My ex and I split when DD was just two. He's always had her for two nights and a half day a week, so they spend a lot of time together and are very close.
He was an arse. He was emotionally abusive - it wasn't as bad as the stories you hear on here but he could be horrible and selfish and made me feel like shit. His views on a lot of things are skewed, but, he's always been very involved with our daughter.
Recently, she seems to have developed confidence issues. She's started talking negatively about herself. How she's not good at things. She can't to things, other people are better than her etc. It's baffling because she's such a bright little soul and I've only ever told her how marvellous she is.
I spoke to friends in education who seemed to think it was quite normal for girls to be hard on themselves, although perhaps a little early. During the easter holidays though, there was a lot of negative talk and a few occasions where she wouldn't try fun things, because she was scared or thought she'd do it wrong. It's just totally out of character.
So I spoke to her teacher to see what we could do to give her a boost and her teacher was great. I then spoke to ex about it all, who said a few things that made me think, actually he is the root of the problem.
He said he would try not to take the mickey out of her anymore. When I asked why he would do that anyway, he said it's just him and she's got to learn to be able to take it.
He said he didn't want to bring her up to be overly confident anyway and that would happen if we keep telling her how positive things all the time.
He then said he felt bad about an incident at the school when he picked DD up. The teacher told him she'd had a head bump and his first words to DD were 'oh no, was it your fault?'. Apparently teacher was quick to say 'no, it wasn't'. He was embarrassed he'd done this when I'd only recently been to speak to her about the confidence issues.
He's a dick. My poor little girl probably gets the piss taken out of her far more then he's letting on. I know how that feels and that actually, he says he's only teasing but it doesn't feel like that.
My questions are....
How do I help her? How can I get her to completely ignore what he says?
Can I just tell him he's not having her anymore because he's not good for her? He'll take it to court. Do I really have a leg to stand on?
Am I overreacting?
I want to know if he is the root of her issue at the moment. Should I take her to counselling? Would that answer the quesation anyway?