Suppose just an xp rant but also a wwyd?

[Offred]

In the last few months xp (who has bpd) has caused disruption by proposing to take children (7 and 5) on holiday to Spain for two weeks with his alcoholic mother despite not being able to cope caring for them at home for more than a couple of hours (with his gf/dsis). We said no way as things stand but that if he took a more fatherly role and more responsibilty and built up to it then it would be fine providing his mother and her drinking was not there and the children felt old enough to cope.

Cue us going away for a weekend for our anniversary and xp having ds and dd. On the sat afternoon xp cracks open the booze and gives ds (7) a taste, puts the children to bed and ds wakes up very feverish and struggling to breathe (croup). Xp sits up with him all night. I call at 11am to check up, xp says ds "has been really wheezy all night, had trouble breathing" I ask who he had called (my mum - GP or on call doc) he says neither I ask why not called me, he says didn't want to disturb us, my mum had to come and remove the dcs because he can no longer cope.

When I get home dcs STILL stink of cigarettes and I decide he didn't call the doctor because he was smoking in the house with a child he thought was wheezy and then watching him in a panic about getting caught.

The holiday has never been spoken about again. Now he has gone back to disinterested 2 hours of contact weekly where he comes regularly but at an inconvenient time and doesn't want to see them when he is free.

Tonight ds has come back talking about a story daddy told him about a fight he had and how "you don't hit girls" and proceeded to throw a book off his top bunk at his 2 year old brother's head because he wouldn't go to bed...

I am just :( and so angry! How do I deal with this?! I have txt xp to say there's no reason ever to talk to ds about fighting and he loves him even without exciting stories. He says if he knew more about what was going on at home he would be able to take it into account, I am - why does he think he doesn't know more about the dcs home lives?!?!?! Have refrained from telling him that... Gah...

Bump

Sounds so tough :(

I've got no real advice but other then you being clear about what is acce

Sorry- stupid phone!

Acceptable, I don't know what else you can do. Point out he is welcOme to make more of an effort to learn about their home life maybe?

But I don't see how they would ever need to know about fighting.

Has he been formally diagnosed with BPD? And has he (or is he) getting any treatment for it?

He has been formally diagnosed and certainly has received treatment (CBT and Meds) in the past but don't know what's going on now. He got better with the children for a bit but things seem to be worse ATM. Almost as if he is deliberately trying to expose ds to inappropriate things to be cool. He ignores dd and always has. :(

What would I do ?

it would be a cold day in hell before I exposed my children to that kind of household for whole weekends at a time.

A few hours during the daytime would be my limit. I would want my kids beck in their own beds, under my care, even if it limited my child free weekend jaunts.

Your exP didn't speak to a doctor to get advice when a young child was wheezing "all night". Has he any idea how quickly young children's breathing can deteriorate to dangerous levels ?

So, I would reduce the contact dramatically and let him fight it out officially (if he could even be bothered, which I doubt)

Main thing is I do point out when he does and says things that are inappropriate and he always just ignores me and hopes ds won't tell me. He thinks I am interfering in how he wants to raise his children but actually he has no input by choice, i feel he needs to support what i'm doing because in reality i am the parent because he doesn't want to be a father and can't cope with the role at all. This only comes up as an issue when he has done something like this it never comes up when he is wanting to see them because he never does, recently he had the bank holiday weekend off work and never asked to see them, he went away over Xmas to see his new gf's family and so they didn't see him till after, he just never prioritises them. I don't honestly know where to go from here, ds really wants to be like him and I am trying to teach him that he needs to think carefully about what is on offer to him at daddy's house; apparently some beer, a smoky environment, fighting computer games, conversations about fights daddy has had... Gah, I don't even know if this is just the tip of the iceberg too. In the past it has got to the point where I did stop contact altogether because he was refusing to abide by the agreement (he had chosen the times himself) and wanted to change it at the last minute and I said we would need to discuss it in mediation if he wanted to change the agreement and he could either come at the agreed time or not come until a new arrangement was made. The children are a lot bigger now and that kind of thing would traumatise them. I'm left in an irritating position feeling like I don't want to rock the boat but I'm really worried, particularly about emotional damage and abuse.

AF - it was one weekend as a tester, which he spectacularly failed and he will not have them for more than a few hours on a Monday night but he is still managing to damage them in that time and I can't realistically restrict it anymore.

He wouldnt fight it out btw, not in the court anyway. He got sent away with a flea in his ear last time for bringing a vexatious suit.

if you are really worried about emotional damage and abuse, then you should be protecting your children

your job is to do what is best for them, and they often don't understand what that is until very much later in life

them's the breaks, I am afraid

would you hand your dc over to people like this if they weren't a blood relation ?

sorry, cross posted

I am glad you will now knock the whole weekends on the head

the monday evenings (not overnight?) for a few hours has much less impact than 48 hours straight

if you are concerned enough though, you can go back to mediation and insist on the use of a contact centre. Have you been documenting all the instances of worrying behaviour (the stuff that is more than could be simply seen as a "difference in parenting styles")?

He's not ever had them for a weekend before and we had built up to it with several overnights which he seemed to manage ok, smoky but no worrying reports from the dcs. He picks them up on Monday at 5.45pm and brings them back at 7pm weekly, this is bare bones contact, the only way to restrict it more is to stop it. Pissed off that we may have to go back to mediation, we can't afford it and one of the reasons is that he is not contributing anything at all.

Especially when I know he will come to the mediation and agree with me but then come out and do whatever the hell he likes then I'll have to do something about it, like stopping contact which would hurt dcs. Think I'm going to have to wait and see what happens over this and ask him about his BPD and whether he needs to go back for more treatment.

If your son has a tendency towards wheezy there's no way I'd let him be in a smoky environment, even for only a couple of hours a week.

He is prone to croup, he wasn't wheezing as such but his dad thought he was wheezing. Every time I tackle him about it he blames someone else "my mum must've been smoking in her flat, I'll have a word" he now doesn't bring them to his house, takes them out for tea and brings them straight home but it makes me that he can't even manage to have a cigarette outside.

Then I know that it isn't reasonable to say he can't see them at all because he can't be arsed to smoke outside. He is giving up now because apparently they don't want to start married life being smokers at their wedding... Makes me he won't even take small steps to prevent the children being harmed by it.

Borderline Personality Disorder is a big deal. If he could be relied upon to always behave rationally and to fully consider the consequences of his actions on himself and others, I would think that he wouldn't have BPD. But I admit I'm no expert.

Do you necessarily have to go back to mediation? If all that happens is that he says one thing and then does another, it seems pointless to waste time and money on a futile exercise. I'd keep contact at bare-bones level and leave it at that.

Yes, indeed. The CBT does not appear to have had much effect but it is not really likely to from what I've read. Can't believe he can manage to make so much trouble even though he only sees them for such a short time, which actually does represent progress from when he was trying to come randomly and not coming for long periods.

How would your XP react if you told him that you have more than enough reason to suspend contact for a while, and if he doesn't dramatically change to follow explicit rules or good parenting guidelines that the contact will be permanently stopped.

Ask him what would HE consider a refusal to stop smoking when a child is highly prone to wheeziness/croup to be other than harmful/neglect/abuse?

What would HE think of a person seemingly perfectly happy to sit and watch a child struggle for breath, but still smoke in their presence and NOT call for help from anyone?

As I understand it, some BPD sufferers can live a life of drama, and if forced to accept that they will lose it ALL unless they get off their arses and COPE that sometimes they just can have a fair stab at sorting themselves out. I'm not saying cure, but if the drama feed is removed, they sometimes can just get on with stuff without creating the incidents.

the other thing to say is that clearly overnight contact can't be repeated, so the holiday plan is totally out of the question.

Remind him that the day that he proves that he CAN cope, that you WILL allow him all the appropriate access possible, but it's UP TO HIM to make sure that HE ups his game.

Where his mother is concerned, she is AS responsible for her behaviour. If SHE can't 'get' the seriousness of the situation, and HE can't make her, regardless of ANY improvement HE makes, your DC will still not be freely accessible to situations and people that are harmful.

Lay down the law, set the boundaries and state that you will not be returning to mediation, as there is no need, you are not interested in his words, only his ACTIONS will do. He just needs to step up, and if he needs help from you/GP/anyone to know that it's OK to ask for it.

Reassure him that you DO want contact, but that HIS choice to behave in this reckless and unthinking manner is harming your DC and you can't allow that, any more than he knowingly would.

Don't let him lean on any diagnosis here, he has choices, he can ask for help.

Ultimately this man is NOT currently a healthy person to be around, and if not the father of the DC, you'd not be trying to maintain contact. The fact that they are related by blood means NOTHING, the unhealthy situation is there.

If a person, either stranger or relative, harms/hurts/neglects a child, that child needs protecting/shielding.

You are doing an admirable job BTW. Keep strong love!

He may try to assert his right to contact through the court as he has done before, he would leave his job and claim legal aid whereas we'd have no financial help unless I left dh. He might get short shrift but he may get to court. He may end up with more contact, last time the court forces me to "let him try" contact arrangements he hadn't managed before and it seriously affected ds's emotional state when he let him down.

He didn't have the bpd diagnosis then. It would affect things but I don't want another war with the kids inbetween.

He has had all his chances to try stepping up. He won't have anymore. He will not get more contact than he has ATM. I wont entertain him trying to assert himself into a parenting role now or in the future. I have told him he cannot expect to have a parenting role, he is like an uncle or an aunt. He is incapable of doing it and has had enough chances to try so I won't entertain it anymore.

The dcs love him, and he loves them. He is messed up.

You can't negotiate with him or rationalise things either. He doesn't understand when he is doing something wrong because he thinks it is normal and I have standards that are too high. Then he deliberately ignores me.

You can't negotiate with an abuser, or rationalise, and they feel entitled to harm, to do what they want to do.

he may have BPD, but he may be an abuser. with BPD.

Poor you to have to deal with this all. I wish there were something I could say to help.

I suppose the only thing there is to say is that YOU are in the right and you are the one your DC will rely on, trust and find comfort with.

((((HUGS))))

Yes, perhaps the bpd is not the important issue.

BPD can be managed if the sufferer wants. I know, I'm one! But after diagnosis 2 years ago (a huuuuge releif for me, it explained so many whys for me) I've been through very intense therapy program designed for me by my psychologist. Today, I'm not diagnosable! But I know I have to keep it in mind forever, in case it rears it's head again!

BPD is no excuse for abuse. If you know you have it, you can access help for it.