Parents and ex plot
Help me! I am being ganged up on. (keep reading, the plot thickens…)
My sad story begins with noticing a sharp escalation in Sam's distain and anger towards us (me and his stepfamily) upon returning from a visit in the Spring of 2011, with his Grandparents and Uncle (Uncle (Jr) resides with them and is in his 40s). I was shocked at Sam's attitude towards us, which took days to return to normal and was compelled, as his mother, to take action. I did not call my parents to inquire about his behavior because we have a history of them ignoring my concerns, instead I started to cut back on his exposure to them, now I offer visits to them at my home, as often as they’d like with me present. To give this some perspective: at 2 years old, Sam had demonstrated a variation of this behavior upon return from my ex, but it quickly changed when I took him to see a psychologist to determine if PAS was a factor and a family assessment was completed for the court. My main concern about my parents was not just that they don’t accept our family situation and its members but that when they are with him they are behaving in a manner (influencing?) that causes Sam stress, resulting in these behaviors and exacerbating his degenerative eye disease (as stress is known to do with this disease). I can see that my parents may think they were being punished for not accepting their step-grandchildren but that was not my intent. My intent was to ensure harmony and stability in our home, where Sam resides and if they were interested in seeing Sam more often, those visits would be at social events involving all members of our stepfamily or with Sam and I alone. I would not change my choices knowing what I know today because Sam’s stability at home and harmony in our family life are far more important to maintain than unsupervised visits with his grandparents.
Sam is 7, I have been divorced for 4 years now, I have sole custody and our stepfamily consists of Ben, my common-law spouse, Julie (16), Karen (13) and Dominic (12). Yes, the kids fight and they are sometimes mean to each other and when behavior is inappropriate Ben and I react swiftly, consistently and judiciously. We have both had a previous experience in a stepfamily situation and are on the same page as far as child-rearing practices are concerned. Raising a stepfamily has it’s own stresses and difficulties without my parents being an undermining factor. There have been plenty of difficult conversations with my parents, my requests for family counseling with them were summarily ignored in favor of mediation, which Ben and I attended, which was adversarial and terminated by me because it was not productive and Ben and his children were not only maligned but also flatly ignored as a consideration. Here we are today, my parents have become unlikely bedfellows with my ex (my parents hated him, even when we were married) in a bid to bully me into documenting a visit agreement (as it was more liberal before Sam’s behavior started to change). I believe they hope to achieve this somehow by appealing to the court by enlisting my ex’s assistance and piggybacking on a suit to change Sam’s custody. Which they are egging him on to do, by feeding him misinformation about our family situation, by speaking to him about things that I told them in confidence and by manipulating him into believing that a court challenge for custody with their help will be successful. My ex even manipulated me, when I did not know that he was colluding with my parents, into making an offer of exchanging visits with Sam for counseling sessions, which I did, thinking it was a good idea then and now he has informed me that my parents believe that I have used my son as a bargaining chip. Which was not my intent, I sincerely believed back then that family counseling sessions (perhaps many of them) would have helped across the board. Today I am not so sure that family counseling would help us as my previously tenuous trust has been completely eroded.
I have heard a lot of differing points of view on this ‘picture’ from doctors and psychologists and I would like a legal opinion. My question is, do my parents and ex have a case? What are my legal rights? Should I consider going to the court myself to change my ex’s access schedule and get a restraining order or something in a court document to forbid him from allowing my parents unsupervised access to my son?
I should add that my parents are in their 70s, they both have health concerns (diabetes, vertigo, unexplained falls) and I now have concerns about their mental health, in that their inability to see that their attitudes and actions are hurtful and harmful to everyone, especially Sam.
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01-11-2012, 08:39 AM
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