how to talk to a teenager about pulling away

[Ref]

Hey folks!

It has been a long time since I posted, so here is some background. DH and I live in PA. SD and BM live in Fl. DH just went to court w/BM to get more visitation because the "reasonable" language left visitation all but reasonable. Now DH has more time w/ SD legally so BM is pulling crap to make every time she is with us a ball of drama. Sd is 14 and already drawn into drama naturally, this just feeds on that.

This past summer (1 month after court), SD started acting strange talking about the case and saying things that just didn't make sense about coming here.

Labor day, Dh couldn't afford to fly down there so he had her fly up. She battled with that for weeks prior telling him she would run away etc. When BM took her to the airport to fly up, BM said that BOTH were crying all the way to the gate. When SD got here she told of a kid who was seeing his dad that she sat next to. She got bumped to first class. She later said she was overreacting because she wanted to go to a friends party.

Now Xmas is coming up. She seems ok when we talk to her, but she sent us a link to her online journal. In the journal she seems upset about coming up. She talked to DH's mom (Gma) and tried to convince her to convince DH not to have her for the whole summer (all but 3 weeks).

It is understandable that she wants to spend time with her friends, but does anyone have any suggestions on how to deprogram her from her mom's influence over these matters?

DH already talked to her Labor day about it and she seemed to understand and seemed ok after the conversation.  Should her talk with her again? What should he say? What can he say so that it is not made worse? Should her confront BM about this stuff?Should I talk with her about it?

She also has hinted that she will not come to see us after she is 16. I told her that she could have my car after she is 16. The only criteria is that she is responsible enough at that point and that she pay the insurance. I think that I will not give her my car if she is not responsible enough to respect her father. What do you think?

Thanks so much everyone

[shawneetears]

Unfortunately, it is going to be hard to do any "deprogramming" when SD is still under influence of that kind.  It seems to only last as long as they are with you and next time it starts all over again. You can only do the best you can do and keeping the lines of communication open between DH and SD is critical.
If SD sent DH a link to her journal there was a reason.  Maybe a compromise can be reached as to the summer. One thought is to allow her to bring a girlfriend with her for a couple of weeks, or let her have the last week or so home early in exchange for anothertime.  At 14 it is difficult if you don't have any friends or siblings your age that you have bonded with.
As for the not visiting DH after she turns 16....well, you have two choices....allow her to make that choice or force the visit.  Sometimes you have to simply make a choice and live with the consequences... neither choice is right nor wrong in and of itself; only you and DH know the situation and what you feel is best for SD AND your and DH part of the family when SD is not there.  Also, what is good for one child may not be good for another child in the same family.  
Some of this is about control....the BM's and also the SD's over the situation.  SD is in the middle and is trying to assert some control.  BM is trying to control through SD..... you have to moderate that the best you can.
It might be hard to let SD chose to not visit....she's going to make that choice when she's 18 anyway... but really all you can do is let them know that even if she choses not to visit that she is never forgotten and always loved... same as you would if she lived with you all the time and then moved out on her own.

wish you all the best life has to offer!  :)

[Genie]

she gets older.  Oh, did we go through this with SD.

You see her social life is SOOOOO much more important and BM feeds into that.  She is down there simpathicizing with SD that she has to miss out on this party and those things with her friends.  How horrible that DH doesn't realize this and understand that she wants to have a social life too.  I mean, she is entitled to one and DH is enfringing on this.  And it goes on and on and on.

Our BM actually went as far as telling SD that in IL there is a law that states at 13 or whatever age BM decided fit her agenda, the children could make up their minds if they want to come over or not.  SD's social life was more important than seeing Dad, who is only good for CS anyways and is just a horrible person and doesn't care about them.  They only live @2hrs from us and it was a constant battle.  So we took it to court and despite BM"s attorney, our attorney, the mediator, the evaluator and the judge telling her no such law exists, she still continued on her merry way of lies and PAS.  DH even agreed that SD only had to come over 1 time a month and holidays and that still was not good enough.  SD couldn't miss ANYTHING in her social life.

So there is no easy solution to this. As she gets older and has boyfriends and wants to go out socially etc etc she will fight this more and more.

Oh and we used to hear the "they were crying the way here" or "they have been crying for the last 2 hours and don't want to go with you" crap too.  And you know what, they were crying b/c BM was sitting there the whole time ranting and raving about DH and whatever was going on at the time and had the kids all upset and feeling bad about coming over b/c BM didn't want them to go b/c they may have a great time at our house.

So I am so negative but I have so been there and done that and nothing we did was ever good enough or made a difference at all.  There was no convincing SD otherwise and anything we tried to say to convince her she was wrong or her information was wrong resulted in her screaming that we were accusing her Mom of lying.  Well, guess what she was!!!! But then that was contrued as talking bad about BM to the children and that was just horrible even though she was constantly talking bad about DH to the children.  But that didn't matter.

[Ref]

How old is you SD now?

BM told SD that it was her choice too. That is one of the reasons DH had to take her to court.

Did you try getting a friend to come with her? I think we will try that this summer. Just a couple of the weeks. That should help out though.

We are getting a kitten this xmas and SD wants us to wait until she gets here to do that. We were getting one anyway, but that seems to be a great bribe.

I am what MB refers to as a "fake wife". My "DH" and I have been together 10 wonderful years. We just got engaged and SD is thrilled. I think the wedding planning this summer may be helpful too.

I just need to come up with good incentives. It seems exausting, but who knows?

any other tricks you tried and results?

[backwardsbike]

Hi!

I'm in PA too and dealing with the same kinds of crap.  I requested and received an evaluation but the evaluator claimed that all kids of divorced families act this way and that it is their way of coping with the conflict.  

Hogwash!  If you are "lucky" enough to be the NCP you end up loosing your time, money, sanity and self respect.  We need to change the laws so that these people who PAS kids can't get a foot hold.  I say if two fit parents both want custody and are willing to live near enough to each other then they should have it and if one fights the other tooth and nail and wins then that one is ineligible for child support!  What do you think of them apples?

The CP in my case had no problem with 50-50 until he married his new wife who is as pahtological as they come.  So after nearly two years of 50- 50 with no problems except BD backing out of agreements all the time my DH was painted as a danger to the children.  CP has told everyone who will listen how afraid of him the kids are.  Last custody evaluator even did a home visit to check this and found that the kids were in no way afraid of DH.  Yet Cp maintained primary residiential.  The PAS has been stepped up and these kids just can't understand why a relationship with me our family or their half siblings ( the only sibs they have) is in any way important.

On top of this Cp and Sm routienly trash me verbally to my face in front of doctors, dentists etc. AND the kids.  If I want to know what is going o with my kids my choice is to stand there and take it or not go to the appointments and not know what the H@LL is going on because they won't tell me.  The judge knows all this and feels it is not contempt because" She has poor chioce in men".  So CP could abuse me for 13 years of marriage and now until the kids are 18.  Oh did I mention that while he makes 75K/yr he still gets his child suppot of $300.  Now I am disabled.  My income dropped to $938/mo and somehow he'll have to make due with just $165/month.  Meanwhile I have two other kids and a disabled DH.  Oh yeah...he's appealing the $165/mo because he wants more.  Yet no one can see that this is all about destroying me.  He couldn't even tell you wha t the kids' best friends' names are.  He won't allow them to have pets because new wife is "allergic" but she owned a dog which bit both kids prior to thier marriage.

I have always taken the high road.  I did not report the abuse during thre marriage ( my biggest mistake).  because I wanted to go quietly and not drag our family through the mud.  Also I had a lawyer who advised against reporting certian things which would have cost him his security clearances because she said, "don't jeprodiaze the children's future child support"  What a joke!

Being older and wiser I'd say the hell with the high road.  Except that it has always been my priority to be able to face that woman who looks me in the eye from my mirror each morning.  Keep in mind though the kids are being raised by the guy who is sneaky, manipulative and has been caught lying in court several times ( No perjury charges because "Hell, everybody lies in family court".

Well, this sure turned into a rant on my part.  Thanks for listening and if you can learn something from my sorry story to help yourself...Please do it!

[Genie]

it was always their way or no way.  We offered so many compromises and all of them were shot down b/c the true goal was not coming over at all.  Wouldn't want to miss hanging out with the friends for even one second.  No way.

Even after court things still stayed the same.  So I don't really have any advice for you on this at all.  I say keep any relationship you have with her there. Talk to her on the phone all the time. Send you thinking of her cards or congratulations cards if she does well in school or something.

I feel the one thing I would do different is not let all the lies and stories stand and not say a word to counter them. We thought we were doing the right thing by not making a big deal about all of PB's lies and stories but then SD just believed her more and more.  If it were now and SD said PB said something about the divorce and what DH was not doing right, I would've whipped out the divorce and showed her exactly what it said and that yes he is doing this all the time.  PB always had SD read the court papers then would "interpret" them to her. And most of the time her interpretation was so wrong.