He did the mash. The Geller mash.

[StuckInPollyannaMode]

Thread 4. Wow. Thank you for putting up with my ramblings thus far, and for all the support - I couldn't have done it without you all.

Previous thread here

I can confirm he has purchased a masher. He sent me a picture of it and asked if it was alright

Justilou1 what those lawyers are doing is just outrageous, and if there were any karma they'd end up in jail.

StuckInPollyAnnaMode I'm so sorry that Geller is sucking the confidence out of your girls. All you can do is show them when they're with you that they can do this stuff and then point out to them that Daddy was taught in a very different way from them and to ask their teacher if they aren't clear about things.

Just off the top of my head @StuckInPollyannaMode, I wonder if you could maybe spend some time with the girls on the pretext of SuperGirl Power?

Geller is happily pigeon holing them, whereas they need to know and feel capable of doing great and wonderful things - just like their mum has done.

Capes. Big pants. Long wigs and hair bands? Watch SuperWoman. Build a Super woman assault course. Dance to some girl power kind of music. Spice Girls etc etc. Superwoman cake.

Meanwhile, I hear you on the sadness, and the need for a hug. I’m 3 months ahead of you, and I’m still going. And you will too. We find reserves of strength in pockets, and there are days when you feel like you’ve run out of pockets. You’ll find another one.

I’ve had to dig deep for patience, that’s for sure. I find meditation very very helpful for accepting situations, acknowledging them, sitting with them. And then getting on with my day.

Railing against the Machine exhausts you even more.

Polly, you have been like Boadecia for all this time. Biting your tongue re Gellar, finding a new home & setting it all up, keeping it all together for the girls in spite of home schooling, Gs attempts to undermine & enmesh you. The tantrums, the sleep problem.

Parents evenings are always shit if your kids aren't strong pupils, I remember how depressed I felt with my failing school kids...(they are successful adults in spite of this !)
Remember they are 8 yo! & have been cut off from their friends & their lives have had to adapt to new homes & swopping between them.
Gellar is almost certainly a negative influence which you are not there to referee all the time any more.
Can you ask sol. What's going on re settlement?
As for the bf. if it feels right, go for it, be genuine, tell him you are definitely on the rebound, only just separated & dont want to get to involved too fast. Which is possibly not his intention anyway.
I say grab any small moments of happiness where you can, but dont "fall in love" ! Yet.!!!

Today is a new day, I read the UK has vaccinated 1 in 2 adults....which added to those who are now immune should soon beat this thing & you can get all the love & support with your besties, along with a gin & a hug.
Meanwhile they are still there at the end of the phone !
& we are cheering you on...👏👏

Sorry you’re feeling down. Yes, you’ve got to keep going. It’s wonderful that you’ve found the strength to be busy and active.

With your kids, you can try to counteract your ex’s negativity with positive affirmation. That’s the thing I’m most grateful to my mum for. She’s long gone now, but throughout my childhood she repeated the mantra that I could achieve anything with hard work and preparation.

My DH is from a broken home (FIL left for the OW). MIL lacks confidence and esteem from her own childhood and she passed on all of this to DH. It’s really sad. I find it exhausting trying to counteract the damage his parents did to his sense of worth. E.g. we used to have big parties before Covid and every time he was convinced that no one would come. I have no idea why he’d think that, but he did. He’s full of ideas about limitations that he couldn’t do this, that or the next thing.

Our young DC wants to be an astronaut. DH will say that won’t happen. I say “well, that’s a wonderful ambition and these are all of the things you could do to prepare for that career”.

Anyway, I suppose the thing that my wonderful mum did when I was a teenager was apply a sort of coaching method to her advice (eg. What do you think you could have done differently? Perhaps next time time you could try x or y or z etc).

I loved getting cards from her with things like “If you try to reach the moon and fail, you’ll still land amongst the stars”.

Wishing you all of the good luck and strength to get through, OP. Greatly admire your courage

Such truths and ideas from the others.

I would actually consider responding grey rock style to future messages from Gellar moaning about the girls "you are the only one telling them that they aren't good enough and can't do things you are the one eroding their esteem it's not caused by the divorce" and reply with it every time, perhaps he will realise that all he does is criticise them!!!

I am so angry on their your behalf.

Keep rereading "How to talk so kids will listen" and keep having those conversations with them "why do you think that?" "Do you think what Daddy said is true?" Etc make it so they are confident to question labels and judgements out on them and not accept them as the truth.

Big squishy (((hugs))) Polly

I’ve been looking into a journal called the happy self journal or something similar for my eldest but he hates writing so I haven’t bought one yet! In any case it or something similar might be useful for the girls?

Polly one thing I found helped me when I was going through a rough phase with my self-confidence was to reframe every “I can’t do this” to “I can’t do this yet”. Make sure the girls know that nobody can ever do everything straight away, and lots of things take practice. The most important thing is to try, and not give up too easily. Lots of cute videos of babies or baby animals learning to do things...

Lots of cute videos of babies or baby animals learning to do things...

Thanks for this idea, my underconfident DCs would love this!

@StuckInPollyannaMode it's shit isn't it? But, you know, your kids have been through a lot, not just the separation, but covid as well. Your confidence has been knocked, theirs will have been too. You can rebuild together, just give yourself time, and know that even though it feels tough right now, you are doing the very best thing you can for you and your children.

Oh Darling Polly - you will get your family hugs very soon. All your feelings are very valid and very normal. I think the longer you tough it out, the more likely it is that you’ll have a tsunami of a crying jag, so you’re better off indulging yourself for short bursts and getting it out. It’s healthy because you’re a human, too. Have a tantrum, punch a pillow, cry buckets of tears, look up creative swears in foreign languages (Schwanzlutscher is fun... 😉) Research creative revenge stories involving central heating and cress seeds.... You are allowed to be peevish, melancholy, sad, pissed off, disappointed, angry, resentful, exhausted, and free - whatever you’re feeling in that moment... because we’re not going to tell you that you’re being ridiculous, or you’re wrong, or turn it into a competition. Stop apologizing for expressing your feelings please!

Of course it's not a real life hug, but I sometimes go back to bed for a sort of cuddle. I have a heavy wool blanket on top of the duvet, which probably feels like a proper weighted blanket.

Just wondered whether a brief snuggle under the weighted blanket might be of some comfort to you.

My DDs were raised on a diet of girl power films, stories, feminism etc. And loads of positive reinforcement from me and my girl friends.

Their Dad is an abusive woman hater who they chose to break contact with.

They are confident brave warriors aged 15 & 16. It is doable. But never lie to them or minimise their feelings. Don't pretend their Dads great. Be honest.

Just got to keep going, right?

Yes and no. You can change the rate of "keeping going" when you need to, in order to be kinder to yourself at the times when it's getting too much. You're still moving forward - and it's important to be able to feel like you're still moving forward - but slowing the rate down to let yourself heal and process. You can't do everything at once.

It's never going to be a linear process; some parts of the curve are going to be steeper than others and sometimes you need to even stop for a bit to regroup

Bloody awful morning.

I have cried so, so much.

DD2 refused to get out of bed.

I had to take her to school in her pjs, having womanhandled her down the stairs. An hour and a half of an utter shit show. And to make it worse, today is handover day for the weekend so I'm not going to get to see her til Monday.

Absolutely traumatised. I've cleaned the downstairs so it's nice to come down to later, but for now I'm going back to bed.

Oh, and I rang my mum because I just wanted to hear that I'm doing ok and it would be ok. She told me that she thinks DD2 is attention seeking and I tell both girls I love them too much so they don't have a concept of what love is.

Huge hugs.

No idea why your Mum said that!!!!! Not true!

Perhaps it being handover day is the real issue, she doesn't want to go?

I hope you manage to nap.

Hugs x

Have a hug Polly, you’re doing fine. DD2 may be attention seeking but I don’t think you can tell kids too often that you love them, especially in your current situation. Could she have been refusing to go to Geller’s more than refusing to go to school?

So sorry you are suffering.
Hope that this weekend is a chance to recharge and feel better.

Keep in mind that you are doing fine for your children Polly! They will get more confident by being in your care without him much of the time. The contrast will matter.

The acting up isn't a sign that you are not succeeding. The kids we fostered were only 'badly' behaved once they felt at home and safe with us; we came to celebrate the oddest things!

(I'm guessing that it is not a coincidence that DD2 wants to stay at home in bed on 'handover day'. )

I think you sound like a fantastic women and mother doing the very best she can.
End of.

You need to go easy on yourself.

DD2 could indeed be playing you, it's not unknown.
Handover day is highly likely a factor.

Stay in bed and reach out to friends.

If I were DD and it was handover day, I think I'd do anything to avoid being with Geller! Nasty shit that he is.
Have a virtual hug from me, @StuckInPollyannaMode and some and a

Ugggh mornings like that just deplete you so much, I always felt hollowed out after a hideous drop off, plus there would be many tears from me too.
You can never tell a child you love them too much, that sense of absolute security that you give by constant loving reinforcement either by word or deed makes a massive difference. I lost my mum as a teenager but even though I can no longer remember her saying it now I know I was loved without reservation and even though my dad is awful at saying it I know he loves me too. So just keep on being mum your way, it's the right way. Hope some time in bed resets the coping mechanism for today.

Polly you can never tell kids you love them too many times i tell mine 100 times a day. It makes them feel safe and secure. I grew up feeling unloved and decided because of that id tell my own i love them all the time. You do you xxxx

Can you telephone her tonight? I think it would probably have been forgotten as soon as she changed back into normal clothes, & a no nonsense approach from the school ...
Or do you think that it would set her off again ?
It will niggle all w/e if you don't have reassurance. Though I imagine G will be messaging with complaints of any bad behaviour ?
Doubtless DD1 will tell him about it.

@StuckInPollyannaMode

It sounds to me as if you managed DD2 with just the right amount of 'tough love' + 'love love'. It's easy for someone else (your mom) to say what you should have done. But she wasn't the one in the midst of the situation, was she?

Geller's trying to sabotage you. I think you need to find a way to impress on the girls that their dad is full of shit. Not in those words of course, but a 'look' or an 'expression' can communicate very well, even with young children. And there's nothing wrong with saying "Well, we don't feel like that, do we?" or "We don't (or do) XXX this way, do we?" without specifically saying "Your dad is wrong". Of course, there may be times when you actually do have to directly criticize him, especially when it comes to school attendance and homework. There's nothing wrong with directly saying "Well, your dad is wrong about that and we will be doing XX".

I still say that everything he does to negatively impact the girls' education is because he is trying to get you to take complete responsibility for it. He figures if he neglects or refuses schoolwork activities that you'll just say "Never mind then, I'll handle it all". He just wants the 'cream' and wants to stick you with the 'skimmed-milk' of parenting.

What a jack ass.

I think your Mum was trying to toughen you up, not the girls. I'm pretty sure everyone's right that your poor kid doesn't want to go to Geller's place, but doesn't want to come out and say so. Pretty sure she's expected to sit still and be a good girl and not say boo to a goose while she's there while he gets on with his very important life and ignores her - anything else will result in yelling. Utter Twatbadger. I don't blame you for crying or feeling less than your best, but others here and at school will know you're heroic. I suspect that shit like this will be used against HIM not you, so he may be in for a bloody rude shock when the divorce goes through. He is utterly unprepared to do what it takes for the bare minimum required. I think you need to push for more, I'm sorry to say.

I’ve been reading some of this thread, I think you might need to accept that the DC’s poor behaviour and lack of confidence might be because of your family break up. I think you decided to leave only a few months ago and only moved out quite recently? Surely can hardly be unexpected that they feel disorientated? Also your XH is still learning how to parent on his own. It may take him a while and he may never parent them in the way you want him to, and he doesn’t have to. You took time to make your decision to leave, you’ve moved on and found a new relationship, they are just catching up. I think your mum was trying to say this to you in her own way. It will take a long time for things to settle down but they will eventually.