Solipsistic self centered nature part of PD?

[cgr68311]

This weekend for the first time in 2 years, I had to cancel our custody exchange. I became very sick over the weekend with some nasty bug, and my 2 year old boy was also quite sick from similar. Needless to say, she went ballistic that I cancelled and did not pick him up.

Our court order says that in case of parent illness, we must provide each other with health provider documentation to justify the cancellation, which I did. It also states that when child too sick to transport, exchange can be postponed until child is better. This weekend both circumstances applied.

She still threatened me with calling the police, filing a complaint with the judge, sending me videos of our boy showing he was now healthy normal (despite the previous day having to clean his boogers more than a dozen times - her own words.

Her self centered, solipsistic nature could not let her see beyond herself. It did not matter the wind chill factor was -20 F, nor did it matter that both my boy were both sick. She kept texting me all sorts of threats, demands and pleas, offered to drop him off at my place, asked me to hire a nanny so nanny could watch him at my place, etc. When none of that worked and received no response from me, then she said "fine, I'll just take him with me everywhere, to the gym, to my friends house and to the restaurant this evening". Said nothing, just uploaded my doctors excuse notes to TP.

Later in the afternoon, apparently she was over her tantrum, texted and said she ended up calling our backup nanny for a few hours and also said  "next time just say you're sick and I'll understand, don't say boy is sick, just say you're sick".

The nanny also texted me and said our boy also wasn't too well and still had a runny nose, etc.

Is it just me or do most of you have to deal with this complete lack of humanity, common sense and selfishness from PDs?

[Associate of Daniel]

Unfortunately you're not alone.

You'll find many similar stories on these boards.  One of the biggest dramas with pds is around health issues of children.

I hope you and your boy are feeling better really soon.  It's so hard being a sick single parent to a sick child

AOD

[cgr68311]

I am, thank you. Yes, I've been reading throughout the forum learning a big deal.

Update: apparently our 2 year old was not healthy as mom made it seem. Not only did Sunday nanny confirmed our boy was still under the weather yesterday,  but also daycare said the same this Monday morning, that he's in bad shape and PD mom was asked to pick him up.

She definitely tried to minimize his health condition. This is two people stating the opposite of her. She's now text bombing my phone, saying daycare should take care of his illness, that they just want a day off, etc.

I'm just quietly reading things unfold. Radio silence until next exchange.

[cgr68311]

Btw I usually suck it up when I'm sick, that's what I do. This time I was told to isolate pending Covid test results.

Not sure to what extent he may be sick, or if he has fever etc, because mom continues to present me a different picture of his symptoms while nannies and daycare tell me completely otherwise.

To clarify, on Saturday and even up to early Sunday morning (5am), she had texted me updates stating he was very sick, having to clean his nose dozens of times, waking up at night etc. Her story changed once I said "well I'm very sick too and being tested for Covid, and if he's as sick as you stated then we should postpone exchange". That's when she went ballistic and started sending me videos that he was now "fine".

Because we ended up not exchanging and she had a restaurante date or whatever she said she had, she hired our backup nanny and backup nanny also said the same thing mom had said a day earlier. Now this morning daycare reiterated backup nanny's and mom's original version. So to me it seems boy has been sick all along.

To top it off, after picking him up from daycare, she just admitted she had the day off (President's day) which I already knew but didn't care to ask since she's full of lies.

She's still texting me saying how healthy he's etc

[Penny Lane]

This time I was told to isolate pending Covid test results.

This explains a lot, I was going to suggest having a backup during your parenting time because you cannot rely on her. But there's really no way to fully isolate from your kid, so really the only option was that your ex needed to step up and take care of her own son so he wouldn't be exposed to possible covid. It is really a shame that she can't/won't even work with you on this.

And to answer your question yes this is very common for us here. Like AOD said, health care issues are THE WORST. I cannot even list all the times that BM has behaved badly when the kids were ill. One time she decided she didn't want to meet in their usual pickup location, so DH was waiting where they ALWAYS exchanged sick kids on school days, she went somewhere else and when he wasn't immediately there to meet her (because he didn't see the text she'd sent five seconds earlier) she dropped DSD on the side of the road and left her there. When DH finally got her and brought her home, she had a super high fever, and when he took her to the doctor, she had PNEUMONIA.

The last time the kids were with BM for a long stretch DSS injured his arm so badly he couldn't make a fist. She didn't address it, when he got back DH immediately took him to the doctor and the doctor was certain it was broken. Fortunately an xray showed that it was not. That close call really scared us though! And it makes DH reluctant to consider moving to a week on-week off schedule, because every week the kids could be sick or injured and they'd have to wait a full seven days to see a doctor.

One time the kids were really sick over here, like throwing up. They went to her house and came back and reported that they were still sick, had thrown up at her house, and indeed were still throwing up. DH referenced it (not in an accusatory way! Just like, talking about the course of their illness) and she replied something like, "this is not accurate, they were fine." Also we learned that she had fed them sushi (!!) the night before.

She has definitely taken the kids to school sick before. So your ex's behavior is not at all surprising, although it's troubling for sure.

My guess is that your ex had this dinner date and she did not want to put your child first, and she was angry that you "forced" her to. I also think that she probably struggles to take care of your son when he's sick, so she's having an especially hard time and needs a reprieve. So those two things explain the outburst, though they don't excuse it. If it was DH's ex, she would definitely retaliate somehow. Possibly by saying that your son is too sick for an exchange in the future when he is all better anyway.

My advice: Be prepared, when he gets back, to take him to the doctor immediately, because he might be extremely sick by that point. Other than that if you figure out how to fix this issue, come back and share your magic with the rest of us. This is one of the most frustrating issues I see and the only "solutions" we've found are simply workarounds.

[athene1399]

We had the opposite dynamic around sickness. BM would play up how sick SD was and say things like "who doesn't want their mommy when they are sick? SD needs to stay here." And that was pre-Covid and in regards to any type of cold no matter how minor. If SD started feeling sick with us, BM would say how we need to drop her off there so she could take care of her. And SD was 14 years old when I met her, so it wasn't like she was a little kid.

But in other situations I would agree that BM cannot think beyond her own needs or wants. If she asked for something that we needed to push back on, she would flip out. If she asked for extra money and SO decided to give it to her, she would flip because it wasn't what she had in mind. It didn't matter that he didn't have to give her anything to help out. It can be so frustrating knowing that she could flip over the tiniest of things, even if it was done/asked for to follow to court order. The court order only applied if it benefitted BM. If we asked for. To be followed, she felt it was unfair and let us know. You are not alone there. I hope you find a lot of support here

[cgr68311]

This time I was told to isolate pending Covid test results.

If it was DH's ex, she would definitely retaliate somehow. Possibly by saying that your son is too sick for an exchange in the future when he is all better anyway.

My advice: Be prepared, when he gets back, to take him to the doctor immediately, because he might be extremely sick by that point. Other than that if you figure out how to fix this issue, come back and share your magic with the rest of us. This is one of the most frustrating issues I see and the only "solutions" we've found are simply workarounds.

Yes, she did say that, that next time she will just refuse to do her time for no reason.

and Yes, I have a pediatrician check his throat and ears today, he's crying a lot. And now she's telling me "yeah I don't know why he's crying so much!"

[Wolf]

This weekend for the first time in 2 years, I had to cancel our custody exchange. I became very sick over the weekend with some nasty bug, and my 2 year old boy was also quite sick from similar. Needless to say, she went ballistic that I cancelled and did not pick him up.

Our court order says that in case of parent illness, we must provide each other with health provider documentation to justify the cancellation, which I did. It also states that when child too sick to transport, exchange can be postponed until child is better. This weekend both circumstances applied.

She still threatened me with calling the police, filing a complaint with the judge, sending me videos of our boy showing he was now healthy normal (despite the previous day having to clean his boogers more than a dozen times - her own words.

Her self centered, solipsistic nature could not let her see beyond herself. It did not matter the wind chill factor was -20 F, nor did it matter that both my boy were both sick. She kept texting me all sorts of threats, demands and pleas, offered to drop him off at my place, asked me to hire a nanny so nanny could watch him at my place, etc. When none of that worked and received no response from me, then she said "fine, I'll just take him with me everywhere, to the gym, to my friends house and to the restaurant this evening". Said nothing, just uploaded my doctors excuse notes to TP.

Later in the afternoon, apparently she was over her tantrum, texted and said she ended up calling our backup nanny for a few hours and also said  "next time just say you're sick and I'll understand, don't say boy is sick, just say you're sick".

The nanny also texted me and said our boy also wasn't too well and still had a runny nose, etc.

Is it just me or do most of you have to deal with this complete lack of humanity, common sense and selfishness from PDs?

Yeah that's pretty normal. PDs usually have very little empathy, but often pretend that they are empathetic in certain circumstances to manipulate people. It's quite difficult to deal with, especially since they often don't recognize it or admit it. Frankly, I respect people who have the honesty and self-insight to openly admit they can't feel empathy more than those who pretend to be empathetic but clearly are not.

[cgr68311]

Boy had ear infection. He's in good hands now.

[CagedBirdSinging]

Hi cgr68311, I can totally relate to this - the selfishness and lack of empathy is one of the main reasons why I left .

stbxpdH used to either act totally indifferent if one of the kids was sick, or else he would go off on a tangent about how he had 'made them sick.' It was some sort of twisted power game - he LIKED the idea of having infected people. So if one of the kids had a cold, he would obsess about how they must have got that from him, even if he didn't even have a cold.

One of my most embarrassing moments was bringing the 2 kids to the emergency doctor one evening - pdH came too. The doctor was examining the kids, when pdH suddenly started talking about how he was sick too, asking the doctor to examine him. She fixed him with a look of utter disgust and said 'umm...no, this appointment is for your children. You'll have to make a separate appointment for yourself.' The utter selfishness! I nearly died. Another time when one of the kids had a fall and we had to rush to ER; just as we were heading out the door pdH asked me to wait for a minute.. he dashed upstairs and backed a bag with books, gadgets, his favourite snacks, change of clothes for himself (nothing for anyone else).. he took ages, and I called up the stairs asking was he ready to go?? (suspected head injury - so I wanted to get to hospital ASAP) He was so annoyed at me 'pestering' him, and generally annoyed at having to bring the child to ER - what a massive inconvenience FOR HIM! 

[WesternLover]

Cjr - I have experienced this behavior 110%. Honestly, as I was reading your post what floated through my mind was "she must have had a hot date that night..."  It explains her extreme need to not have your son that evening.