Daughter becoming increasingly violent after 7 year custody battle

[SilentMommy]

Hello, I’m new to this site and I’m happy to have found it. I could use some advice and kind words. A quick background explanation: my children’s Father (42 years old) has been destroying my life, Mom (36), since our split in 2014. I moved back to my hometown in Maine from California because I had no support system, family or good friends. My children’s dad is a musician so he was never home and drank a lot. Most weekends he would turn off his phone and go camp in his bus without warning or if he came home he would be drunk. He cared more about entertaining his friends and trying to become famous than helping raise our first baby. I had to leave because it was starting to make me lose my mind. Later on we tried to work it out and had one more child, nothing changed so I once again moved back to my hometown.

After my son was born via an emergency c-section, I suffered from severe postpartum depression. I was a single Mother with a 2 year old and newborn. Their Father came to visit our new child a week after he was born and an argument ensued which caused me to ask him to go to the spare apartment that we had arranged for if we needed to be separate. As he was walking out of the front door, I was shutting it and he quickly turned around and forced it open while kicking off my big toenail. I went into a mild shock and was trying to control the damage (I don’t want to go into detail on that injury) and he ran outside and called the police. While outside he scratched his own face and had told the police I assaulted him first. He left Maine the next day. After three months of waiting for the court date my depression became worse. CPS was constantly stopping in unannounced due to his false report and making me feel worse. I didn’t realize that my milk was drying up, I was starting my son on baby food at the same time. CPS requested I start taking him to a doctor they wanted him to be seen by 2 hours away, I complied. After 9 months the Dr. concocted a plan that made the state able to take partial custody of my son for failure to thrive despite him gaining weight every week. The doctor had two different facilities weigh him on the same day and I had changed his diaper before the second facility so his weight dropped by .02 ounces within that hour. The state used that as reason to take him and it was a vicious year long battle. Their father did not show up for court one time, my Mother in Florida was against me writing requests to allow her friend (she was a foster mom) to keep my son until he was 18. I did not have money to hire a lawyer but was able to win him back after a year. The stipulation to get him back was that I had to move to Florida so my Mother could “help” me.

I moved to Florida, found my own house then shortly after, my kids Father moved to Florida and lived with my Mother. I was forced to move to Florida and with the way my Mother and their dad were treating me, I wanted to move back to Maine where all of my friends live and my terminally ill Father was. I was still suffering from severe depression and made the absolute worst comment I could have made when I was trying to move back up north. I said if you take my kids, I will (eat spaghetti). It wasn’t a true statement, I was just angry and was sick of dealing with him and my mother taking my kids and not giving them back when it was my time.

A couple of days after my statement, police knocked on my door while my kids were eating breakfast and their Dad was with them. He filed for emergency custody with my Mother who inserted lies of abuse to help him and I lost both of my children to him. Four months passed before I could go to court and get permission to have supervised visitation. Seven years have passed and everything that can go wrong in the system has gone wrong; from 5 cancelled court dates to one of the judges dying, to my lawyer purposely ignoring me for months and prolonging my case 3 extra years. We had mediation in December of 2024 and I was finally awarded a temporary timesharing order for unsupervised weekends with my children. Their Father gifted my daughter a phone before she came to my house and had “find my phone” activated as well as told her I could not touch her phone. She is 11. It caused very serious issues between her and I for months because I kept asking her not to bring it to my house, she’s too young and irresponsible. She was a zombie and constantly staring into it no matter what we were doing, she even started to record our conversations without me knowing and sending them to her step-mom. I finally made it very clear that if the phone came to my house one more time, no one was going to see it again, so it ended.

Every weekend until school got out in May was filled with my kids screaming at each other and becoming increasingly more physically violent with each other(11 year old girl, 9 year old boy). I always believed in gentle parenting and speaking calmly to children, unfortunately I had to change in order to try to gain any control of my kids behavior. I’ve had to increase my tone, I ban them from video games or we leave parks and playgrounds early due to their behaviors.

The final weekend I had my children, before their last week of school, my daughter was playing with a hacky sack in her room. She had created a fun game with it but after 20 minutes was becoming increasingly frustrated from her room and started yelling at everyone in the dining area for speaking while they were playing the game Guess Who. I asked her to take a time out without the ball and she wouldn’t give it to me. Her behavior before trying to remove the ball was excessive and becoming more disrespectful to my son, their step-dad and myself. When I tried to grab it from her she started hitting me really hard and screaming even more. After 7 years of being alienated, I felt I needed to stop allowing my kids to not listen when I ask them to do or stop doing something. They never listened prior to me having weekends with them and would yell at me that I wasn’t the boss or in charge during supervised visits. To finish this story, my daughter scratched me and was leaving marks on me then decided to kick my bad knee really hard to the point it hyperextended and almost broke. I’ve been limping and in the hospital for years so it was very painful. I looked her in her face with tears from pain coming down my face and gave her a very light smack about two inches from her cheek as if to try to snap her out of it and realize what she was doing. I ended up recording the audio of the entire situation incase anything was brought up in court and I called law enforcement to diffuse the situation after an hour of my daughter screaming, hitting and chasing me throughout our property for the ball. She was refusing to diffuse and take a time out. Law enforcement told her she was committing a crime and a female officer had a lengthy private conversation with her instead of taking her to a juvenile detention facility. Her behavior was better for the rest of the weekend.

On the very last day of school I was supposed to have my kids because it was the weekend, I knew their Father would try to pull something so I went to the school early to try to pick up my son, he arrived shortly after me and made a scene with the school saying I can’t take my son. The Father had his new lawyer email me saying that the Father wanted to be governed by the previous court order that only gives me 2 hours of supervised visits per week and two 30 minute phone calls per week. The mediation order stated that we needed to come up with a parenting plan on our own or go to mediation for summer timesharing. I tried to discuss a summer timesharing plan but the Father refused and his lawyer refused to setup mediation when I sent an email with a list of mediators, requesting that we set up a date for that.

I am still in court for this and am in the process of hiring a new lawyer.

Their Father has destroyed my life and every dream I had regarding having a loving family, something I never got to experience as a child.

If anyone has any advice or experiences they are willing to share, I would love to hear it. My depression is worse than it has ever been and I have done every type of therapy imaginable over the course of 15 years. Please be kind with your responses if you do not agree with any of the choices I have made, I cannot change the past as much as I wish I could.

Thank you. ❤️🙏

This sounds very challenging for your children.

You want to have a parental relationship with two children who barely know you. They're telling you as clearly as they can that they don't see you as a parent. They barely know you.

It's hard and horrible that that should be the case, but you need to start by thinking about things from their perspective

You and your ex need to find a better way to communicate than through lawyers

And you and your children need to begin to slowly and gradually build a relationship. Could you slow all of this down a lot. Spend time with the children one on one, just for a few hours at a time, doing something they enjoy. Build up very gradually to having something more like a parental role in their lives, but that might not look how you've envisioned it. Your daughter is 11 already. She might not ever choose to see you as a parent, especially given what a difficult start you've made of rebuilding the relationship

Your ex & mother colluding sounds incredibly painful as does the legal process. This is a UK site & the law is different here so can’t comment on that.
It also sounds like you may be struggling to rebuild a relationship with children you haven’t been able to parent in many years.
But I’m very concerned by the escalation you describe. You describe your daughter playing with a hacky sack or ball & you trying to get her to have time out. She’s 11. I’d say that’s a bit old for time out & perhaps that may be partly why she’s reacted badly to the idea? It also sounds like there were other people around? She may need more time with just you & her brother to rebuild a relationship. There’s a sudden mention of a step dad which worried me…she needs to rebuild a relationship with you before having to negotiate a step dad. And then you describe hitting her & calling the police. On a child. I am not sure you’re going to get many “kind words” here after that. It does sound like you’ve had a terrible time but treating an 11 year old this way is not OK. She needs time with you (not some new man she won’t yet see as a step dad as hasn’t had any time with him), she needs age appropriate care (not time outs, now she’s 11), definitely no violence (!!!) & no calling the police.

You called law enforcement on an 11 year old child after you hit her on the face and she was threatened with a juvenile detention facility? I am sorry but I feel sorry for the child. I think I can work out why you have a bad relationship with them. I'd like to hear the other side of the story.

I also don’t understand this “eat spaghetti” thing…although tbh it seems irrelevant to the fact that you’ve titled this thread about your daughter’s violence while admitting your own as well as the astonishing response of the police…why would they tell a child she was committing a crime & threaten her? What crime?

Totally the children I feel sorry for born into this mess, passed from one person to another, no stability, ups,downs poor kids won't have a clue how to cope or even who loves them and who is just using them as pawns. Btw despicable calling police on such a young child! There were hundreds of ways to deal with that situation and you acted and chose wrongly. If your depression is so bad your probably better off not in there lives. I've had severe depression and ptsd from an incident years ago and I can honestly say I've never sworn,yelled,smacked my children etc because if you can't control yourself then you shouldn't have them. If you can't provide a full-time loving stable life don't have them. My heart breaks for these kids.

@sealprincess I also don’t understand this “eat spaghetti” thing

It's a euphemism for committing suicide I believe.

Oh I see. Thank you. It’s just quite a confusing post with also the sudden mentions of step parents. So I was unclear.

This is going to be very hard to hear but it is necessary for you to understand that being willing to take a step back in situations like this is the right move. It doesn’t need a court to conclude that unsupervised residential visits with you and your daughter aren’t safe or healthy for anyone involved. It is an absolute no brainer for your ex and your mother to decide they need to stop. Something has to change before they can resume. Ending the current parenting plan and going back to supervised visits is the right thing to do.

It may well be the case that your ex and your mother are countering and undermining your efforts to parent. But your response to a young child’s tantrum was really poor parenting and you lost control of yourself and the situation.

A new plan is needed and it may also mean that you need to do some parenting classes and get mental health support. Going to court won’t rebuild your relationship with her. If you want to do something constructive that doesn’t rehash the past then show you are willing to do things differently in the future.

Children aren’t fully developed. Some of them will be naughty and defiant some of the time. As the adult you don’t have the same excuse and if you are not mentally able to be mature then step back.

Dear @SilentMommy I’m shocked nobody has offered condolences for your trauma, because that’s where this starts and ends. Your Mother sounds cruel and possibly mentally twisted and has an unhealthy relationship wit your ex husband. And you weren’t equipped to parent well having her as a role model and a husband who was a drunk and an abuser. This is the root of all of this. But I’ve noticed society jumps on the woman for her flaws before extending the hand of compassion first. Trauma is passed down when it’s not healed, and you were traumatised and your children have been traumatised. They would be confused, and must have been even more so when they were younger. I’m so sorry for all of you. I hear a woman who recognises she has made mistakes but desperately above all else just wants her children to know that she loves them. Have you honestly considered stepping back a bit, chilling with the lawyers (expensive and not going anywhere) and just telling them you love them, and have always loved them. That’s the most important thing. Let that shine through. They are getting to an age where soon they will be able to choose who they spend their time with. Don’t be afraid to apologise for your mistakes and make it clear you love them. It’s the most important thing. And one day they might come to you of their own accord, and not because of a court order. Totally understand why you don’t want to wait but hoping that if they see the love is real they will come to you. I’m sorry life has been so hard for you. It’s not supposed to be that way. Good luck OP.

I’m shocked nobody has offered condolences for your trauma, because that’s where this starts and ends. Your Mother sounds cruel and possibly mentally twisted and has an unhealthy relationship wit your ex husband. And you weren’t equipped to parent well having her as a role model and a husband who was a drunk and an abuser.

Based on one side of the story of someone who hit her 11 year old child in the face, called the police and was wiling to let said police take her into a juvenile centre (have you any idea what that would be like for an 11 year old child). Forgive me but I an loathe to believe a one sided story that everyone else is an abuser from someone who has themselves committed abuse; and where repeated court hearings have found otherwise.

But I’ve noticed society jumps on the woman for her flaws before extending the hand of compassion first.

Oddly, I think it is often the reverse - women get away with abusing their children because society assumes that men are the more likely abusers, and children's services in many countries assume that the maternal instinct is such that they will not do deliberate harm to their own children. If a man had posted here that he hit his 11 year old child across the face - no matter what "provocation" or background context there was - and then called the police to have them arrested, he'd have been lynched by now.

Oh my word, what a sad, sad situation. For all of you, but especially the children involved. I feel so sorry for kids in the middle of this pretty much since they were born, just getting more and more screwed up with each year that passes. You smacked your child across the face and called police on her? Seriously? Jeez.
I hope it works out for you all op, I really do.

Wow @Lemonvalley you think the OP’s trauma is where this starts & ends? Lots od the replies including mine were sympathetic to what she’s been through but where it has ended (so far) is with her hitting her child & calling police on her who then threatened the child.