Hello everyone,
Looking for some words of wisdom here. I have a 3.5 year old boy and a 2 year old girl, their father left when DD was 2 months.
I will try to set briefly the backstory first - the father is a textbook drama king, thriving under extreme emotional swings. Formally he has contact on one weeknight and overnight Friday to Saturday. He sees the children at most once every two weeks now, after not showing up at all for almost 6 months. Every time, with no exceptions to date, there is some unexplainable and dramatic action from his side during/preceding contact - the last one, for example, was shaving off our daughter's hair (chin length before). The one before that was lying about his mum, the children's grandma, dying in agony (she is very much alive). If I listed everything that has happened and submitted it as a soap drama script, it would probably be rejected as too unrealistic and bizarre.
I am very worried now about the impact this chaotic contact, and, if I am honest - ex's personality and behaviour as well, has on DS. He has always been a very emotional, hyperactive and easily excitable boy, had a moderate speech delay (sorted out with speech therapy, now almost normal).
After he now comes back from the contact he flips into a hysterical meltdown, shaking, laughing and crying at the same time, then goes all rigid and stiff for a couple of minutes. First time it happened I even called an ambulance, thinking it was an epileptic fit. He also becomes incontinent for a day or so after the contact (fully potty trained for more than a year now), noticeably regresses in speech (reverts to baby talk), and has screaming fits in the middle of the night. Then, after about two days, he's back to his normal self. It has been observed not only by me, but also by friends, family and nursery personnel.
I happened to witness (on and off) the contact between the two yesterday, and this is probably the main reason I am writing now (never thought before I will discuss something like this on a public board). Ex was in a hurry so dropped in to spend an hour with the children in the living room. It was quite volatile - started as an ultra active physical play with a lot of laughter, running and noise, and then suddenly ex started yelling at DS for not behaving himself properly and being noisy. DS then wetted his pants, and was lectured for a couple of minutes for being filthy and stinky. I entered the room then and found ex holding DS in an armlock and tickling him, while DS was crying, wriggling and begging to stop - to which the father was replying consistently: "only when you say sorry for doing a wee-wee and being such a naughty baby". I asked ex to stop and leave immediately, which he did. Surely enough, very soon after he left, DS had this hysterical reaction again, unresponsive for almost two hours after (just went to sit in a corner after the fit, soiling himself, rocking backwards and forwards, and screaming if I attempted to enter the room, then went straight to bed by himself, woke up during the night with screams a couple of times and then woke up today generally back to normal).
I probably will be urgently seeking an opinion from a child psychologist (?) next week. I could not sleep last night at all after observing the interaction and the reaction that followed, and it scares the life out of me now. Am I overreacting? Underreacting?