I’ve been having problems for years now with my child’s Dad, he is the definition of Disney parent, but so keen to be seen as better than that, that he constantly tells my Son to lie to me about things he’s done, things he’s said, things he's bought him, what time my Son is allowed to stay up until…… pretty much every area of his life there. The thing is I don’t actually ask what goes on there the only things I know are from what slips out. When my Son was small and his Dad had him two days a week he used to give him to his Grandmother for half of that time and both he and the lying Nan used to pretend that it was actually him looking after him and they were just visiting her. She lied to my face about this many times.
Anyway it all came to a head last year as he also manipulates my Son in other ways and he completely ruined two events last year for us, one of them being our holiday in the summer and then at the end of the year my Son come home telling me that his Dad was scared of me, he said that he’d lost something that I’d sent there and that Daddy was “really panicking” because he was scared of my reaction (the item wasn’t even lost it was at my house and was of no importance at all)
I spoke to the school counsellor because I was worried about my Son always being told to lie to me, that it makes him more vulnerable to manipulation from outside of his family in the future thinking that is normal, that he has always had me portrayed as uptight and unapproachable by being told I can’t know things and to get advice on how much I can or should open my Sons eyes to recognise when he is being manipulated.
The school counsellor recommended a counsellor she knows to have a couple counselling session to work on our co parenting, this is where things got worse.
In this session I explained some of the incidents where he and his family had lied to me, where my Son had been told to lie to me and cover up for things and this counsellor made excuses for him for every single incident, he said my son probably made things up, my Son probably construed things wrongly, I was probably looking at things wrongly. He dismissed everything my Son had said, every time my Son was speaking to me and suddenly stopped because he’d realised he had said something he had been told not to, every time my Son gave away something he had been told not to and then suddenly back tracked, all of the times that the evidence there was pointing in the direction of my Son telling the truth and expected me to completely dismiss my own instincts and ability to recognise what was right in front of me. I looked like a paranoid person and my Child’s Dad was so very comfortable with all of the blame being pushed at my Son it actually made me see him in a worse light. This was nearly a month ago and I still can’t let go of it, I’m still so angry that this person who doesn’t know us would so quickly dismiss something that has been going on for my Son’s whole life that has me so worried about him and that is undermining his relationship with me. He just thought that my Son’s Dad was such a nice person there was no way I could be right about him.
Does this sound right? Is that what we signed up for and I just expected something different? I thought I would talk and his Dad would answer, but actually he didn’t even need to deny much because the counsellor did it for him. I’m still so upset by it.