Child arrangement court order

An excellent contribution to the discussion Madgran.

Razz I did say that it maybe wasn't your intention but that was how it came across to me. Again, it may not have been your intention but I believed your remarks about petulant, uncompromising and argumentative responses were directed at me which is why I responded the way I did.

I have made no assumptions about you and share in your frustration of being accused of doing something I haven't done.

That is a big problem I think on the majority of estrangement threads nonnie; all P's are good, all GP's are bad or all P's are bad and all GP's are good.

Any of those claims are ridiculous, they bring nothing but disruption to an already complex and for some distressing discussion.

Yes, Nonnie, you are right. The comment was missing context, so it is hard for anyone to know.

What I do know however, is that when looking for signs that a child is being manipulated or coached, comments like “mummy lies, daddy (because it is usually the other parent) doesn’t” would raise concerns.

I think any parent who hears “mummy lies, grandma doesn’t” coming from the mouth of their 5 year old child, is, at the very least, going to be having strong, strong words with grandma.

Why strong words GG? Why not a talk with GM to find out why the child made that statement in the first place?

IMO an immediate response of having strong words with the GM is the assumption that the GM 'helped' the child come to that conclusion in the first place and isn't that what started this particular debate to begin with?

Right, perhaps we can leave it there and not make assumptions AT ALL and actually listen to each other.

You have to remember that part of the problem here is that different generations do things differently. My son and dil parent very differently to the way I did, although my parenting changed vastly over time because of therapy, because I did a lot of reading worried I would be a bad parent like my mother and because I am a teacher and do regular training on how to communicate with children and adults (possibly need more lol). I think there are a lot of ways to be a good parent, but it is easy to be set in them. It's easy to automatically treat your grandchildren in a different way than their parents and break the continuity of how they are being raised. It's easy to think your way is better etc

I am struggling to think of examples I am not bound on confidentiality

Here is one though, a friend once fell out with her parents for 6 months. They had used physical discipline on her child. She was furious as she had never used it. The parents thought they were justified because they had used physical discipline on their children and they were fine. Their daughter said that actually she wasn't fine and she had felt frightened and didn't want her child to ever be afraid of her. Her sibling sided with the parents and thought that smacking was fine. My friend said that if they ever laid a finger on the child again they would lose their privileges. Eventually it settled down and they agreed to disagree, but my friend didn't leave her child alone with them for a long time and it caused a lot of friction.

Yes let's do that Razz.

You'd think that involved GP's would know how their AC and their partners are parenting wouldn't you, whether they do smack and with so much talk against smacking as a form of punishment, that if they were unsure, they would check with the parents.

When DS was little we were staying with my mum and he was having a temper tantrum, well he'd been having that particular temper tantrum for 4 hours. My mum had been at work and when she came in asked if he'd 'been at it all morning' and when I said yes she went up to him and smacked him on the back of the hand.

It worked; he stopped probably due to the shock, don't get me wrong it wasn't hard but he'd never been smacked before. I was shocked and angry, told mum ever to do that again. I wasn't against a smack on the back of the hand as a reprimand but not at the age he was then and not in front of me without even asking.

An example of as you say Razz different generations doing things differently.

It also has to do with the definition of abuse and discipline.

Spanking was discipline in the past vs now more recognized as physical abuse by younger generation.

Same with emotional abuse. It went under the radar for a long time.

Financial abuse, reproductive abuse....

If the mother said they could not go to the GPS for dinner because they were going out somewhere else, and then don’t go, only a manipulator would insinuate that the mother tells lies based on those details.

It could very well be that the plans to go out with another guest fell through at the last minute and could not make it, so they stayed home seeing it was now already time to eat.

Just such bad assumptions on this board to make nothing more than straw man arguments that rent helpful at all.

To be fair, I have used this excuse many times when I needed a reason that didn't hurt someones feelings. The real reason being that I just didn't want to. I don't think my children ever noticed. If they did ask 8 just would have explained to them that I didn't want to hurt the other persons feelings

I would definitely know that my children would have said I was a mean liar to me before telling someone else that if that is what they thought. So they would have got the explanation and if they then went to my father or my husbands parents and said I was a mean liar, I would hope they would play it down and give them the same explanation instead of holding it against me. Everyone has off days when they just don't want to or days when they have heavy menstrual cycles or runny bums and just don't want to tell the other person that lol

Or even if they did hold it against me, play it down for the children's sake

Razz, If I ever invite you to dinner; I’d almost rather hear anything else than you have ‘runny bum’ to excuse yourself from the event LOL

Lol!

Are you saying that a child who hears his/her mother saying they can't do something because they're doing something else, who knows that they aren't, is a manipulator *TwentyTwenty?

If previous plans had fallen through presumably the child would have known about those previous plans, that they were supposed to be going out, or that someone was supposed to be coming for tea or whatever.

That explanation would certainly explain that response Razz and I agree that a reasonable person would play it down but not everyone is reasonable.

My mother wouldn't have accepted any excuse without a guilt trip so I would probably have tried to accommodate her if one of my legs fell off

As I said, not everyone is reasonable and I'm sorry that your mother wasn't Razz.

Ah me too Smile, me too.

Razz

smile, My children never knew what the plans were until five minutes before hand. Plans change all the time, and I was not prepared to deal with tantrums when they did.

I still remember the tantrums Summerlove. Our children did tend to know in advance what our plans were, maybe if they hadn't we'd have been spared a few.

My daughter is aspergers so she needed to know some plans in advance, especially doctors and dentists or places she had never been. People she was close to not so much because she would get anxious waiting for it to happen and explode when it finally did into every one of her quirks. She makes her own plans now thankfully

www.verywellfamily.com/before-you-sue-for-visitation-rights-1695438

I found this very interesting

No, Smiles.

It goes both ways. From GPs or from ACs.

In this case, I’m saying that a GP (or AC) that assumes the mother (or GP) is dishonest because the GP (mom) doesn’t know all the facts is manipulating based on wrong or bad assumptions. It goes both ways for parents or GPs.

Bad and wrong assumptions based on partial information.

The GPs that accuse the mother of ‘being dishonest’ without having access to all of the reasons they didn’t come for dinner, reasons that could have caused the mother to:

1: not go to the GPs

And/or

2: not keep the original plan to go out with friends

are manipulating and creating false, unfounded and ill informed bias that ‘Mom is dishonest’. This could be reversed for an AC that invited GPS for dinner that didn’t show also.

Mom could have been very honest, but the child and the GPS may not have access to that information that moms honest decision was based on. It doesn’t mean that Mom was lying, or that she’s dishonest. But most of us are predispositioned to assume the worst about folks, which creates opposing truths.

Guiding, creating bias or manipulating the event to a pre-determined ‘Mom is dishonest’ theme without having all the facts, is ... manipulation.

Specifically, manipulation to a false narrative. GPs and parents are both flawed in their accusations when make assumptions without having all the facts. Opposing truths are the foundation for most of all estrangement cases, and this is one method that opposing truths are created on each side.

I’m almost sure you are aware of this.

Or maybe we just agree to disagree in principle.

These ‘opposing truths’ may even then get incorrectly reinforced by either of the parties:

GC of GPS visits afterward and says ‘I wish I could have come over but mom was dishonest and said she had other plans, but we stayed home’.

And most GPs that have turmoil will just agree, ‘yep, sorry.. I knew she was dishonest’

Or on the parents end:

GC says ‘I wish my GPs would have come but they said they had other plans.’ And mom answers ‘they always make up a dishonest excuse when they don’t want to see us, I’ve had it my whole life’

Detrimental reinforcement of assumptions that we have become predispositioned to expect. Opposing truths amplified, until finally ‘the last straw’ is in sight.

Summer that is very interesting and backs up a lot of my thoughts on this. There is an organisation here that comes in to interview the children in school when parents go to court and the children often are given their own representation to make sure their needs are put first. The children are more important and completely innocent no matter who is at fault.