Post Divorce: My little girl misses her Mom. I'm getting angry. [long]

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ugh - three nights without sleep.

Backstory: Wife and I “separated” September 2006. We moved apart the last week of December 2006 (the delay was due to her job search). Kids lived with her (and at least two boyfriends) for the next 15 months with me being a 14% dad, having the kids alternating weekends.

It was always the goal that the kids would eventually move in half-time with me. That happened starting early April of this year. There’s a long story on that, of course.

I think I’ve made a good home for the children. It was a high priority on my move-in to get setup quickly so the house would have a feel of permanence to it. Each kid has their own, personalized room. My daughter’s room is pink and girlie: white curly-cue daybed frame, pink walls, new comforter set & window drapery, and cute teddy-bear artwork on the walls. The room needs paint and a closet (probably start building a closet this week, then paint) but is mostly complete.

My new wife moved in at the very end of April, she’s very good with the kids and is trying hard to be their friend without usurping the role of their mother.

My boys, 6 & 11 have adapted quickly but my little girl, “Sally”, 8, has ongoing Mommy issues. My ex- has told me that she believes that she’s pining for the old family setup, asking once to go “Home” and not meaning either of our homes. I have to take anything she says with a grain of salt, though, she lies to me in nearly every conversation, especially if it makes her look like the better parent.

So, Sally is back to her old pre-divorce behavior. Not sleeping, crying at the drop of a hat (especially at night), complaints of a sore stomach (from stress I think).

She claims to remember none of why her mother and I divorced. She says she doesn’t remember the loud arguments, she doesn’t remember her mother spending multiple nights out of the house. She doesn’t remember the fact that her mom’s boyfriend moved in with them for three months starting the day they moved from our shared home.

For the past couple years, she’s been on sleeping pills. First prescribed stuff from the doctor - it was supposed to be a counter to mild ADHD-related sleeplessness. Her mother got cheap and switched her to Tylenol PM a year ago or so. I disagreed with the “need” for them but maintained them during my weekends for consistency.

Her sleep for the past couple years has always seemed fitful - obvious vivid dreaming, sleepwalking, crying out, & night terrors.

A couple weeks ago, with the buy-in of my daughter, we reduced to half dosage. It seemed to reduce the vivid dreaming. She stopped sleepwalking so much. I talked with her mother about reducing the dosage at her house, too. She defended her use of the sleeping pills.

My ex obviously ignored me and on my next week with the kids I asked Sally if she was still getting half a pill at night. Sally told me “half a pill doesn’t work at Mom’s”. She took a whole. We talked about it again and went back to half a pill.

I spoke with her mom again and this time she again defended their use and then suddenly switched stories in mid paragraph. She said that the dosage was small, they’re not physically addicting, and besides, Sally hasn’t used them at her house for months. I pointed out her inconsistency but she stood by her statement.

Anyway, her Mom took Sally off the pills entirely at her house two weeks ago (and told Sally that it was hers and her boyfriend’s decision - I wasn’t in the story anywhere). I kept her off this past week. Sally now agrees she doesn’t need them. She seemed to sleep fine for the first couple nights of this week.

The end of the week, though, is a different story. The past three nights she’s been up until midnight, repeatedly coming to my bedroom to cry. When asked “what’s wrong” she either responds “I don’t know” or “I miss Mom”.

I been trying to start nicely when she shows up at my bedside. I just take her back down and settle her back into bed. A visit or two more and I’m just sending her down on her own. Still she’s back for more. The other night, my wife and I have the door shut and locked (quality time was ensuing - we thought enough time had passed and she might’ve actually fallen asleep) and Sally came and pounded on the door and then turned and howled her way back to bed. Kinda broke the mood.

She called me on Saturday while I was at Home Depot and asked to go “visit mom”. I told her that’s not the way it works. She’d see her Mom on Monday. She cried.

I don’t want to get into shuttling her back and forth on demand - it’s a recipe for later manipulation and abuse. Don’t like what’s happening at Dad’s today? Go to Mom’s. Dad won’t give you a cookie? Go to Mom’s. She’s only 8 years old and, frankly, she doesn’t get a vote on custody weeks. (The child psych I talked with a year ago on custody issues agrees that she’s too young to get to decide on her own). That’s reserved for mid-teen years & up, said the counselor.

Last night we’re all grouped on the couch watching Mary Poppins. She started to cry at the first singing-to-sleep scene and cried for the rest of the movie. I wanted to tell her that her just how her mom is far, far, far, from being Mary-fucking-Poppins but I have to hold my tongue. Later, when the movie was over, it was a night of multiple visits to my bedside culminating in a screaming cry back to bed, waking her brothers. That got my wife out of bed with me following.

She calls her Mom nightly before bed when she’s at my house. Lord help us if Mom isn’t available. Her Mom fosters this behavior - it makes her feel loved an needed. She’s not cooperated in a plan to reduce the calls some, to be “unavailable” some night (with pre-warning to the kids). The other night her Mom didn’t answer the phone and the wailing went on for hours.

She never calls me when she’s at her Moms.

I’m “Dad’s house”, her mother’s is “Home”.

I’m feeling damned unappreciated here and I’m getting angry about it. I can’t help but be angry that she wants her Mom over me. I want to scream at Sally as to why she wants to be with that whore of a woman who broke our family in half rather than with me, the man that’s been home with her while mother was running around the town. It’s “good parenting” to be a hypocrite so I have to hold my tongue.

I want to buy a lock and lock Sally in her room. I want to give her to her mother full time and just keep the boys over at my house - at least they want to be with me.

And, selfishly, I want to make love to my wife without interruption or simply fall asleep without finding my girl standing by my bed crying every night. She’s got me so stressed out that I’m not sleeping at night, either.

Anybody got anything useful?

2

Family therapy.

3

Dude, that’s hard.

Has the kid been in for any kind of counseling? She’s apparently getting something from her mom that’s soothing to her, though whether it’s psychologically healthy soothing is a separate issue. :frowning:

4

And therapy for YOU toot sweet. Seriously you have got to deal with your anger.

5

This may be your best option, not because it’s better for you, but because it may be better for Sally. It sounds like she may need the consistency of having one home. She’s certainly doing her eight-year-old best to let you know she is stressed out and unhappy with the current situation. My parents split up when I was a toddler, and for me, shuttling back and forth every other week was more stressful than having only one full-time parent. Give some thought to this option, just be sure to stay involved in her life in other ways if you do - make time for day visits and such. She doesn’t have to live with you half-time for you to be her father. Whatever you decide to do, get a child psych involved again, rather than relying on old advice and sleeping pills that aren’t helping the problem.

6

Yes, call a medical professional pronto. Tell them you and your ex have established a dependency habit on sleeping pills for a child and you need help getting her to sleep without them. Tell them to do some blood work, as prolonged use of acetaminophen can cause liver damage, and shouldn’t be administered at all to children under 12.

And ask for a referral to a family counsellor while you’re at it.

What on earth were you thinking? I’m sorry, I’m just stunned.

7

I have to second this. I have an eight-year-old daughter, and it sounds like Sally just really needs the emotional support she gets from her mom right now. Try not to take it personally. My wife serves an emotional need for my kids that I know I can’t duplicate and we’re all living in the same house together. Your ex-wife might have been a total lying bitch to you, but nothing in your OP suggests that she’s abusing or mistreating Sally.

I’d recommend you talk to your ex about letting Sally spend most of her time at one house until she’s older and has the emotional maturity to handle the situation better. The 50% parent thing is not working for her and she’s telling you that very clearly.

You can’t force her to love you more. Right now leaving her mom to stay with you feels like a punishment to her. That will probably change as she gets older. One way to encourage that change is to reduce her unhappiness level right now. If spending time with Dad is a treat, then she’s more likely to want more of it in the future.

8

Belrix, you are in serious trouble. Get it fixed now. Tommorow morning, call a doctor period. Then call a therapist. Do this now.

9

I’ve followed your story and understand that you’ve been through a lot. I totally empathize with your feelings. But in this case I’ve got to say, get over yourself. Go to a therapist. If you’re at the point where you want scream at an 8 year old and lock her in her room then you have serious issues that YOU need to work out.

You don’t have to ‘hold your tongue because you have to be a hypocrite’, you have to hold your tongue because the reaction that you are expressing here toward a child is completely and totally out of line.

I sincerely hope things work out and that you can have a good relationship with your daughter in future.

10

As far as the Tylenol goes, what Shayna said. That’s stupid as hell.

And as far as the psychological problems go, just remember Sally’s going through worse than you are right now. Why don’t you put yourself in her shoes for a minute? She just wants to be with her mom. Why should she care what her mom did to you, or who’s the better parent?

11

To the folks hung up on the Tylenol thing, you have to go back and read the part where it says her mother did this. As an every-other-weekend father, I didn’t get a vote. I know it’s not healthy and as soon as I had my daughter with me half-time, I started phasing her off the stuff.

Geesh. Read for context people.

Also, make note: Wanting to lock somebody in their room does not mean it’s done. I’m trying to express my frustration here. It’s very much like the frustration of a new parent who’s baby won’t sleep through the night.

You want to scream at them. You want to shake the baby. But you don’t and I haven’t and I won’t.

Her mom didn’t just do this to me. This broken family is what she did to all of us. The kids are too naive to see the full picture and may not ever see it since they don’t have all the information. Another part of the hypocritical good-parenting I maintain is keeping this truth from them.

Hyperbole is lost on some of you, it seems.

12

Neither you nor the ex wife nor the current wife should be messing with dosage on prescribed medicine (“with the daughter’s buy-in”??? What does that mean?). The fact that an 8 year old is on sleeping pills is pretty frightening. Get yourself and the kid into counseling. And I agree with the others who said to just let her clinginess toward her mother go. She’s at that stage and she needs her mom right now. Accept it for what it is.

13

I understand that your ex-wife hurt you a lot and I am very sorry for it but please, please do not have conversations like this with your daughter. She’s just a little girl.

Ditto on the therapy for your family, therapy for yourself, medical tests to make sure your little girl’s liver is still functioning.

14

You’re not being hypocritical when you refrain from giving your kids the whole sordid story. However much you need to vent about your ex, your kids don’t need to hear it, not now, not ever. Vent here if you need to, but not to your kids. Especially not to an 8-year-old.

Another vote for a visit to a doctor and a thorough physical for your daughter.

15

They probably will see it all one day. In a similar, but obviously not exact, vein my mother hid for years just how bad her relationship with her mother-in-law was. Never said a negative thing about her, never let us see just how badly she had been hurt by a lot things that happened over the years. But having a brain in my head, I figured it out for myself. I see no reason to think that your kids won’t as well.

I get that you haven’t done those things to your daughter and don’t believe that you seriously would. But you are obviously stressed and angry and I still maintain that a therapist would be useful to you. Hang in there dude, I’ll be thinking of you.

16

You gave her the pills on the weekends, so you’re responsible too, especially since you “know it’s not healthy”. Why don’t you man up, stop blaming all your problems on some stupid woman you’re not even married to anymore, and take the kid to a doctor to make sure she hasn’t got liver damage? Do you think anyone really gives a damn who started it?

17

No, YOU gave her the same drugs EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND SHE WAS WITH YOU.

YOU.

Stop blaming everyone else for your messes. If you knew it wasn’t healthy and heard that your ex was giving it to her, you should’ve taken your ex to court and demanded full custody due to her potentially doing irreparable physical organ damage to your daughter, by administering a drug that is explicitly not meant for children her age, against the warnings on the label and inserts, without a doctor’s advice or consent.

YOU.

You’re her FATHER, not a bystander.

Your child has now been exposed to long-term use of a drug that can cause liver damage when used in such a way. I don’t CARE if you’re the one who supposedly weaned her off of it after more than a year of nightly use.

YOU have to take her to a doctor right away and tell him or her what you and your ex have done.

YOU.

Just stop blaming everyone else and take responsibility for the health and well-being of your child.

18

It sounds very likely that, in this case, your ex has it right. I’ve heard a lot of children of divorce want this, and it can make them hostile to the new step-parents.

But, whoa! Grow up here, you’re the adult. Thinking of your ex as “that whore of a woman” doesn’t make it sound like you’ve gotten over the whole thing, and yet, you’re married again? You need to get past this, for your daughter’s sake and for yours, too.

My suggest is, when your daughter is at your house, get a routine and follow it strictly. For example: Put on pjs, brush teeth, read a book, get a drink of water, and then to bed, with the understanding that that’s it–bed. The end of the line, the end of the day. Sleeping pills for an eight-year-old doesn’t sound like a real good idea. My best guess is that more physical exercise would help. Get her into ballet, or soccer, or swimming (with my kids I found swimming particularly good)–something that is fun for her, physical, you and your ex will have to agree on it because it should be something she does whether she’s with the ex or you.

19

Wow, I’m shocked by the amount of OP-blaming going on. I doubt it’s very helpful.
**
Belrix**, I’m willing to believe what you say: that the only door locked was your own, once; that the Tylenol was a decision Mom made that you tried to mitigate without directly contravening Mom; that the stress is making you have thoughts you wish you could chuck out of your head; that having a kid who is in so much anguish, especially anguish that you can’t seem to help her with, is devastating.

Oh, and for the self-administration of a half dose thing? Calm down, y’all. At least for adults, messing with the dosage *by taking less of it *is just following common directions for sleep meds. They often say, right on the bottle, “Take as needed.” Docs have talked me through the whole figuring-out-whether-half-a-dose-works-better thing. I’d be surprised if parents aren’t advised to facilitate the same process with kids, but IANAD of course and may well be wrong. As might those who are castigating Belrix on the subject.

Based on what you’ve actually written, you sound like a caring parent to me. Your situation sounds untenable. Something big needs to change. For your daughter’s physical health, she needs to have a checkup because of the acetaminophen issue – now that you’ve heard about the problem, you can do something about it. (I’d never heard you shouldn’t give it to kids, myself – in fact, last I heard, you were supposed to give it in preference to aspirin because of some chickenpox or flu related syndrome you don’t hear about anymore. I don’t have a kid, admittedly, and I hope you’ll be a hell of a lot more careful in future since you do.)

For your family’s mental health, yeah, I agree you should find a good counselor, as what you’ve got is so obviously not working. I’d caution that the boys should go along at least a couple of times, because they may be having big issues that they just don’t present so dramatically (since their sister has such a successful monopoly on that at the moment). *Not *to say your daughter is doing this on purpose, but kids seem to tend to carve opposing aspect niches for themselves, if that makes sense – that is, for instance, I was the doesn’t-get-in-trouble-smart kid, so my sister was motivated to contrast with me and be the rebel-who-hates-school.

You do sound like you have anger that, while you’re obviously trying as hard as you can NOT to let the kids suffer from it, is eating you up and leaking out around the edges. You don’t have to solve that by yourself. I think you can feel that it’s important not to let your own righteous indignation interfere with what’s best for your daughter – no matter how justified your indignation might be – and counseling might be a very good thing. It might even help you see clearly whether “giving her up” to her mother for a few years would be a good thing.

Good luck, dude.

20

Seconded, or thirded, or fourthed, or whatever we’re up to now. I’m a child of divorce, and trust me, my mom informing me of all the jackassery that my dad did, did not open my eyes to my dad’s jackassery and make me love my mom more than ever. It just made me feel weird and bad and like 1) there was something wrong with me, since after all, half of me came from him, and 2) like Mom couldn’t possibly want me around that much since my dad was such an ass and she regretted every second of her time with him.

I’m over it now, but it pretty much sucked as a small child. Your kids don’t need to know about all of the major and minor wounds you and your ex-wife inflicted on each other in the course of your marriage. They just don’t. She might have done shitty things to you, but she’s their MOM and she always will be.

Also, seconding everything Shayna said about the Tylenol.