It was in response to a query a member submitted, asking all of us to list all of the ways that we've found the Psychotic Other Parents interfere with parenting time, and it made me tear up. Why? Because looking at the list I'm about to re-post below, the only thing that came to my mind was how badly these kind of shenanigans affect the kids. My childhood was filled with safety, stability, and two non-perfect yet very good parents. I never had anyone, other than the grandparents, fighting over my sister or me. Yet children whose divorced parents have a high-conflict relationship get yanked back and forth practically on a daily basis.
There are more nasty tricks than just these that get used by PEs all of the time to ruin visitation with the other parent, but here are just a few:
- Signing the kid up for an activity, or scheduling a doctor's appointment, or some other can't-be-missed event that only the psycho parent can take the child to, during the other parent's parenting time.
- Making the child feel frightened of the other parent, or guilty that they're going to spend time with the other parent or go to the other parent's home.
- Setting up the child to prefer the psycho parent's home by purchasing pets, inviting friends or relatives over just before exchange time, or buying love in general.
- Sabotaging the parenting time by dressing the child in clothes that either don't fit, aren't appropriate, or are tattered; by feeding the child sugar right before an exchange so that the child is hyper; allowing the child to stay up too late the night before a morning parenting time exchange so that the child is sleepy and cranky when the other parent picks the child up; picking a fight with the child just before the exchange time so that they are emotionally wound-up when the other parent picks the child up.
- Telling the child over the phone that he/she can "come home" whenever he/she wants.
- Telling the child that they're "so sad" that the other child isn't with them and that they're lonely.
- Incessantly calling/texting/contacting the child while he/she is at the other parent's home or with the other parent.
- Intentionally withholding important things like medicine, sports gear, clothing, etc., in order to "have to" visit the child while they're with the other parent and thus interrupt parenting time.
- Going to the other parent's home while the child is there, where they basically stalk the other parent and the child.
- Emotionally manipulating the child into believing that they are miserable when with the other parent, or that the other parent is abusive.
- Denying parenting time and then making it appear to the child as if the other parent cancelled.
The reason I got teary when I read this list was that I realized that Stella has done 8 of the 11 things on that list. I say 8, instead of the whole 11, because a few of those things require that the PE and the non-PE live close to each other. We have the benefit of living in separate states, so she can't really withhold medicine, but of course in order for the kids to have medicine for colds or whatever she would have to take them to the doctor, and that's not something she ever does. She also can't come near our home without driving for 6 hours, and most of the time she won't even drive 3 to meet up in the exchange city. She doesn't tell the children that they can "come home" whenever they want, because the kids know that's not true and since we get them for scheduled school breaks it's pretty clear when they're going to go home.
All of that other crap, though, she's done. She signed Marsha up for a 1-week summer camp to intentionally ruin Guy's parenting time for the summer, which also ran over Father's Day and his birthday. It worked. We lost 3 weeks with the kids because she refused to give them over. As a reward for coming home from summer break with us (as if they had a choice?) she bought them a puppy. Nevermind that she got rid of the dog they'd had for 4 years, 8 months earlier, because it was "too much." She wouldn't meet us in the exchange city for a makeup parenting time order in October because she didn't feel like it (those weren't the excuses she gave, but that was basically why) which meant that we didn't get the kids for their fall break this year because we couldn't afford the time to drive all of the way to her city in her state, and then back to ours (12 hours total of driving) to get them. Meanwhile we'd been telling the kids they were going to spend their fall break with us, and all of a sudden they weren't. Stella told them it was because we wouldn't drive out to get them, nevermind that she had refused to help with the transportation and refused to release them on the day she was supposed to. We've picked up the kids on two occasions now, in winter, to have them not wearing socks nor jackets, nor have any socks or jackets or sneakers with them. Stella has convinced Marsha that Guy used to beat her with a belt when she was 3 years old and that I yell at the kids all of the time. Nevermind that kids are generally incapable of forming long-term memories until the age of 4, Guy would NEVER beat a child, let alone a 3 year old with a belt, and that I don't yell at the kids all of the time. Stella tells the kids that she's lonely when they're not there to the point where she sounds manic depressive and forlorn without their presence.
Almost every second of every visit we have with the kids is spent trying to set the very best example possible, meanwhile dispelling some of the lies that Stella has told the kids. Such lies, relayed to me by Marsha, have included:
"Mommy said that she didn't want us to go with you for spring break because she was afraid you wouldn't bring us back."
"Mommy said that she thinks you write down all of the bad stuff Johnny and I tell you about her so that you can get her in trouble."
"Mommy told us we weren't allowed to talk to you or Daddy for a while or see you." (Response to us asking if they had questions about why they hadn't talked to us for 3 weeks or if they were wondering why we hadn't seen them in 3 months.)
"Daddy used to hurt Mommy. That's why she calls the police." (Not true.)
"Mommy says you aren't going to be around very long." (To me. I've been around 2 years and have told the kids I have no plans to go anywhere.)
Ug! It's so frustrating. Most of the replies to those kinds of things are, "Sweetie, what do you think?" or "Sweetie, that's just not true. That's ridiculous. We would never do that." Luckily for us, Marsha is a smart kid. She knows her mom is full of crap, but that's her mother and she's going to go along with whatever "Mommy Dearest" says. Most of the time she isn't put off, she just does what her mom tells us.
The best way, we've found, to combat this kind of crap is to ask the children questions about the lies in the form of "What do you think?" or "Do you remember that happening? No? Who told you it happened that way? How do you remember that happening?" The kids end up putting the pieces together pretty quickly and start remembering things for themselves or drawing their own, true, conclusions. The problem is getting those corrected-to-truth memories to stick and not fizzle again when the psycho, manipulative, other parent gets their claws back into the kids.
Every day I pray that a judge will somehow see this behavior through testimony in court from Stella herself, the court advisor, Guy and me, family, etc., and that he'll decide the kids don't need to live with Stella anymore. In two months we'll know for sure what our lives for the next two years, at least, are going to look like. Please keep us in your prayers.
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