and D (then almost 2) started acting detached and angry towards everybody, including me. Three days after that, S4's anger escalated towards his mom, and she called me to tell me, in a way asking for help. At that point, I made an educated guess on what was happening, and called her out on it. She then admitted what had happened.

The lesson I took from that is that I do not need to share everything that is concerning to me with her, and sometimes I need to let it get to a head as it did in "TRD" incident. it's a fine line to walk since we are trying to co-parent to reduce conflict.

[Boss302]

I don't think you're alienating him at all by telling him you miss him when he's not around. Absolutely not. I think that may be his way of telling you he likes being with you. This also may be his way of avoiding conflict with his sister.

Maybe say, "I can see where you'd feel like you want to stay with me after what happened with your sister, and I understand where you're coming from. But I trust your mom to handle things like this. And I appreciate you saying something about it." At that point, maybe you could bring the sister into the conversation and try to get to the bottom of what went on, and set them both straight.

That assumes, of course, that you actually DO trust mom, but I'm making that assumption.

I think the healthiest thing  possible is an environment where everyone's feelings are worth talking about and validated, and that includes YOUR feelings.

[Turkish]

I don't think you're alienating him at all by telling him you miss him when he's not around. Absolutely not. I think that may be his way of telling you he likes being with you. This also may be his way of avoiding conflict with his sister.

Maybe say, "I can see where you'd feel like you want to stay with me after what happened with your sister, and I understand where you're coming from. But I trust your mom to handle things like this. And I appreciate you saying something about it." At that point, maybe you could bring the sister into the conversation and try to get to the bottom of what went on, and set them both straight.

That assumes, of course, that you actually DO trust mom, but I'm making that assumption.

I think the healthiest thing  possible is an environment where everyone's feelings are worth talking about and validated, and that includes YOUR feelings.

Thanks Boss, that is good to remember, as I forget self care sometimes (well, a lot).

And nice hypothetical validation statement for S4. S2 is a little young yet to coherently communicate (though of course she is at that age where you can tell she understands far more than her verbal skills indicate)

I trust her... . knowing how she is. The TDR incident shows that she is still the same underneath (insecure attachment, fears abandonment). She's being very, very nice to me lately. Of course, this mirrors me being the same, though with a lot more detachment and boundaries on my side.

[livednlearned]

People who care about whether they are alienating probably aren't! But you've mentioned before that he wants to stay with you, and that means it's to be expected that S4 will ask for something you can't give him, which is the choice of where he stays. In some ways, you set him up for a let down. That's not necessarily bad -- it's good to give kids safe opportunities to deal with negative feelings. But it isn't alienation. If you want to avoid messing with S4's feelings but still express your love, you could say, "I love being with you, buddy." Focus on how you feel right then in the moment. My guess is, at 4, he doesn't feel responsible for your feelings (the FOG part), but as he gets older, he might, so it's better to not make him feel that his presence or absence is responsible for your feelings.

Are you and your ex on the same page about hitting your kids? I can't remember where I read this -- maybe it was Don't Alienate the Kids by Bill Eddy -- but if a child is doing something you don't want, and the punishment is hitting or yelling, the kid learns nothing except to hit or yell when there is conflict. If your son is hitting D2, and you don't want him to do that, he needs someone to model redirection or an example of how to interact with D2 when he's angry. By focusing on how S4 felt when his mom hit him, you aren't alienating at all. You're getting him to say how he felt. Then, if you have a different idea about what mom should have done, you can talk it through with S4. "Mommy hit you so that you wouldn't hit D2. Is there another way she could help you be nicer to your sister?" Or even get him to talk about what D2 was doing when he felt so mad he hit her.

You don't have a horrendous custody case hanging over your head. Like you said, your ex is a bit more agreeable than many of the people here. So you probably don't need to tiptoe around your kids too much. Don't Alienate the Kids really helped me with this -- it's really about modeling for your kids how healthy people deal with conflict that matters.