Ex-husband's wife sent this email during custody dispute, was it inappropriate?

[Kiwiana100]

FYI this happened a long time ago. 2015 to be exact. My ex and I were in custody dispute. He and his wife wanted full time care of my eldest girl (Rebecca). I had agreed to only 50/50. They felt that her autism diagnosis was wrong and that I was conditioning and enabling her. He had become highly verbally abusive and his wife (a trained counsellor) stepped in to try to negotiate. This is her email. I found it to be a huge boundary violation. I have changed the names.
Hello Hannah,

Thank you for your email. I acknowledge that you changed your mind about meeting next weekend, I find that a bit of a shame as actions toward better communication could be, in my view, really helpful.

Great that you agreed to the new schedule which is based on your revised wishes.

You hope that one day Rebecca will appreciate your decision to prevent Matthew from caring for her full time. I think it sometimes requires a lot of love and grandeur to let go of your own needs and try new things for the sake of the child. Assigning Matthew full time care for Rebecca would have been such thing. It would have been a chance for Rebecca. Why would it mean you give up on Rebecca? You had both girls in fulltime care for nearly four years and Matthew never viewed this as giving up on his children. I really wonder how you develop such views? You both, Matthew and you, have the same rights to care for the children. Hannah, that's right, time will reveal Rebeccas's views on this. I agree, one day both girls will form their opinions about their experiences with both of you. They will make up their minds what they found helpful, what not, what they liked and what not. They will do this as we all did it with our parents. Good mother or good father – at the end of the day it is for them to say what they think.

Please don't worry about the way Matthew portrays you. I am well aware of the fact that I hear only his perception. Please also know that neither of us are judging you. You can do what you want, have you own values, live your own life as you want, please don't worry about this. We never comment on things related to you towards the girls and we take our pride in this. We also have no bad intentions towards you, we both wish you all the best, why would we want anything bad for you?

But still Hannah, between both of you parents, it must be possible to raise concerns. If Matthew e.g. gets the impression that Sarah gets more attention than Rebecca he must have the possibility to raise this issue with you, would you not agree? This is in our view just a normal part of communication between parents. And btw, you do this too on a regular basis.

Since we don't see each other on the weekend, please let me say a few words about your (Matthew's and your) way of communicating. I am well aware that you despise Matthew for his bad communication style because he is sometimes getting very aggravated, aggressive and becomes verbally abusive. You are absolutely right. And I have seen him on a number of occasions finding it extremely difficult to stay calm when things are getting out of hand between you two.
But I think it is a bit one sided to point the finger on Matthew alone and see yourself as the victim. Its never right to blame just one side. As a person who witnessed you both communicating, I would like to invite you to hear my perspective of it. It can see that you still hold a lot of resentments against Michael. Your relationship ended nearly four years ago, and I strongly doubt that you reached closure. Maybe you disagree, maybe you reflect on this and find the right answer to this question for yourself. What I observe is, that Matthew never gets it right for you. In your books he is to blame for this, that and the other. Just recently for Sarah not wanting to eat at McDonalds (please see your last Thursdays texts) and in yesterday texts you even blamed him for you not having a good relationship with your daughter Rebecca. Within this framework you expect him to react friendly, patiently and respectful. Beyond that you often don't consult with him in parenting questions, you rather consult with outsiders, I suspect you don't view him as competent (??). And, I'm very sorry to mention it, you don't acknowledge his efforts and achievements with the girls. In contrast you even criticise him for that.
I can tell you that Matthew too loves his children and he actively helps them to reach their full potential, to improve their behaviours, gives them direction, guidelines, support and last but not least his love. Rebecca's improvements in math and her communication, for example, are remarkable. Both girls are happy around him. I must say, I admire that on him. I find is sometimes hard to watch how you criticise him for all that is possible while insisting to be respected, and not being criticised. Respect is of course preferable, it just has to go both ways. When we blame we should also see our own parts that we play.

I really hope that you give it a go and think about my words.

Kind regards

Katherine

Only one of the DD's broke contact with their Father and the SM, the other one sees their pov. The court awarded them residency.
But that was going to be my point. I've worked with children and families, post fostering/adoption and parents can get stuck at points. OP you need to focus to get over this point. The girls are adults and you are no longer battling for them. Going through residency arrangements/loss can cause a form of PTSD as I'm sure your counsellor works to support you with strategies. Sometimes you have to accept that not everything can be got over, you've got to learn to push it back and carry on, or try and make peace with the past. Hopefully posting/talking about the situation will help you start to just live in the here and now and get rid of the elephant in the room, because there is no reason why anyone else should feature in your relationship with either daughter. My youngest, autistic DD needed support until she was around 28, so I'm sure you have a lot going on, but this still shouldn't be a battleground with either DD being seen as wrong.

I think you should have returned it like a piece of work a student had done with the grammatical errors corrected in red

Oh the temptation!

The only time this is an issue with my daughters is when they are affected by her verbal abuse. My autistic daughter hasn't processed it, and my neurotypical daughter still suffers from it. I have to tread very lightly around the topic with my NT and try to support her without seeming to attack the other parents. It's a very delicate balance, to say the least. On the plus side, my NT, who was severely alienated throughout her teenage years, trusts me enough to share what's going on and not just about this issue. She openly says she doesn't tell her Dad everything because she knows what the reaction will be.

Patronising cow.

OP, I’ve read all of your posts but not all of everyone else’s posts, and just want to say I completely understand and feel for you. I had an abusive ex with a new wife who was a TA, I believe, and had similar conversations with them both. My DS is NT and academically high achieving. He’s an adult now very sensible and emotionally intelligent and we’ve all moved on, but it has all never quite left me.

I can see both sides here, though I wouldn’t have stepped in like this.

I can see she has agreed with you about the ex’s poor communication style (frustration, anger) but also she has tried to say he (and you) needed to be able to raise concerns without a big row (true, if possible) and she has suggested you were overly critical of him (as in, that seemed to her to have been your default position).

She also seemed to be trying (badly) to point out that they didn’t badmouth you to the kids (good) but then unfortunately all the points were smothered by the patronising bit about ‘we don’t judge you’ which she should have just left out. I don’t know you and have only this post to read - so I don’t know if you let the kids see your feelings about ex or not.

I think she was trying to help and was desperate to see some breakthrough in communication but as a professional she made a bad call I think.

You could consider pasting it into Copilot (or chatGPT or Gemini) and asking it to summarise … with it set not to store it, see what non-human summary is like?

I think this is well written, and sounds fair and balanced.

Whether or not she should have stayed out of it is a good question. Normally yes, but it sounds as if this was affecting her also and so she wanted to try to take a positive step to help remedy the situation.

Did you not find the external viewpoint helpful, OP? How did things pan out 10 years on?

OP you say you have closure but I’m confused why you are still posting about something that happened 11 years ago.

At that point, I don't think they were badmouthing me, but it began soon after and was relentless, even to the point of telling the girls that I caused the autism. As for my being critical, I had endured numerous verbal conversations where I was called stupid and irrational among many other charming labels. When I asked him to get help with his anger, the answer was "I don't have an anger problem, you have a stupidity problem", so yeah, her view was definitely one-sided. With that being said, there were many times I could have acted with more maturity as well, but at this point in the conflict I was attempting to de escalate and protect the kids from the fall out.

I don't think you had any grounds for complaining about her to her professional body - that just feels like wanting to get revenge on her / bully her. She was obviously very involved with the children and stating her views wasn't unprofessional. It might have been worth considering her views rather than just getting angry.

I think she is over-stepping as she was not in a professional situation but a step parent. You do not say how long she had been in the children’s life. Effectively she has written the email from a mediation view point. Which is not her place. I’m wondering if she has children herself? How is the relationship now? If it helps I have an ex with a wife who also likes to “help” in a similar way and it backfires every time. In my situation the wife seems to try and parent everybody…

Why aren't they responding to the verbal abuse? Putting in boundaries? Do they realise, as adults they are now in control and have full autonomy? Are they having therapy? You all seem stuck.

She probably believed she was trying to help. However, she employed the language usage of her area of expertise to imply competency and a lack of bias. But she was biased. She had married this man and had taken the blue pill about 'crazy ex-wives with unreasonable opinions' who need to be managed. But if she had not taken that pill, what would it say about her own choices? It may be that - fast forward some years - she would be more able to have some sympathy with the OP.

Consider her view that I am selfish for not giving them 100% care (I had agreed to 50/50), that I am to blame for her husband's verbal abuse of me? This had taken the form of regular hour-long screaming, hysterical rants interspersed with profanities and accusations of being stupid, irrational, selfish etc etc, refusal to calmly discuss any of my concerns around my daughter's welfare, unfounded accusations that I 'conditioned' her into autism, aggressive emails and texts, and later a deliberate campaign to alienate my children. Are you for real?

My ND daughter doesn't have contact anymore. She just has a hard time processing it. My NT daughter is only 20 and has misplaced loyalty. Yes, both had therapy.

Totally inappropriate, in my view. As an aside it’s also extremely badly written and parts of it I had to read several times because the syntax was all wrong…

You asked about the letter, and that is what I responded to. I don't think you should be reporting someone to their professional body because they tell you what they think about a family situation they are necessarily very involved in. There isn't a rule that a therapist or counsellor can't give an opinion on how someone else is behaving without being unprofessional.

I didn't report her, but I felt that someone who validates an abusive man's behaviour should not be working with vulnerable people. Her email definitely crosses professional boundaries at a number of points. Giving me an uninvited psychological analysis was one of them. Highly unprofessional and definitely cause for concern.

It depends on her professional body's code of practice and the law, but generally speaking it's a serious ethical concern from many points of view if a therapist/counsellor starts "dealing" with their own family's case, even if it's an extended family. In that letter she used the term "observing" that may imply professional neutrality but she is not neutral. There are lots of blurred boundaries in the letter.

She also admitted the abuse but tried to justify it. This is more serious than blurring the boundaries, and confirming this in writing exposed her to potential disciplinary actions. However, lots of counsellors are not regulated and it's a grey zone. And of course nothing could have stopped her to express her views as a private person so in case of any formal complaint she would have said that she wasn't acting in professional capacity.

(I'm a qualified therapist)

Apart from the fact the step mother sounds foreign in the way she writes, it is without doubt totally patronising and out of order. She doesn't sound like the stable influence you might hope for in a counsellor!?

Sorry kiwiana it sounds like a difficult situation. Parenting is hard and I hope things settle as the girls get even older. Are they at uni? Have lives of their own? Those sorts of experiences will help them heaps to see the world and maybe themselves differently. My OE helped with this and some of my uni days.

I'm unsure what you are searching for but it must be something and I hope you find it. Posting this doesn't seem as uncomplicated as you make it but you are correct, it's inappropriate and your response was awesome.

1. no wonder your daughter isn’t keen on counseling if this is the main counsellor she knows.
2. this is a classic ‘flying Monkey’ of a narcissist, she is his enabler. Narcissists need someone to be enraged by them and someone to adore them at all times.
3. it’s not too late to report her by the way.

I agree with this from a professional viewpoint. One of the core ethical principles is informed consent, you have not consented for her to analyse you.

I also can’t believe you’re criticized for not praising him for the ‘good bits’ of his parenting as if that’s your job /as if he would ever do that for you 😂😂😂

If, like me, you feel strongly about this, please could you say so here? MN monitors site stuff threads. So far they have said that AI posts are okay.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5490256-posts-written-by-chat-gpt-and-other-ai