| Spring |
| (Carpal \'Tunnel) |
| 06/09/04 09:16 AM |
Re: My suggestion...
|
Thanks gr8dad. We have tried this already. We originally hired a therapist two years ago for SD and her mother for the sole purpose of healing their strained relationship. Mom refused to come. After about four months of her no-shows....including the therapist calling the mom to invite her...we gave up. The sessions became more for just the kids. Hubby and I went as well at different times to help us cope with the mom's behavior. Last summer, when she first tried to kick the daughter out(after a year of counselling sessions) the therapist and my hubby convinced her to come to a session(just the mom and the therapist). The objective of the session was to come up with a summer schedule where mom had one on one time with both daughters...mostly to help this particular SD and her do some bonding. After about 45 minutes of the therapist listening to the mom go on about all her problems being because of me...she finally had the mom agree to a summer schedule that didn't include kicking the SD out. Less than 24 hours later, we got a call from mom screaming at hubby to come get her 'evil' child and she never wanted to see her face again. We did, and she's still here a year later. Incidentally, mom told SD that the only reason we were trying to get her to come to the therapist appointments was to make her mom spend her money. I dispelled that to SD when I told her that we paid for all the sessions including the one her mom came too...and that we had told her mom we would pay for her to work on the relationship with SD. I told her if she wanted proof I could show her the invoices. This was at a time when we decided that it was time for some of the truth to come forward. Mom has been lying about us for years but until then, not one bad word about her mom ever came from us. Still, it wasn't so much as saying bad things as setting the record straight.
I feel mom is a narcissist...of course this is my arm chair diagtnosis from all the research I've done on her behaviors. She is focussed on things all being about 'her'. I am very suspicious as well of her creep of a boyfriend. He doesn't like kids to start with and as soon as SD came to live with us, he moved back in with the mom and they announced they were getting married(until their drug bust put all their plans on hold). He was apparently the one who orchestrated this last extortion attempt with SD. He also orchestrated the one a year and a half ago when I was set up by them at my place of work. I feel that a large part of the reason she was brought back here is that he didn't want SD in his home. He always leaves when she is around according to SD. He always go to the bar when she's there. THe boyfriend is a control freak from what I have heard and it sounds like whatever he says goes...after all, he is supporting the mom. She used to work with him in the drug world but she was also arrested last November and they have been shut down since. I can only guess how tight their money is because I believe their assets were frozen. I think this is also causing much stress in their house. He owned eight homes he used as drug houses. He still has to pay mortgages on all of them plus the new monster house he bought a month prior to the bust...and those lawyer bills are huge I would bet as he has hired the best. He's not a pleasant man at the best of times.
Mom is using the situation with SD to play more of a victim role. Her version is we coaxed SD to come live with us...even with the attempts by us to NOT let it happen(not because we didn't want SD but because we want their relationship to work out) and our willingness to let her go back(until we understood that mom really hadn't changed). We truly do have SD's interests at heart. My biggest concern right now is that she is doing very well. One weekend with her mom and her self esteem will be attacked, her head will be filled with lies and she'll be made to feel like garbage because she lives with us. Her mom is the Queen of emotional abuse.
I talked withthe younger SD that lives with her mom yesterday. As usual, it's put on speaker phone and the younger one is a totally different person...she sounds afraid to talk to me. She has told me she isn't allowed to wave when she sees me in public when she's with her mom...she isn't allowed to mention my name when she's with her mom. Its really sad!
I would love for SD not to see her mom until we were able to build hewr self esteem up enough to act like a bullet proof vest for her mother's remarks. I know that isn't the "PC" thing to do and I would never deny a request from SD to visit or talk to her mom....but I can't help but worry about her when she's there. She's just doing so well...we've come so far in the past year but especially the past three months.
Any more suggestions now that you know a bit more?