Thanks for the immediate reply and wealth of information. It's a relief, but sad at the same time, to know that my husband and I are not the only ones dealing with this type of behavior from a BM. I don't know if she has this disorder, but it sure does seem to describe her perfectly.
DH and BM have a very specific court order from their divorce proceeding years ago, but we've since had it modified to be even more specific, for the exact reasons you suggested doing so. BM still manages to create conflict where there should be none. According to her, we're the ones responsible for all of it, even though she creates it. I feel so sorry for my SS, the emotional turmoil he must be going through. We know he's a good kid and knows right from wrong, he's demonstrated that every time he's with been with us, but as soon as he's back in the BM's care, she seems to manipulate him into going against everything he knows as being right. She is teaching him to lie by coercing him to do so, hide his whereabouts from his father, make up stories about non-existent illnesses or exaggerate them to the point of us suspecting that he's deathly ill, when in fact he may just have a common cold, etc. etc. etc. We have tried tirelessly to understand why she does the things she does and tried to reason with her during her bouts of extremely unreasonable behavior, but finally realized that it's impossible. We avoid interaction with her as much as humanly possible because any and every point of contact with her becomes an opportunity for her to act out. Other than loving my SS unconditionally and trying to lead by example, I'm not sure what else we can do, but we're going to review the information in the links you provided. Hopefully, that will help us through another day. One day at a time, it's all we can handle.
DH and BM have a very specific court order from their divorce proceeding years ago, but we've since had it modified to be even more specific, for the exact reasons you suggested doing so. BM still manages to create conflict where there should be none. According to her, we're the ones responsible for all of it, even though she creates it. I feel so sorry for my SS, the emotional turmoil he must be going through. We know he's a good kid and knows right from wrong, he's demonstrated that every time he's with been with us, but as soon as he's back in the BM's care, she seems to manipulate him into going against everything he knows as being right. She is teaching him to lie by coercing him to do so, hide his whereabouts from his father, make up stories about non-existent illnesses or exaggerate them to the point of us suspecting that he's deathly ill, when in fact he may just have a common cold, etc. etc. etc. We have tried tirelessly to understand why she does the things she does and tried to reason with her during her bouts of extremely unreasonable behavior, but finally realized that it's impossible. We avoid interaction with her as much as humanly possible because any and every point of contact with her becomes an opportunity for her to act out. Other than loving my SS unconditionally and trying to lead by example, I'm not sure what else we can do, but we're going to review the information in the links you provided. Hopefully, that will help us through another day. One day at a time, it's all we can handle.