Complaining

[Penny Lane]

Hi everyone, it's been a minute since I've been here. Hi! I hope everyone's winter has been as painless as possible with your NPD exes.

In my situation I am a stepmom to two now teenagers with an extremely NPD mom. She was really awful and involved in my husband's life for a very long time, but as he implemented boundaries she has slo-o-o-wly backed off. Lately they'd settled into an uneasy - well, not a truce, but a situation that everyone could live with. This has gone on for several years, with intermittent outbursts from BM but nothing like how she used to be. (For context in the past we have had to call the police on her, she has taken DH's name off forms so that he can't communicate with doctors or others, she harasses him in a variety of ways like sending 30 texts in an hour about how she believes he's mentally ill ... basically she has tried a variety of ways to terrorize him).

Anyway so now lately she's been ramping it up again, not quite as bad as she was when I first met DH, but pretty bad. She's lying to the kids and sending them back to our house really mad at us, and especially at DH. So our options are 1. do nothing, and let the kids be mad at their dad for something their mom is actually doing or 2. correct the record and involve them even further in something they shouldn't be involved in.

So, for example: DH does EVERYTHING for the kids. Every doctor's appointment, signing them up for extracurriculars, parent teacher conferences, etc. BM will attend maybe 10-20% of these appointments in a given year. But sporadically, maybe once a year, she will schedule an appointment, without telling DH, and take them to that and then try to get him to cancel whatever appointment he already made. Like they have their regular dentist appointments and every few years she'll just randomly take them to a different appointment at a different place and it's a huge headache because insurance only covers so many dentists visits, and also DH can't get any information from the new office because she of course hasn't put him on any forms.

MEANWHILE she will tell the kids that their dad doesn't allow her to go to dentist visits and he's neglecting their dental health and if it wasn't for her they'd never get their teeth cleaned and so on. So now the kids are furious at their dad for preventing them from having good teeth, when really he's the ONLY parent who consistently takes them to dental visits.

It's like this but with every doctor, every extracurricular, everything you could think of. She'll randomly get it into her head that she needs to fight DH to get X done, where X is already getting done and also DH has been asking her for years to be more involved in this sort of thing.

And what is maybe the most frustrating is that the kids don't seem to notice that this is all objectively untrue. Like, they know who takes them to the dentist. I guess she is saying "your dad doesn't tell me about the appointments," which, they have no way of knowing whether that's true since DH tries to keep them away from his communications with her. But I think they're just too riled up by what she says to take a step back and apply critical thinking.

Things are really bad at her house right now too, the kids are so so so stressed they're just like vibrating with unhappiness when they come back to our house.

So now I am practically vibrating with stress, I'm so worried about the kids and I'm SO MAD that BM can just lie lie lie and harass harass harass and there's no consequences.

I guess this is mostly just airing frustration. I know generally what we need to do, remain the calm steady house and just let her tire herself out on these appointments and everything else, and soon enough she'll find someone else to harass or otherwise distract herself. However, I still hate it, for me and for DH and especially for the kids, who did not ask to have a mother who's totally removed from reality.

[Rebel13]

Hi Penny,

It so sucks to have to watch someone mistreat people you care about! That's been happening to me recently, in a very different scenario, and it's so frustrating and painful.

I know you are mostly venting (which is fine!) but, as a former child of a disordered mom, I wanted to see what you would think about learning, as a family, some of the stuff that is coming out now about coping with a nervous system formed under ongoing interpersonal trauma. I have recently gotten trauma therapy and it has been helping me SO MUCH. I wish I had had the opportunity to learn these skills years ago. Unfortunately, the research on childhood trauma didn't even exist when I was a kid and young adult.

Some of the things that are helping me are the Therapy In A Nutshell/Emma McAdam videos on Youtube, Peter Levine's book Healing Trauma, the work of Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist who has a lot of great posts on his website and also podcasts and guided meditation videos, and the phone apps Mindfulness Bell, Insight Timer, and How We Feel.  In this video, Emma McAdam explains how to use the Mindfulness Bell app to relieve chronic stress, and I swear it has changed my life:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcoIE3Yiaw0

Anyway, there's lots of stuff like this out there, and different stuff works for different people, so I hope you can find something that helps you cope with the stress of this situation (if you don't have enough of this kind of thing in your life already). Though I am not a parent, it seems like you could approach it with the kids without even mentioning their mom, just, "I noticed you seem tense/nervous/unhappy, and I heard about some stuff that helps people calm down. Would you be into trying it with me?"

I hope it helps! Take care of you, put on your own oxygen mask first, etc. 

[bloomie]

Hi, Penny Lane! The frustration has to be through the roof with the antics continuing year after year with the bio mom. I am so grateful these kiddos have you and your DH and a stable home to come back to. The reentry after time with their mom has to be rough. 

Are the kiddos old enough to be included in the messages about appointments? For example, a text thread (if the kids have phones) that informs them and bio mom of a dental appointment or activity so that they can all calendar it? Or using a family calendar app?

Is there a way to diffuse the one to one communication and at least offer some kind of reality check in all of this for the kiddos? I also realize there is no way to end the gamesmanship and divisiveness with such a one, and I am sorry you all are dealing with this! 

[Stepping lightly]

Hi PL,

I am so sorry you all are dealing with this situation.  I agree with Bloomie on the calendar suggestion.  Although, I caveat that with knowing sometimes that is the bigger problem and causes more issues.  We were "required" to use Google calendar.  Although there were issues, It was set up so all parents got alerts of any changes.  This was the important part, I had a time stamped record of when BM added or removed something, so if we showed up at soccer to a canceled game, I could see she took it off the calendar AFTER we got there (and yes, we were somehow bad parents to all involved for actually still showing up..crazy making at it's best).

Feom my experience,  the kids see what each parent is or isn't doing, to the point that they can.  If the PD parent is making their lives miserable about appointments, it may be just easier for them to see things her way on this topic to endure life under her roof.  They are using survival mechanisms we can't even phathom.  I have come to realize that no matter how clear a situation appears to us, the kids are looking at it through a very different and often fogged up lense.  No matter what, it's hard for them to imagine their own mother not telling them the truth. Trying to get them to see the truth isn't always helpful for them.  In my mind, I think mitigating chaos is probably the best we can do to help them.

You know the path forward, consistent, calm, loving!  You've got this!  Co parenting with PD
is not for the faint hearted, I believe we are out in this position for a reason.

[Lookin 2 B Free]

Hi, Penny.  I'm sorry to hear you're dealing with this awful situation again! It sounds maddening!

Fjelstad (author of Stop Caretaking the BPD/NPD) has a newer book out for those co-parenting with a pwPD:  Raising Resilient Children with a Borderline or Narcissistic Parent.  I found it to be extremely useful.  I just tried to locate it to look up your situation, but I must have passed my copy on.

My tendency would be to deal directly with the children and their concerns about me and leave the BM totally out of the conversation.  In other words, dealing with it as I would if they had just come up with this idea/frustration on their own instead of being fed it by BM.  I might review what I have been doing and hear what more they might like from me and maybe validate that yes, I can understand how having healthy teeth is a real concern and a good thing to stay on top of and I want them to feel comfortable with what I'm doing and am open to their input.  If they bring up bioparent, I just shrug it off and don't address that since I wasn't there to hear it and just get things square between me and the kids.

I know Fjelstad advocates taking care of ourselves and I'm sure what she recommends is excellent advice (which may not have anything to do with what I just said).   I wish you well!

[Rose1]

I definitely feel for you. This situation with the parental alienation is very difficult.
As mine got into teens I read somewhere, can't remember where,.maybe even here, that as kids get older they need to learn how to deal with pd and need to learn the strategies. Especially since they will likely have a much longer relationship with the pd than you will. And they will be adults dealing with a pd as well.
Mine did not see the pd.very often which in hindsight I count as a major blessing.

However there were always nasty digs which eventually were also directed at the kids as they grew into their own voice.
I also read that sheltering the kids from the pd can have bad results because suddenly one day they wake up to the pd reality and have no idea about what the truth is. I think this may be child dependent and I decided if they ask they get an honest answer. My oldest was very medically inclined and was doing her own research at 16 so we had information about bpd to look at.

So in our case the parental alienation contributed to them going nc as adults (oldest is nearly 40). They resented it and knew it was lies.

On the minus side, I suspect from Dh's experience that golden children have a much harder time of it because they can get roped into participating in the alienation to keep in the good  books.
The other thing that rather surprised me because I thought they were fairly well adjusted is as they hit their 30s anger and resentment surfaced about abandonment, and memories of things that were said to them I didn't know about. (Suicide threats for example). As they got older he treated them the way he had treated me because they had boundaries.

I wasn't very good at boundaries but I did try to teach my kids boundaries and gave them permission to disagree politely and stop a conversation. I found the girls couldn't do that on their own and needed to learn polite disengagement.

Anyway take what works and leave the rest. Everyone is very different but I believe no matter what, a pd in the family causes lasting emotional damage and we can only mitigate up to a point and know we are not the cause.
Take care

[Penny Lane]

Thank you all for the wise, wise words! I've read them all over several times and every one of you offered really good advice. Thanks especially for the outside resources, I'll check them out.

These thoughts really hit the nail on the head re my concerns - balancing making a space free of conflict vs giving the kids the tools to deal with their mom once they're out of the house.

To bloomie's point, including the kids in the communication is a whole other thing. BM has started texting DH + the kids in one thread, while SIMULTANEOUSLY texting DH separately, in some cases contradicting what she's saying in the group text. In the text with the kids she's polite and chipper and focused on solutions. And at the same time she's just absolutely unhinged in the separate thread, threatening him and name calling and everything else. And then she'll often throw in a parental alienation type jab in the group text, which, of course DH doesn't want to escalate it because the kids are there, but leaving it unaddressed gives the kids even more of a wrong impression.

Similarly with the calendar - BM just won't look at a calendar DH makes and she won't share her calendar with him. The kids have the calendar on their phones so they know when everything is.

Thanks again everyone, it's been really rough lately and it's so good to know there are people who understand.