Divorce Support Forums: step mother labeled as evil by mother

Read up on Parental Alienation Syndrome. One common tactic is to portray the steps as evil. The kid KNOWs the other parent is NOT evil, so the alienating parent can't be successful in alienating teh kids... so the alienating parent moves on to figuring out OTHER ways to keep the kids away from the other parent, and that involves ... oh, like booking the kids for too many extracurriculars; saying that the step parents, romantic interests, step-siblings are bad; saying the other parent's neighborhood or house is inferior;

Heck, this can start even at separation, not allowign the other parent to take a fair share of the kid's clothing, furniture or toys, claiming it all belongs to the kids, convincing the kids to keep it at the alienating parent's household, and then telling the kids that they'll have no fun at the other parent's house because the other parent doesn't have any of their furniture, clothing, toys (whatever the kids at that age will find more important)...

If you read up on this, you'll realize that you've become a tool for this woman to use against the kids... she THINKS it's used against thier fahter, her rival, but the truth is that she's using the kids, and hurting them, and so doing this is against them as well..

There's nothing you can do to control what she does, you can only control how you respond. Until the kids voluntarily want to see you again, it's worth it to "disappear" durign the times when your husband is spending time with them.

Depending upon how my husband's ex is handling things, I will disappear from time to time. I'll be in another room "working", or I'll have some other activity that I need to do during thier visit time together. It has the bonus of giving him alone time with them and gives him the chance to give them the little bits & pieces of information that he needs to give them as a parent... advice about how to choose a career, a college, how to manage a budget, how to manage a schedule of homework, how to step things up when one grade dips... and they're starting to see how the world really works (not ONLY their mother's "unrealistic" view of it... the "unrealistic" language coming from the therapist & the judge first, but I agree wholeheartedly.)

You really don't have much of a choice at this point... if you are an active participant in visits, the kids won't visit... so you MUST step back for a while. Do it, you might find they soften up towards you once they realize that thier father is still the wonderful man they knew when he still lived with their mother, and if he's that wonderful, maybe his wife is OK, too... but unless you back off for a while, the relationship between him & his kids might be destroyed & un-recoverable, and that would be tragic!

Post Extras