A brief background.
My daughter who is 8 yrs old has lived with her mother since we separated when she was aged 3.
My ex has since remarried and is currently living approximately 100 miles from me.
I have a very close relationship with my daughter and she stays with me every other weekend as well as half the school holidays. This is part of a court order, however getting to speak to my daughter in between is very difficult and controlled entirely by the mother. I only have one mobile contact and as that’s hers she decides when to answer, she has refused to give me the landline number and refused my suggestion of getting our daughter a mobile phone.
When married difficulties arose that at the time I assumed were the kind of reasons a lot of marriages break down. When we first separated and were not living under the same roof we did get on much better.
However since remarrying, over the past 3 years I’ve noticed the traits my ex had when we were married have increased dramatically.
I recently accidentally heard a random program on radio 4 about personality disorders and it really made my ears prick up. Many of the symptoms seemed to describe my ex wife. I can’t list them all but these include a very wild temper with no middle ground, very controlling of everyone in her life, very paranoid and suspicious of everything, difficult to get on with and with my daughter a bully.
I’m sure a lot of people reading this will think it sounds like personality traits we all have, but it really isn’t, everything is way more intense dialled up to ten.
In the past 3 and a half years my daughter has switched school a total of 6 times, some have been due to my daughters step dads work situation but the last 2 were not and after 4 previous moves most people including myself would reason that our daughter needs stability but it’s as though my ex doesn’t see that or care.
The last school move took my daughter out of a brilliant school that had an ofsted rating of 1 and outstanding. My ex has a fixation with our daughters education, she has enrolled her in several well known after school education classes 2 of whom have since said they can no longer help our daughter stating the reason as being unable to get on with her mum, one of the centres called me to apologise and explained the reason. She also sets her own daily curriculum of math, reading and English, I wouldn’t have an issue with this if it were in moderation but more importantly the way my ex treats our daughter is not to praise and encourage but to put the fear of god into her.
I can see my daughter is very weary of her mum and at times terrified of her, not from physical harm, but verbal, mental abuse that leaves her incredibly anxious.
One thing that’s stands out to me is that she doesn’t really try and hide the way she treats our daughter, it’s as though she doesn’t know she’s treating her in a way that makes her very anxious.
I’ve read several threads on here about people who have been diagnosed with a personality disorder, however knowing my ex as I do, the thought of me suggesting she may be mentally ill would be met with fire & rage.
I’ve read and seen a whole host of articles and videos online stating that children can often inherit the same disorder that a parent they grew up with has, which is very worrying.
It’s hard to know what steps to take, Child services at this point seems overkill, a child physiologist for my daughter to speak with?
Does anybody have any useful information, I’d really like to know if there is a body I can speak with to get useful advise.
I’m genuinely not out to try and get custody of our daughter, if there is help and she was willing to take it that would be a start but as things stand i need to take action.
Thanks Paul