My Ex is trying to turn the kids against me...

 

"My ex is doing his or her best to turn my kids against me". Man have I heard that before, in fact I lived it and am still living it. What you can do depends a lot on your situation. The Family court (in most counties) will advise you that you cannot talk in a derogatory nature about the other parent. There may even be orders in place that state this exact thing.

Parenting classes and mediation classes (usually ordered by the court in any divorce that involves children) will talk at length about how to act around your children when it comes to talking about the other parent. I believe that this information, this way of conducting yourself , is truly correct and the best thing for your children.

But if the other parent is not following this order or the same "plan" when it comes to talking about you when the kids are with them then you may be screwed, to put it bluntly. From my experience unless you can get yourself in front of a judge or in some counties an "emergency screening" there is little chance you can stop it.

What if your the parent who is talking bad about the other one? Well there is a huge impact to your children that you may not be aware of. You may be hurting your children's future and eventually having it backfire on you. How? Here is what I have seen:

• Some children catch on quick to this and they will resent you for anything bad you say about the other parent.
• You may change the way they look at marriage and relationships in a way the prevents them from having a successful one in their own future.
• You may turn them to "your side" now but when they reach adulthood and see things from an adults eye's rather than a child's they may see you in a "not so nice" light and it could even permanently damage their adult relationship with you.
• You may create great anxiety and even depression in your children. When their with you and you say bad things about the other parent they may side with you because they love you and want your approval. But they will be deeply hurt because they also love the other parent. This will cause huge conflict inside them.

If this is happening and you know it for sure then you have to try and do something about it, not for your own sake but for your kids. I was lucky (if you can call it that) my ex had a drinking problem so I was able to get us into an "emergency screening" which led us to a full Family court assessment. In the assessment the court psychologists was able to see that the kids were being trained to not trust me and be angry with me. This caused them to temporarily put the other parent on supervised visits. After which another Family court visit was setup to check progress.

So was that a good thing? Yes and no; yes it stopped the bad parenting on the other side but it also deeply affected the children. Yes there was an improvement in the children's anxiety levels, my 5 year old stopped wetting the bed but my 10 year old started to hate me. In retrospect I wish it had never happened but there was not really any other choice at the time.

Now my children are reaching adulthood and I see things in a different light. One that I wish I could impart too all parents going through a divorce. Here is what I have learned:

• Your children are only with you (typically) for 18 years, and in reality you only have the first 15 to build your relationship if your lucky. Past that it's all about their friends.
• To waste time trying to turn them against the other parent only servers you not them.
• You turn what should have been the best years for them, their childhood, into a time they will remember for the rest of there live with anxiety and fear.
• When they become adults they may end up hating you for making them hate the other parent, you may have them for 7 or 15 years but you will lose the other 30 to 40 years with them as adults. You do want to know your grand-kids don't you?
• You may damage their adult life permanently. You may be dead not long after they are in their twenties, they may continue living for another 60 years. Do you really want to ruin those for them?
• When and if they have children they will most likely treat them as they were treated by you? Is that what you want? If not then break the chain now.

So basically talking bad about the other parent is a bad thing that on serves you not your kids. Look, even if your unhappy with the situation or you are mad at your ex you need to consider this: if your ex is a good parent or person and they do a good job of taking care of the kids then be thankful. You could have an ex that doesn't care at all about them or abuses them. Just say good things or nothing at all about your ex when the kids are with you. Let them have a happy childhood.