Laying back and allowing your ex to trash you risks harming your children. However, speaking up risks perpetuating the conflict, which risks harming your children. You can’t stop your ex or their new partner from hating you. You can’t force a good relationship with someone who won’t co-operate.
What are you supposed to do?
There are tons of online resources that might help you get started answering this question. Just on the first page of google results for the thread title, I see these:
http://www.firstwivesworld.com/resources/resource-articles/5-signs-your-ex-turning-your-child-against-you
http://www.brainwashingchildren.com/category/brainwashing/
As to how to handle your particular situation, the solution invariably depends on the person. The conflict doesn’t have to harm the children, and in fact will be beneficial unless she’s truly batshit (see below). Keep it civil and keep it between you and her, making sure they’re nowhere in earshot. Poisoning a parental relationship will really fuck a kid up in the long term. This is not something that sane, mature parents do.
If she’s not totally batshit, you could try talking to her about it. You could try writing an email (or letter) containing this argument. Don’t frame it in a way that benefits you–that won’t sway her. Frame it in a way that benefits the kids (“Did you know that a child who has no relationship with their father is x% more likely to get into drugs/become a career criminal/burn ants with a magnifying glass?”* &etc.* Whatever stats you can find, use them). Unless you’re an evil homeless raving junkie or something, every divorced kid has the right to a healthy, happy relationship with both of their parents.
If she IS truly batshit and won’t be reasoned with, then there may be nothing you can do. Just set a good example by your behavior every time you spend time with your kids–don’t badmouth her to them or around them, but correct anything they say that’s wrong (“Daddy, mommy said you live in Satan’s asshole and smoke crack with the neighbors!” “Well clearly I don’t, honey, you’ve been to my house on Maple Road, and I’ve never done crack in my life!” &etc).
If she is batshit AND truly evil (poisons the kids against your, denies visitation in violation of your court order, moves out of state), you may not be able to salvage your relationship with your kids until adulthood–or possibly never, depending how big a liar she is. Which is unfortunate, but sometimes there is nothing you can do. Just keep being a good person, pray to whatever deity you believe in, and keep your dick further away from the crazy in the future.
Good luck.
I bit my tonge. A LOT.
Keep the lines of communication open with your kids and rachelellogram nailed my strategy here:
I was calm, I was reasonable and I never acted the way he did and it’s paid off. I have a great relationship with both kids and they barely speak to him. I wish that wasn’t true but I can’t control his actions only my own.
One thing I wished I had given up on years sooner than I did was trying to fix things so he wasn’t so angry. I gave in millions of times in an attempt to make things better but you can’t fix emotions with logic.
For a bit of perspective, I was the “new partner” in such a situation. We did not poison the kid against his Dad. We went way, way, way out of our way to never, ever say anything bad about him. But still he constantly accused us “poisoning” the kid or telling lies about him.
Maybe your spouse really is badmouthing you, I don’t know. Heck, she(?) probably is but still, it’s hard to know what goes on at the other house when all the information you get is filtered through a child. I would suggest talking to the ex as reasonably as possible to try to figure out if the badmouthing is real and intended or if it is just the normal gripping we all do, magnified by a child’s fear and concern. If it’s real, document it.
Now that my step-son is older he has figured out the score. He knows the personalities involved and if we had lied about his dad he would now know us to be liars. Fortunately we resisted the urge to badmouth that piece of pond scum.
My ex constantly said subtle negative things about me to my kids. They are intelligent, and recognized it for what it was. At times they would be angry that I refused to fight back, but I would always explain that they had to respect both parents.I also told them that if she didn’t like me, I likely gave her ample reason.
Thank you. I will sift through this information to give them. I am also ordering that book.
The best I can offer in personal experience is take the high road; I have specifically said “I will not say anything bad about your mother to you. When you grow up we can talk candidly, but while you live with her I will not say a word.”
My children are intelligent enough to understand exactly what I am saying, and thankful that I take this road. Our relationship is good and I don’t give a flying fuck what my ex says.
Remember children are often far far more intelligent than you might think.
Often. But they’re even more often just as dumb as you might think, or dumber.
I have a cousin who is in this situation. His ex-wife and her family conducted a vicious campaign against him for years (e.g. her brother called up a prospective employer to warn them not to hire such an evil guy). She didn’t turn the kids into haters, but - according to my mother - she managed to create an us-versus-them mentality, so that they feel like they’re being disloyal to their mother by being close to their father, which creates a reserved relationship.
But it’s a subtle thing. One thing I do know if that a mutual cousin once gave the kids a ride to a family event, and she insisted that the kids address him as Mr. So-and-so, versus the first name that a relative might use. And I know my cousin - the father - is always very tentative when trying to arrange a family affair that involves the kids, because there’s a likelihood that the ex will sabotage their attendance at the last minute.
But the irony of it all is that by all indications, in other ways the ex appears to be doing a good job of raising the kids, and they seem like pretty good kids, AFAICT. So I think her hold will loosen over time. Eventually they will move on in life and out of their mother’s shadow, and see their father for the good guy that he is, and if the ex doesn’t come to grips with that, and tries to keep her hold over them, she may lose her own connection with them.
So it’s a tough road to hoe, but if you hang in their it could possibly work out in the end. No guarantees, of course.
With my ex, I first did take the high road, saying only that he sometimes made bad decisions when he did some disastrous fuck-up that I couldn’t sugar-coat. I did this, I realise now, as a reaction to my own mother, who bad-mouthed my father so outrageously that it helped to destroy any relationship I might have had with him, though to be fair he drove the nail in that coffin, I wasn’t pre-disposed to think nice things about him either.
Eventually, my son was a mess from that. If I didn’t defend myself the things his dad said about me must be true, right? The final straw was during a scream-fest from my son, about 10 at the time, about how I’d never paid child support when he lived with his dad, which he did for about a year. They had to eat Ramen noodels for weeks! His dad was going to lose their apartment and they were going to have to sleep outside and starve and die! Dad told him that I didn’t care if they starved! Dad said that I hated him (his dad) and that I’d let Son starve and sleep in the streets if it meant Dad had to! How could I be so mean?!?
I simply pulled out all my receipts which had his dad’s name on them, the amount and the date, laid them on the bed and walked out of the room. Mostly, because I was too angry to say anything constructive.
We had a big tearful talk that night, and I agreed to answer any question he had about what his dad had to say about me with either that it was true, not true, or that it was partially true. I also said that there were some things that I would not deny or confirm, if they were too personal for me to talk about, and that I reserved the right to decline to answer. I told him he’d have to be happy with that, because my relationship with his father was grown-up business, and not his.
That’s worked for us. His dad still bad mouths me outrageously, and I have had to cop to ‘that’s true’ a couple of times (not as often as the other options) and I have to stop myself from explaining because that would just be me trying to justify things. He’s 16 now, and his relationship with me is pretty strong. He has a decent-ish relationship with his dad, which is what I wanted. He understands his dad has his own problems/issues/perspective, which is fine, and that I do as well.
So that’s worked for us. The thing I would have done differently is to have done it from the start, because my son had a lot of very big problems by the time I stopped covering for his dad lying to him.
Because I am able to speak to my ex I did call him on the behaviour as well. I tried to have a drink or something first, so I could just be all matter of fact, which was kind of passive agressive to be fair, he prefers me to get angry and yell so he can act like I’m unreasonable. I just said things like, “You said X to Son. X is not true, and you know it isn’t true. I told Son that what you said was not true, although I didn’t give him any details. Please stop doing this, it isn’t helping and it is hurting your relationship with Son.”
I think I said that a billion times, pretty much (I said it just two days ago, in fact.) He’s conflict avoidant, so he has to go pretty soon after I say anything like that, but at least he knows that I know and that our son knows.
But as I say, this only works if you cop to things that are true that your ex says, even if they are unflattering unless you’re refusing to answer altogether.