Please could any of you help with this research? It will be very helpful as it may provide judges acting in Family law cases under the Children’s Act to be better informed about the impact of bipolar on the family. This would provide an objective, empirical based evidence on which they could draw conclusions, rather than simply hearing highly subjective, hostile evidence from ex spouses….
http://www.manchesterusersnetwork.org.uk/?p=667
“If you have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and would like to help with research looking into bipolar disorder and the impact on family relationships please read on, without volunteers psychological research would grind to a standstill, you will be very much appreciated by some pretty clever people for taking part in the study” – Rob, webmaster for M.U.N.
We are carrying out a study across the North West that investigates the needs and experiences of people with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and their family or friends. This aims to help in the development of family interventions to support people with the diagnosis and those around them.
We are looking for pairs of people who are both willing to take part, consisting of a person with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and their relative or close friend. The study will involve meeting separately with a trained researcher at your home, to complete a number of interviews and questionnaires that will explore your experiences. These will be used to identify links between the symptoms of the person with bipolar disorder and the needs and responses of their relative or friend.
The study will be taking place until March 2009, and at the end we will get in touch to let you know the findings.
If you would be interested in taking part, or in finding out more about the study, please contact
Lalitha (Lali) Iyadurai, Trainee Clinical Psychologist at the University of Manchester
Email: Lalitha.Iyadurai@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Tel: 07962 997070
“Please let me just hug them – I will only be with them for a minute”….
“What are you doing here? ” my husband’s nanny asks with a shocked look on her face.
I look at my daughter’s face, whom I haven’t seen for a while. She is unsure: it’s clear she wants to hug me, but she also knows how angry her nanny will be if she does…Her hand is held very firmly by the nanny’s hand so she cannot let go to come to me.
“I was in the school for a meeting. I’ve only just noticed you go by. I didn’t know you were here.” I find myself stammering, shaking and apologising for my very presence in my own children’s school to a nanny who has no parental rights over my children – she is their nanny not their parent. Why am I apologising? But I know the power she has to make life even more difficult for me whilst the children are in her care, so I avoid a row and swallow my anger. Like a mother bear, I want to protect my children from another female who is trying to step between me and my children so that I can’t get to them. I hope instead that she will see how desperate the children and I are to give each other a quick hug.
“We won’t be long” I plead, so longing just to hold them for a few seconds.
“NO, we are going now. There is no time for a hug. We’re leaving. Come on kids” Her face is taught with anger, showing clearly how much she dislikes this situation. She is entirely dismissive of me, the words almost spat out with no effort to apologise for her inability to be accomodating of my request. She could stop for a few minutes if she had wanted to. There was no serious deadline she had to meet. So why can’t or why won’t she permit this little request? Do I also detect a certain look on her face as she grabs hold of both children’s hands and whisks them off to the exit of the school? I don’t know. All I know is that they are looking back at me, clearly distressed, while I have to just stand there looking into their dear faces, whilst another woman takes my children out of the door without a second’s feeling for mine and my children’s plight. I feel a huge surge of strong feelings: anger, resentment, frustration, shock, hurt. The very core of my motherly instinct is ripped. This stranger to our family, no relation even, now has the children she’s always wanted. At 50, she has never been married nor has had her own children – something which has deeply upset her. Instead, she’s found another way of having children: taking mine instead.
It’s just a dream, I tell myself when I wake crying. Except it’s been the pattern of these dreams for quite some time now. The dreams are always the same: I am back in my own home, one that she now lives in. I am unwelcome in their even though, in real life, I am still the owner of that home. In this dream home, she is the one who is in charge of my children. In these dreams, I am sometimes a ghost, sometimes I am merely invisible, a mere on-looker whilst all my children, the nanny, my ex husband, his guests ignore me as they simply look through me. When I am visible in these dreams, I am constantly reaching out to my children in all manner of ways: I am trying to feed them, I am trying to hug them, to talk to them, to protect them from a stranger……….always trying to be close to them. Invariably, I am met with palpable hostility from both the nanny and my ex husband – “why is she still here, when this is our territory now” is the unspoken question that hangs in the air. There is no attempt on their part to be hospitable, accomodating, kind or compassionate for the children’s plight or mine. They make it clear that I am now in their territory, their home, their space, their rules. I stand in my own home, with my own children and am made to feel like I’m the intruder, the unwelcome pest.
Although these are my dreams, these dreams are simply a representation of what is happening in real life, in my real situation, in my real experience of how my ex husband and his nanny treat me. The discomfort in his employee’s face is painful and hurtful to see and experience and I ask myself what I might have done, or what he might have told her, for her to treat me in this way. She treats me like I’m an irrelevance, like she’s the mother and I’m her employee and one that she doesn’t like at that. Ocasionally I stand up for myself and tell her not to treat me in this manner, but there is never an apology on her part, nor any change in her behaviour.
I bitterly resent this. I carried those children in my womb for 9 months. I gave birth, screaming with the pain and bear permanent physical scars from the births. My eldest had to be pulled out as she’d got stuck and I live with the scars of that birth today – a constant reminder of her bond to me. I breast-fed each child, waking several times a night to feed them, comfort them, nurse them, sleep with them to keep them calm. I slept beside their beds in hospital as each of them had their various baby illnesses: diabetes, tonsilitis, pneumonia, meningitis. I held them when they were scared in hospital, comforted them till they fell asleep in my arms, argued with the doctors when I instinctively knew that they were not giving my son the right treatment when he was vomiting with his diabetes, spending hours by their sides unable to sleep whilst their bodies fought off various infections.
Now, in my dreams, my children are being told by their nanny to call her “mum” – to hear them say that about another woman who has come into their lives and taken over, rips me to the core. When my youngest daughter is with me, she often calls me my nanny’s name and call’s her nanny’s name mum, before quickly correcting herself. For this child to have another woman in my shoes is clearly confusing for her and hugely upsetting for me. I remind the children that they only ever have one mum and one dad. Nobody else in their lives will ever be their mum or dad. Other people can play those roles and provide huge support, kindness and comfort as did my step father who has looked after me since I was five. But he is not my dad – my real father is my dad. I love my step father as much as I love my dad, but that doesn’t make him my dad.
There is a bond which is never broken between parent and child and when a stranger comes into the children’s lives and tries to break that bond, it is the cruelist and most hurtful thing they can try to do to both the child and the parent. But this behaviour comes from a deep insecurity, selfishness and unkindness on the part of the person breaking that bond. Because they don’t have their own children, they seek to take on somebody else’s. It happens in many animal species where one animal who has no children, tries to take another animal’s offspring. We are just animals too fundamentally. What is playing out in front of my eyes is another female animal trying to steal my children.
My children are hurt, angry and resentful about the way this nanny treats me, but what can they do? They are only children with no power over the way the grown ups in their lives are behaving. They tell me they desperately want to be looked after by their mum rather than by a nanny but there is nothing they can do about it. They are forced to accept her even when their dad is supposed to be looking after them. He employs her even at the weekends and during his holidays with them. She even spent Christmas with them! Even when he came to collect the children from me, he brought the nanny with him on the 4 hour journey! It’s as if he is treating her like his surrogate wife even though she already has her own 8 year long relationship with another man and she is certainly not my ex husband’s type…..I don’t understand why he is doing this other than to think that he doesn’t like being on his own, either with himself or when he’s with the children. He has to have a woman around…..
When will these dreams ever stop? Even the sleeping tablets that have been prescribed for me by my psychiatris for post traumatic stress disorder brought on by having my children taken from me, don’t stop these dreams from penetrating my refuge of sleep. Sleep is meant to be my place of healing all the hurt in my daily life, all the stresses that we all go through, yet mine just brings further haunting, further distress that lingers throughout the day, playing on my mind as I go through each dream scene feeling each hurt afresh.
Oh God, if you ever listen to any of my prayers, listen to this one: “Please let these dreams stop and let me heal…”
Wow! Did I hear my children burst with their feelings tonight! They started by saying that they didn’t want to leave me after our weekend together. Once again, they talked about how unhappy they are about not seeing more of me. They started to talk about how they felt about the Judge and her decision to “take away their mum from them.” They were angry and resentful about their situation and were clear that neither the Judge nor CAFCASS had considered them or their feelings at all. So they expressed their feelings like this:
My youngest daughter thought that the Judge should be sent to hell where she would make the Judge sit in a bath full of spiders…clearly, for her, that was the most appalling punishment that she could think of. For her, the thought that someone she hated would be subjected to what they might fear most, surrounded by what they feared most and in a place (hell) where they would have to stay forever being surrounded by what they feared most was the maximum punishment she could inflict. Mmmmm…….that’s anger for you.
My eldest child started by asking whether she is now old enough to be sent to jail. I could see that she was grinning mischievously so played along with her. I told her that, under UK law, a child of 10 was considered legally capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong and could therefore be found guilty of a crime. She then asked whether, if she was sent to jail, she would be sent to jail with all the adults so I explained that children are sent to a young offenders prison, not with the adults. I asked her why she wanted to know. She said because she has been wanting to go into the Court and thump the judge really, really hard whilst shouting at the same time “How would you feel if your children were taken away from you! You’re not the one who’s suffering! We are! How would your children feel if they only saw their mum every other weekend! You should have come to our home and see how we are suffering without our mum. You’re not the one having to cope with it all, we are! “
She said that she is very angry still with what has happened. She said that the Judge didn’t come to their home to see how they lived and what their home was like, that the judge didn’t meet them or talk to them or even ask them how they felt about their mum or their dad or what living arrangements they would like. They were just ignored and nobody came to talk to them. She said that she hated CAFCASS too: “They should have a young person to talk to us, someone who understands us, not an old person who can’t listen properly! The person should understand how a child thinks about things.”
My son also described, in graphic detail, all the things that he would like to do to the Judge too; these were all about physically hurting the Judge: thumping, throwing things at her, hurting her REALLY BADLY. He also wanted to shout at her, telling her how angry he was about having him mum taken away from him.
They asked whether they would get into trouble if they did this. I said that yes, what they wanted to do was known in criminal law as “assault” and was a crime which people can be put into prison for. I explained that “assault” was a crime in which a person hurts someone else physically, emotionally or psychologically. I stressed that no-one should ever hurt anyone else unless it was self defense if someone was attacking them. They then wanted to know if brothers and sisters were put into jail when they hurt in each in their fights. I said that yes, when they were older, then if they hurt each other badly, they could be found guilty of assault. Their logic continued: “But all brothers and sisters hurt each other, mummy. They all fight each other when they’re angry with each other; they thump and kick each other. It’s normal so why is it a crime?” I had to explain that, one of the jobs of a parent is to teach children not to hurt each other either physically, emotionally or psychologically. It is a crime because no person should hurt another person EVER even if they are in the same family. They then said: ” but if we are angry with each other, or we get hit, then we hit back. What the Judge has done to us is to hurt us, so why can’t we thump or kick her back? She has really hurt us and now she’s just gone back to her own house and left us hurt.”
I was very struck by the intensity of their anger and the way in which children could think of the most appropriate punishment for someone who they feel has ruined their lives. They have often expressed how angry they are with the Judge and CAFCASS, repeatedly saying how much they want to hurt these people as retribution for hurting them so much by taking away their mum. It is that simple to them: they are hurting, so they want to hurt the people who, in their eyes, have hurt them so much.
I am a religious person and also a pragmatic person. I teach them about the bible and that God wouldn’t want us to hurt each other; that he loves us all, that we are all his children (even the Judge and CAFCASS) and that therefore he doesn’t want us hurting each other. He teaches us to be kind to each other and to love each other. It is wrong to go around hurting people and I stress that “hurt” includes emotional and psychological hurt too. I also teach them about what the law says and that we cannot behave in any way we want to as we all need to learn to live alongside each other.
The quote that I repeat to them is “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” (Ghandi).
The question they are raising is fundamental: “Who is hurting who?” Who is hurting (emotionally and psychologically) who? If hurting another is a crime and is against the teaching of a Christian society, how do the children understand that, despite the fact that they are being fundamentally hurt, the law states that it is acceptable. I had to explain that there are different areas of law: one law states that it is a crime to hurt another, but another law states that it is not a crime to hurt a child because the law states that “it is acting in the best interests of the child”. The law that governs the decisions about who they should live with tells the Judge what to do and the Judge is following what the law states. The law states that the Judge can overrule a child’s feelings if the Judge deems that the child is better looked after by one person than another even if that is not what the child wants. The fact that they are hurt badly by this decision, does not make it against the law. The crime of “assault” is not applicable here as another law has taken its place. The children found this, not surprisingly, hard to understand.
I had to explain that, sometimes, the rules that we live by are not always straightforward and, sometimes those rules don’t always make sense because they are so complicated and different rules apply in different situations. The adults make these rules because they understand the different situations. This idea is very hard for them to understand; their view of life is very simple.
The talk from some of the visitors to my site, is that I am the one who is ruining my children’s lives and yet my children’s view is that it is the Judge and CAFCASS who have ruined their lives, not me. You might say that my children wouldn’t want to tell me that they think I am responsible in order to save my feelings; although there may be times when this could be the case, I know my children very well. They are typically brutally honest with me and have no trouble at all telling me when they think I have done something wrong, or hurtful, or careless or not thinking about their feelings. We have a very open communication system and I actively encourage them to tell me openly, honestly and frankly what they are thinking and feeling. I tell them that, unless we know what each other thinks and feels, we cannot make things right for each other. I repeatedly stress that sometimes we are not aware of how we might be upsetting someone and that we are not mind readers so the only way we can understand how each other is feeling is to tell each other. I also tell each of them to “hear each other out” so that we can all tell each other our own side of any situation without leaping to conclusions and judgements and to take it in turns to speak and to listen.
I told them that the Judge made her decision based on only what she heard and that she didn’t hear everything that she needed to hear. I told them that I agreed with them that, the most important people to hear from was the children, yet she didn’t hear them. (I explained that it was CAFCASS’s job to hear the children and then relay that to the Judge). I then told them that she didn’t hear from anyone in my family, or any of my friends and that, if she had, she would have heard “the other side of the story”. Because she didn’t hear both sides properly, she made the decision without hearing all the things that the children would have said.
My eldest daughter then went on to say what she wanted to happen; she said that she thought that a fairer arrangement was to live one week with me, followed by one week with Daddy, one week with mummy etc. They all thought that this would be a good solution, my other daughter saying 50:50…. I told them that mummy and daddy can choose to agree on whatever arrangement we want and voluntarily put aside the current court order if we wish to. The issue is that we would both have to agree on a workable alternative. I would be prepared to try another arrangement if that is the arrangement that the children would prefer. The challenge, of course, is getting my ex to listen to what the children want and putting his own feelings/wishes to one side to enable him to listen with an open mind…
If I don’t work full time, the children get to see me and I’m there for them for their matches, concerts and, well, just “there” for them. The only way they and I can see more of each other than under the strict terms of the court order is for me to turn up to all their school events; I cannot be stopped from doing this as it is my parental right regardless of any court order. I therefore come to all their school events, their school masses and assemblies, their sports matches, their music concerts and so on. I even go to their children’s parties sometimes if it is at a friend’s house; the parents of the birthday children know that the children and I don’t get to see each other much, so they are happy for me to come along…
If I work, they will miss out on those times with me. They already have a mother that they cannot access due to the Court order. I do not have a full time job; I have chosen to be self-employed to give me maximum flexibility to spend time with the children and be there to support them. Consequently, I don’t have much money. I cannot afford a nice car, or expensive holidays or to take them out to restaurants or give them a big house. We have to share a bed and go camping instead of staying in hotels.
I have repeatedly asked them whether they would prefer me to earn enough to buy them nice things and to have a smart car and live in a bigger house or whether they would rather that I have the time to come to all their matches etc. There is a resounding and unanimous vote from them that they would prefer my time than my money. There is not even the slightest question in their minds about that….
The irony is that, because I can’t provide these material things for them, the court is less likely to agree to the children being looked after mainly by me! The idea that one parent (by working full time and therefore not spending time with the children) is more able to “look after” the children because they can provide for them materially is nonsensical given what a child wants. A child wants time with their parents, not a smart car or a big house. Provided the parent can provide food, clothes and a home, who is to judge whether the standard of that material provision is “high enough” to be acceptable and therefore sufficient?
Here is a link to a blog written on this subject from a child’s perspective:
http://laura1318.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/the-working-mum-from-the-daughters-perspective/
I am a mother animal, an animal with powerful instincts to protect and defend her young from intruders and danger. I am a mother whose whole being has become that of caring for her young over and above everything else, even at the risk of her own well-being. Every fibre of my body is wired in this way and nothing can override it. My programming was set millions of years ago and won’t change over my life time.
My instincts are so powerful that they form a deep part of my subconsious, a subconsious that is there for the good of all our animal young. Survival of the species, survival of the fittest. Those with the most powerful instincts will save their young and bring them to adult maturity. My instincts drive me to protect, warn, hunt down, track every danger, obstacle, intrusion which may prevent me from following through on my mothering. These instincts are so powerful that I spend every night dreaming of my children. Every night in my sleep I am looking for them, tracking their movements, sniffing out danger, hunting down intruders, finding my way to them to protect them from danger, fighting anyone in my way to help them in their distress. I am mistrustful, hyper alert, viscious if they are being threatened, fearless, courageous and 100% determined that they will survive at all costs. My own life is unimportant, I would die fighting for my children with not a moment’s hesitation. Their survival and well-being is more important than my last breath.
I grieve for them daily, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. They are alive but not under my protection, I am helpless against intruders, I am unable to nourish them, to comfort them, to teach them and guide them. My life has become half shadow even in bright sunshine. They are not dead, so I am not fully grieving yet I feel like a member of a herd whose young has gone missing and crying out for them to come back to me. I feel like an animal in a cage in a zoo with her young in another compound. I feel like I am pacing, pacing, pacing in circles, with a hunger in my stomach, restless and unable to settle.
Animal children’s instincts are set to seek protection from their mother. To find nourishment and comfort from them, to follow them, to be guided and taught by them, to return to them at night for safety and protection.
How does it feel for them to return to an empty nest? Animal young often die without their mother or fail to thrive. Some literally wither and die as they lose the will to live. They lack skills to defend themselves. They cannot hunt as effectively. They don’t know where to find the best catch or how to find a mate or worse, how to mother their own children as they’ve lost their role model and teacher. Any nature programme teaches these fundamentals and we all accept them as true for animals. Why do we question it for humans?
Male animals in the majority of species are not the primary carer. They don’t chose to stay with their young and do the nurturing. Even when they choose to stick with the mother of their young, they are distant and uninvolved; their role is hunter-gatherer. THey will fight for their children, yes, and often to the death with an overriding instinct to protect mother and child. No-one doubts that the male of the species is a fundamental part of the pack.
But they are not the nurturers. They are not the one that the child seeks out for comfort, even when both parents are present. This is not the way all baby animals are wired – they are wired to be with their mothers.
We all know and accept these fundamental instincts of animal behaviour. Why do we think that homo sapiens are so fundamentally different that these animal instincts and behaviour no longer matter? We are animals to the core. Only our “sophisticated” brain tells us otherwise. Our instincts don’t listen to our brain. That’s why we have them – they are there to overide the brain, to keep us alive and protect us even when our brain misinforms us.
I won’t settle. I won’t give up. I won’t stand aside and watch another person mother my children. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.
Dream diary:
Friday 23rd Oct: I dream that I am at a school function with some of the parents; we are waiting for the children to come in to eat lunch at the buffet. I am looking out for my son, oblivious of anything else going on around me. I say to the Chef” you see, Chef, it’s vital that my son eats before the others, he’s got diabetes, he must eat first and eat well….” I spot him and hurry him to the front of the queue and make sure that his plate is piled high with all the best of the food. I settle him down to eat with his friends whilst I go back to see what’s left of the food. Very little. The chef tells me he’s put some aside but when I uncover the plate, the food has gone. Nothing. I go hungry…..but at least I know my son is eating…
Sat 24th October: I dream that I’m skiing with the children in an unknown skiing area. There are very few people around so it gives all of us room to ski really well. We are in the midst of a strange mountainous areas of craggy rocks with deep cravaces to large, expanses of snow. We are clearly in an off-piste area with much of the snow being fresh with no ski marks on it….The sun is out and the day is beautiful…all in all fantastic conditions to ski in.
My kids and I are happily skiing along when my youngest goes to near the edge. Before I can blink, she has fallen over the edge; I hear her screams as she falls. My pounding heart has leaped into my throat, I cannot breathe through panic. I make my way to the edge and look over…My worst fears are confirmed; she is lying face down in the snow at the bottom of the crevace.
She is dead…..
I awake sobbing, shaking, terrified……Thank God…….it’s a dream…..
This case is just so horrible to read. Of course, I am the first to say that I haven’t read the details of the case as I won’t be able to find them given the confidentiality/secrecy of the courts, but I am inclined to believe many of the facts of this case. Equally I appreciate that this account is one-sided – I have not heard the father’s story and we all know that there are 2 sides to every story. So please read on bearing that in mind….
Essentially, a mother has lost custody of her children to a man with a vast number of criminal convictions (including sexual abuse) who is dying from AIDS. The father claimed that the mother was discriminating against him on the basis of his AIDS/HIV and the courts agreed with him. The fact that he is dying from his illness raises questions of how well he can parent the child in the mean time. He’s been given 7 years to live and the child is only 7. Her daughter is only allowed supervised visits with her mum despite having reported that the daughter is being sexually assaulted in her father’s house.
This is an interesting dilemma. I fundamentally believe that no-one should be discriminated against and I find discrimination against HIV sufferers to be totally inhumane. I have watched a dying man in an AIDS hospice and felt nothing but profound sympathy for those sufferers. There is no doubt that a parent can parent regardless of AIDS. However, there comes a time when the effect of an illness on a person’s ability to provide care for a child becomes an issue of concern. If a person has become so ill that they can no longer function properly, then how can they be capable of parenting? If they are no longer capable, then surely the other parent should step in in preference to some other carer UNLESS that other parent is deemed incapable.
So what are the comparables between this case and a case involving a parent with a mental illness? A mental illness, if properly controlled, means a parent can live a normal life. They won’t die from their illness and it won’t deteriorate unless the sufferer refuses medication. Someone dying from AIDS is highly likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and stress and be unable to hold down a job once the illness becomes severe.
Yet to refuse an AIDS sufferer parenting on the basis of their illness was held by this court to be discriminatory and yet the judge in my case was able to decide that I couldn’t be the full time carer due to my Bipolar illness.
Can anyone help me to see this differently? Am I missing a point here? These questions are not sarcastic – I genuinely would like to hear other peoples views on this…
The mother claims that her troubles have arisen from challenging the court system – the more she has challenged them, the more they put their foot down and refuse to help protect the child.
When does a parent’s determination to protect their child, turn into “trouble making” in the eyes of the Court (or a “vexacious litigant” in our English court speak). She has been told that she is simply refusing to accept the court’s decision and therefore she should go and get help with coming to terms with the decision.
I often wonder whether any of the family court judges have lost custody of their own children. If they have, I doubt very much that they would maintain that a parent should be critised for “refusing to accept” a decision which the parent knows goes against the well-being of their child. The fundamental parental instinct is to protect your child from any harm, including psychological and emotional harm. If a parent believes that their child is suffering from the result of not seeing them (which has been proven many times in research), then they will fight, argue and refuse to give up until they know their child is being looked after properly.
Surely, the Judges realise that this is simply a fundamental human response to their child’s distress? Do they honestly think that a parent will give up?
If the Judges themselves could talk from personal experience of how they came to terms with having their children taken away, then their assertions about a parent needing to accept a decision may become more credible.
Until such a time, I am inclined to think that every parent will continue to fight for what they believe is the right solution for their child. They will put their child’s wishes paramount to a judges disapproval.
Do read the following account from this mother – it’s heart rending….
http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/2003-abuse/abuse.pdf
My daughter showed her chronic shyness yesterday, which I believe is a manifestation of the affect my absence is having on her and the ongoing lack of insight of her that my ex has. Her views and opinions are often ignored by him – something that I have both experienced when I’m with her and him, as well as being recounted by her on numerous occasions which she relates graphically and with a depth of feeling that is manifest in her lack of self esteem and anxiety. Yesterday was a case in point. She was being shown around her prospective new school by children who were barely older than herself yet she could not communicate with them. She clung on to me throughout, despite being with both me and her father, largely ignoring him and not once taking his hand. This is striking behaviour given that she has been largely in his care now for the past 18 months. She is now over 10, but behaved more like a terrified toddler hiding behind her mother’s skirt, than a confident child about to enter her teens. She would not step into any of the classrooms on her own – she clung on to my arm and pulled me into them with her, burying her head into my shoulder as much as she could. She asked questions of me, quietly, so that nobody else could hear and would not look at any of the other children in the eye. Even when were being shown around the art room where she saw the pottery and the art class of pottery skills led by a cheerful, friendly, bright young female teacher, she could not bring herself to share her own enthusiasm for the activity she loves most. Instead, I had to ask the questions for her. Very ocasionally she spoke to others but it was with a manifest lack of confidence.
She has always been a relatively shy child but this has been attributed by her father as being the effect that my continuing presence, my Bipolar and my fundamental personality has had in the children’s lives when I was the caregiver. Now that he has been the main carer for the past 18 months, her shyness with others has increased, not decreased as he asserted in court. If he was the right person for her to live with, then why should this state that she is in have continued? It is clear to me: he cannot relate to her in the way she needs him to. He has a fundamental lack of understanding and empathy with my daughter’s shyness and high levels of sensitivity as her behaviour is so alien to his own. Her high levels of sensitivty both to the affects of her environment on herand to her interaction with others is very similar to my own and I therefore have an inherent empathy and sympathy with this trait of hers. He however has no experience of feeling like this and has not shown any willingness to accomodate this – rather he prefers to tell her that she “is being over-sensitive” or “over-reacting” or “imagining” certain experiences that she has. He dismisses her perceptions of her world to such an extent that she is now highly reticent to assert herself with him. I observe all this and feel helpless as I am not there to help her respect her own feelings and teach her assertiveness. Only having small amounts of time with her doesn’t support the kind of understanding and nurturing she needs to help her validate herself.
Most mothers fundamentally know their child and have an inherent understanding of their fundamental personality and nature. Of course their are exceptions, but it is widely acknowledged by most people that this is the mother’s natural ability and is the result of the close bond that a mother and child have. The net result of this lack of a mother’s input – a mother who fundamentally understands her child – is to produce a child lacking in self esteem, a child who no longer trusts their feelings and instints when their main carer (my ex and his nanny) ignores, dismisses and makes light of their experiences. When I try to teach them how to stand up to him, they tell me that they are “too frightened” of him and his anger and that “he doesn’t listen” even when they do try to tell him their feelings.
An example is that my son was told off by his nanny for being naughty when he ate some crisps and hadn’t restrained his friends from eating them too. The fact that he was having a hypo and therefore could barely function, let alone take his friends to task, was not recognised by the nanny at all. Unsurprisingly, he felt misunderstood, resentful and mistreated. Her lack of understanding of his nature and her lack of experience of his condition has a profound affect on him. He grows increasingly resentful of the limits she places on him with regard to managing his diabetes, with the result that he is now angry about his condition and feels that he is not having the support from her that he needs. This is in stark contrast to how he feels when he is with me, as he knows that I understand his feelings and respect them.
I know these things that my children are relating to me to be true as I experienced my ex husband’s reaction to me over many years when I tried to explain to him my own feelings about the world and the people I interacted with. His usual response was that I was “over-reacting”, was “far too sensitive”, that I “imagined it” and that it was my attitude, personality and behaviour that provoked any conflict with others rather than attributing any behaviour on other people;s part to any difficulties I may be experiencing.
When someone is told this time and time again, it knocks their self esteem and devalues their experiences resulting in lack of trust of their own perceptions. Over time, it is an extremely toxic experience which ultimately can lead to severe anxieties and depression due to the lack of ability to follow through on their need to assert their wishes, needs and feelings.
This is exactly what is happening to my eldest daughter and is beginning to happen to my son too who is also telling me that he is frightened of his father and therefore can’t tell him how he truly feels.
I cannot bear watching all this happening and having to stand on the side-lines unable to intervene to support what they are saying and feeling other than when they are being looked after by me. Given that they are with me so rarely, I cannot provide the validation that they need on a regular basis. This is resulting in my children becoming increasingly uncertain of their interactions with others and a lack of ability to assert themselves in challenging situations.
This is highly damaging to them and, in my view, is causing the “significant harm” that the law refers to in the Children’s Act.
Proving it as a causation, however, is fraught with difficulties as proving a link between his attitude and behaviour to them as being the main cause of these problems is still in debate in the on-going “nature versus nurture” debate. What is certain though is that a child’s personality which is a mixture of both parents, needs to be understood and nurtured by the parent who’s personality best matches that of the child. Certainly, in my eldest daughters case, her personality is much more like mine and she would benefit far more from being with someone who understands her than with someone who doesn’t.
How do I prove this? Ultimately, it will be her choice that counts. By that time, however, she may be so full of self-doubt that her ability to make that choice will be greatly hampered as she may no longer trust her own feelings. Only time will tell…..
I woke up crying from a dream I had last night. The tears started during my dream: my dream-self was crying and as I woke up, I was still crying.
I had dreamt that I had become a ghost. My ghost-self was able to be anywhere that my children were – it felt wonderful. If they were asleep in their room, I could sit on the end of the bed and just watch them sleeping. If they were sitting quietly reading a book, I could sit next to them mouthing the words alongside them and watch the expressions changing on their faces when they read a funny piece or a puzzling piece or simply watch them becoming drawn into a fantasy world. A world where I was too. I could run outside and play with them, chasing after a ball or just cheering them on…
Nobody would notice, so nobody could stop me. No-one could tell me that I shouldn’t be near my children. I could spend all day and all night with them. If I was lucky, they might become aware of my presence in a positive way and just feel comforted that their mum was with them then they could sleep soundly, assured in the knowledge that my love was all around them even when I was not physically able to hold them and cuddle them.
No wonder I awoke crying…..it’s simply a dream and not a possibility…..
[Don't worry - I'm not suicidal. Far from it, I would never do that to my kids and I feel no reason to do it since making a full recovery]
I dread going to sleep nowadays. Most nights I dream about missing my children, about them being taken away, about them being in trouble and not being able to help them, about having to witness their tears and not be able to wipe them away, about them growing up without me, forgetting that they had a mum. I can only sleep with a sleeping tablet and then I still wake up fretting with a dread in my stomach and memories of the dreams I’ve had floating in and out in the early hours.
I never tell the children I have these dreams. When they tell me of their own bad nightmares, they tell of dreams of me having my head chopped off or about being eaten by a giant spider or about being kidnapped and me not coming to rescue them. My youngest wakes up scared that I really have had my head chopped off and is constantly scared that her dream will come true. She’s fretting about whether I’m safe and whether I will die. No matter how much reassurance I give her, she’s not convinced that I’m alright. She’s often telling me that she loves me “to the moon, and all the way around the universe and every atom in the universe!…..” but then goes on to ask how much I love her, seeking constant reassurance that I do.
My son is being teased at school for the fact that his mum doesn’t live with him; they tease him in front of other boys saying “your mum doesn’t live with you” in a taunt, repeating it until my son has to walk away. What does he tell them? How does he explain? He can’t; he simply has to walk away, hurting. No other boy in the whole school has a mother who doesn’t live with her son. He has to nurse that hurt on his own. Unlike other children with divorced parents who can share their hurt, he can’t; his family story is different from everyone else’s. It’s acceptable to have a father living away, but there is no other mother who is……How does he explain that even to himself, let alone to anyone else….
No wonder we are all having nightmares; it is a nightmare, whether you are awake or asleep and there is no end in sight….this is not a dream, but a harsh reality that my children and I are living in and we won’t wake up to find that it’s just a dream…..it’s horribly real.
