To be over the moon with the way mediaton went?

[D0oinMeCleanin]

I particularly enjoyed these bits

Ex: I have no problems. I don't even know why this is happening. When they said that someone was gonna be coming round I thought it was gonna be someone who'd help her with the house and that and explain that it's not good for kids to be living like this. It's making them smell.

Mediator: So what do you think you can do about the children smelling?

Ex:

Mediator: Do you think if they came to your house you could wash their clothes and shower them?

Ex: Well, yeah and I do, but that's not the point is it? When they're with her they smell and they'll get bullied

Mediator: Okay, but social services have already investigated at your behest and they were happy with the way the children are cared for. Do you think the smell might be your issue?

Ex:

Mediator: So showering them and washing their clothes would be a way of dealing with that?

and

Ex: She lets them go to school all scruffy with grey shirts and holey socks and dd2 is always covered in mud and I dunno what else.

Mediator: So if you are not happy with your children's uniform what can you do about it? They are your children aren't they?

Ex: Well yeah but...

Mediator: Could you buy them new uniform if you think they need it?

Ex:

He sat with a face like a slapped arse throughout the whole thing. I doubt it's gonna help with his attitude, he still insists he is right and me and the mediator are wrong but boy did I enjoy watching it

He is a twat of the first water. You have come such a loooong way in the years you have been posting.

I'm sure this process is helping, but maybe going very low contact would be possible? I think, form what you have said, that your DC are able to take themselves to visit your Ex when it's time for them to stay with him. So maybe there is no need to see him face to face. Perhaps you could open an email account for dealing with the DC, although he will obviously be able to contact you by phone in an emergency. Do not pick up the phone to him, but if he phones, text to ask what it is. You can then ignore stupid texts, and only respond to important ones.

That was an x post.

Umm great. Who's cleaning out the rats and so on....totally not cool IMO...

"I don't keep hitting F5 like a sea lion though."

Arf.

Dd1 is now in bed and my Night Nurse is working, so I'm off to bed now.

Sanity, funnily enough we are due to do a session on how to effectively write and respond to emails and texts, so that's obviously something this lady has identified as something we are not good at

We do mainly communicate via messages, but as this woman points out, even though the children cannot hear what is being said, they can still see that dad is texting mum and mum is getting upset and vice versa and there will still be tension when they talk about dad or mum. Plus he is grilling the dd2 on what is going on in my house and asking her about my laundry habits, how often I bath her, along with telling her that she smells, which clearly is something that needs addressing along with dd1's refusal to have anything to do with him and my reaction (or over reaction, which is what I had been doing) to his criticism of me. These are all issues that have been identified as needing improvement. She cannot tell me what he says my attitude is like or how he thinks I am in the wrong, I'm sure he does have valid issues, but she's not allowed to tell me what has been discussed in their private sessions.

I do feel as though the work we are doing is helping me in the way I deal with his criticisms of me and helping to improve my own behaviour towards him, his attitude to dd1 has improved so hopefully with time his attitude in other areas will improve.

I'm not sure what you're getting at Pony and tbf I don't really care either.

The only thing I'm getting at is who is cleaning out the rats? No big deal, but they need to be cleaned out or your kids will have to smell rat shit when they're sleeping.

While it would be my personal idea of hell, I don't think keeping rats is any different from keeping hamsters, guinea pigs etc, no? No more dangerous or smelly than any small caged animal that needs regular cleaning out.

Many people find them fascinating intelligent pets mad people

I think the teeth gnashing over the rats is unnecessary.

I'm not gnashing teeth, I'm an animal lover. But given the context.... Rat shit.... OCD daughter...accusations of bad smelling kids. Really? With all the othernNimals in the house, we're the rats really necessary?

My DS had a friend who had pet rats in his bedroom. The pong emanating from the front door when they opened it made me feel sick. The house stank to high heaven and they only had one dog besides the rats.
They were an absolutely lovely family and God knows I'm no Hyacinth Bucket but that was rank. Rats piss and shit all the time, everywhere. I can't believe any house containing them doesn't smell.

Just so you know.

We do mainly communicate via messages, but as this woman points out, even though the children cannot hear what is being said, they can still see that dad is texting mum and mum is getting upset and vice versa and there will still be tension when they talk about dad or mum.

And your DD1 has witnessed shit on Facebook and even got involved, to the point where she wrote a long ranty post calling her Dad a 'big liar' (when he wasn't actually lying).

DD2 is not allowed to say how much she loves her Dad, without DD1 having a go at her and making her feel dreadful.

It's not just about the texting. The public internet dramas and passive aggressiveness from both sides has made the children 'hear' what's being said.

Worra this is something I remember about the older posts. DD2 is almost ganged up on and picked on because she loves her Dad. What she says is dismissed by OP and DD1 and she is sidelined.

I'm also a bit dubious about the drip feed from the gloating OP to getting to this point.

It can be a difficult thing to protect kids from Aermingers and I speak from experience.

When I split from my ex husband, our 8yr old witnessed so much tension/overheard telephone arguments/conversations between extended family members and we actually didn't realise to what extent at the time.

It was only looking back a few years later, that we realised this. Although none of it was played out on the internet and he was never encouraged or allowed to get involved, he definitely overheard things he shouldn't have.

As a result, he became a very angry teenager who went through about 4 years of hell.

He came out the other side (thankfully) as a pretty level headed 23yr old who is now a stepdad himself...and an absolutely brilliant one in my biased opinion.

But some of his friends who grew up in similar circumstances weren't so lucky. The anger made them turn to drink/drugs/crime and even now a lot of them are still fucked up.

All of the adults in his life including me, would do things very differently if we could turn back the clock. We would have kept so much more away from him, if we'd even been aware of how much he was witnessing.

This is why I get so...I don't know 'frustrated'? at some of the OP's posts where the kids are concerned.

Parallel parenting is often a good move when it gets like that.

You don't comunicate pretty much at all other than a important info diary that goes between the two. No verbal contact at all and no making arangements other than actual real emergencies.

The down side is no flexibility the upside is no contact it does not even have to be long term as sometimes a few months can be enough to start building up trust and let go of ill feeling.

Plenty of people keep rats and their homes don't smell.

I suggest those anxious about this aspect of the situation take it up with people on the Pets board. It's massively irrelevant here as clearly the OP's house DOES NOT SMELL.

I went to a house with my dad once to collect a a blue streaked lory on behalf of his pet shop owning friend.

My god the house there was bird shit everywhere. Thick layers of dust and feathers on every surface and the smell was indescribable. He offered me a cup of tea! I had to make my excuses and go outside, the house was causing an asthma attack.

I can barely look at my dad's friend now when I visit her petshop. She has that bird living in her house. I'm never going there for tea again I can tell you. It must be rank now. Shame, she used to have such a lovely house. But sadly the people who own this kind of parakeet have squalid houses. I know because I've been in one

Worra, there was a lot of anger on all sides when we left, yes from dd1 included. She'd spent almost all of her life being told by this man that she was not good enough. That's not going to go away over night because we left. There's still a lot we need to work on and yeah, over the course we've made a lot of mistakes, including dd1 reacting to things she sees him posting on FB and me posting things on FB (that dd1 and ex himself are excluded from seeing) because I feel angry. I'm not saying any of that was the right thing to do. I know it wasn't we made mistakes. We were and are hurt and angry.

All I can do is try to move forward and learn from those mistakes. Which is what I am trying to work through with this separation service and dd1's counseling. I'm still not always going to get it right, but who does? All I can do is try to move forward.

D0oin has said that the rats are cleaned twice a week. That should be plenty.

Thanks Thumb. The rats don't smell. Nor does my house or children.

Ex is simply trying to undermine my confidence in myself again. He's pissed that he's lost control of me and dd1 and is acting out. He can't tell me I am messy or not coping with running a house on my own because I can see that I am, so he tells me we smell instead, this way he can try and convince me that I cannot smell it because I am used to it and every single other person, including trained professionals are just being polite, he's the only one willing to tell me the truth, in order to help me out, of course, not to make me feel like shit, he'd never do that

It's just more control and bullying from a controlling and bullying man. It's taken me a long time to realise that. Far too long, but I'm getting there, slowly. As is dd1 with the help of counseling and the support of her friends.

I know this is not the focus of the thread, but I couldn't help be struck by what you said about your daughters friend going out of her way to make positive comments about the house and how nice it smell. Gave me a little tear that did, how kind.

Oh, this is daft.

We've gone from admitting SS said the rats smelt, but not overpoweringly so, to insisting they don't smell at all.

Ok, fine, some people wouldn't care if they're sleeping in a room with a slight odour of rat, and others would.

But I can kinda see where the ex-H is coming from if this is how conversations go with him.

Blimey, mn

I know we're not a single entity and many views are represented etc etc

But to the casual dipper inner, this looks all

Poster: My husband is awful!
MN: Leave The Bastard!
Poster: I've Left The Bastard!
MN: You haven't Left The Bastard properly!

OP I hope you have a thick skin and plenty of rl backup. Looks like you're taking sensible steps to make a shit situation better. Good luck to you

Some of you lot would make awesome barristers

Obviously the rats have a smell. Most things do. If you put your nose against their cage and inhale you will smell a variety of things, including rats, because there are rats in there and rats smell of rats. There is not a great deal I can do about that. It is not necessarily an unpleasant odour, but it is an odour. I guess odours depend on your personal preferences. I adore the smell of bleach but the smell of crisps makes me feel physically ill.

It's not an odour that fills their room. You cannot smell it from their bed, if you stand with your nose pushed up against their beds you will smell a slight odour of laundry powder, fabric softener and dd1's perfume and on laundry day sweat.

Similarly if you stand near my toilet you will smell bloo loo. That does not mean, however, that my entire house smells of bloo loo or that the children smell of bloo loo or even that you can smell bloo loo while you are in the bath, but the smell is there.

Of course what I meant is the rats do smell badly. It is not a smell that fills their entire room or the house or taints the children themselves.

Ex cannot smell the rats. He's afraid of them and therefore never goes upstairs. He's not as I've previously thought imagining the smell because he thinks there should be a smell, he's not mistaking the smell of a cleaning product he does not like for rats or any of the other excuses I've made up for him in the past and no amount of cleaning or reasoning with him will stop him smelling this smell, because he cannot smell a smell. He never has been able to smell a smell.

What he is doing is doing is purposefully and maliciously trying to undermine my confidence and my belief that I am doing better without him than I was with him and it worked for a long time.

I got stressed about the smell. I became paranoid about the smell. I cleaned religiously. I obsessed about the smell and all it did was cause myself and dd1 misery and anxiety.

The exact amount of attention the smell requires is precisely zero and on that note, I'll be leaving this thread because it's starting to needlessly go around in circles. I cannot prove to MN or to ex that there is no smell. That's why he chose a smell to focus on. I can prove I am paying bills, I can prove I am washing up. I cannot prove that he cannot smell a smell therefore all I can do is ignore him and plan his untimely demise

Ok, look, I am sorry you feel rotten. And I don't think he sounds wonderful.

But I do also think it's a waste of time posting and then arguing away everything you've just said when people don't agree with you 100%.

You really do no need to justify yourself to anyone on this thread. I for one think you have done brilliantly in extracting yourself from a clearly unhealthy relationship. Have you made mistakes along the way? I wouldn't be at all surprised, as most of us make mistakes every day of our lives. But some people on MN will never be satisfied by anything you say or do. Best to ignore them IMO.

Hang on.

lol omg.You took him in when he had broken both his arms??? ANd now he's declaring you are a shit parent.

Jesus Christ. Ex husbands are their own worst enemies when it comes to having the moral high ground. Nearly every week I hear of ex husbands sinking to amazing new lows.