Reaching out to alienated kids?

[MM1972]

I have three older kids. I have not seen them since before the first Covid lockdown when the other parent wanted to claim on my insurance to get a new kitchen and bathroom.

When I refused they said they would have to choose between a family holiday or house refurbishment. They said they were going to tell the kids that there would be no holiday that year because of me.

Within a minute I had angry texts from all three. One said never to call him and he'd blocked my mobile and work numbers.

Prior to this I had been taking them to school most mornings. This was annoying my ex as they frequently told the kids I was always late. It was also in addition to agreed contact. Me getting them to school on time after they'd missed the bus went against that narrative.

My gran died recently. My ex brought the kids to the funeral but they left without speaking. My ex later phoned my dad to say that they left as my son was going to hit me.

I've not seen him in 5 years but have been sending birthday and Christmas presents and inviting them to all family get togethers. I normally don't even get a thank you. But he is increasingly angry?

I think my ex is obviously telling the kids things. I don't know exactly what. I assume it is money related.

I am self employed and used to do quite well. Things have been difficult but I have given my ex my house mortgage free plus paid their debts. I also took on the house we had jointly owned which is in arrears and in need of repairs.

I had to borrow money to pay of the other mortgage including from family members. I am still paying this as well as trying to clear arrears on my own mortgage.

There is a narrative being fed that I'm loaded and the ex is poor. It actually the other way about. Following the divorce (when I first saw financial disclosure) I worked out they had almost 500k more than me during the period from separation to divorce.

This extra income was used on takeaways and expensive holidays. 2 of the kids are very overweight now. There are no savings unless they lied in the financial disclosure.

I have never once complained about lack of money to the kids. It was not a worry they needed.

Should I tell them now? Two will be going to uni and I have no way of supporting them.

11, 12 and 13?

I've only highlighted the final incident but there was a long campaign before that.

Basically everything I did after the separation was wrong and incompetent.

As one example. One child was repeatedly trying to touch my genitals on a walk in a very public place. I mean repeatedly. I got quite cross and threatened to slap them.

When I got them back to the ex's I thought we would discuss how inappropriate it was to touch anyone on the genitals. Instead I was called a stupid idiot in front of the kids for expecting them to know what inappropriate meant. They comforted the child who had been attempting to touch my genitals. I subsequently got a solicitors letter accusing me of slapping the child along with a claim that this was witnessed by an unnamed individual. The slap never happened.

Why do your adult kids not want contact with your ex? If it's very obvious can you share?

Can you elaborate what it speaks of? Because I don't know what you mean.

Being the alienated parent is not easy or nice especially if you've not been told why. If you've had no say to address what's being accused.
Your getting an unfair hard time, your ex should never have brought the children into an argument about an insurance claim, nor used a holiday as bait. If it were the other way round the man would be slagged off on here for using his children, for not prioritising their own over a holiday and dragging them into it.
Subtle alienation is still alienation and manipulation of a child.

I'm not sure there's anything you can do. My dh has tried everything sadly

Ok.

So to summarise:

You were married.

You either on your own or separately owned two houses. You must have been quite rich because you say you handed over half a million to your ex which she spent in takeaways.

That is a lot of takeaways.

After the separation you were paying mortgage and rates and insurance on both houses. You did this by borrowing money from your dad and planning to borrow from your business.

You say that you used to take the children to school so presumably they lived with your ex, and presumably she was paying their expenses and the bills for the house.

Did they live with you at any point? Did you do overnights?

You say that your daughter is morbidly obese which you blame on your ex making her help with the cooking.

You also give an example of when you threatened to slap one of your children which is bluntly very poor parenting. If you had done so and it had left a mark you could have been prosecuted for assault as it is illegal in the U.K.

surreyscb.procedures.org.uk/hkyqoz/procedures-for-specific-circumstances/reasonable-punishment-and-smacking#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20justification%20for,of%20the%20Children%20Act%202004.

So regardless of the financials, I think it seems fairly clear why your kids don't like you.

If you had children and they hit someone would you teach them it was wrong?

I was frequently hit by my own kids. Not only did my ex not tell them it was wrong they criticised me for being hit.

Being hit in the genitals was only one time this happened. It wasn't the first nor the last.

I have other kids. They would never be so disrespectful to hit me. If they did my partner would help me set them straight. They would never blame me.

But I can tell what kind of person your are from your reply.

Help you set them straight by assaulting them? If that's the case you, and your partner will likely also be no contact with your DC one day.

So you haven't seen your DC for 5 years as you 'couldn't afford' to go to court, but went on to have more DC with your new partner?

You say your DC are clearly been fed lies because they left the funeral angry. No chance they could have been angry because you couldn't be bothered to approach them?

Look you can make as many excuses as you like, but we don't know you and it won't help contact with your DC. If you want to speak to them you apologise and hold out the olive branch.

I had the other children before the alienation ramped up. My income took a hit with a steady and continual drop in business. I went from barely managing financially to drowning. I do have contact with one of the older daughters who has helped me at work. The other two don't respond to messages. I'm not sure approaching them at a funeral would have been wise. They also left straight away. It's not like they stayed for even 5 minutes. But thanks. For your assumptions.