Who’s Kid Are You?

It’s another Grrr day. I have refrained of late to write about my Grrrs with The Mother. Today’s Grrr tugs for a venting session. We have patiently – or not – observed all summer the lack of my stepdaughter’s presence in our house. She has not visited her dad since May, not even Father’s Day.  Can you say Parental Alienation?  Last weekend she was "forced" to ask her dad for a ride to a swim meet in another town on Saturday. As I understand, now, her mother was sleeping (night shift or some other important employment related unavailability) and her stepdad had to go golfing. This all makes it clear to me that they have moved on from the high energy parenting that was going on up to about a year or so ago….read: lots of activity that blatantly slams our house out of the exciting household to visit competitions…and were, indeed, relying on the oldest daughter to do all the running/driving/chauffering of little sissy - she has moved out into her dorm, thus the call to us. Okay, so we made it happen: spouse-man is just her dad afterall. Pick her up, get her a McMuffin, let her hang with her friends, and drop her off back to her mom’s.

This weekend we are going up to the mountains to visit family driving in from Montana. I urged spouse-man to invite her – it is within the window of what would be our normal scheduled time, again, afterall. And, wow, she actually said she wanted to go. …. But, and here’s the butt of it, she responded "Let me get permission from my stepdad, though, since mommy is out of town."

She needs to get permission from her stepdad to go with her dad on his weekend? I’ll leave the other questions hanging for a while…

There, I have vented, and now I need to actually go digest this myself. Grrr.

Comments

[Stephanie]

That's RIDICULOUS! And spouse-man should tell her so. "Let me notify stepdad" would be one thing, but permission? I don't think so. It's sad because the Parental Alienation thing isn't a one-day affair. It happens over time, just as you described, until one day everyone realizes the goal has been reached. It's sad for spouse-man because he'll never really have a chance to have a relationship with his daughters like he should have had. It's sad for the kids because they don't even realize that it has happened to them. It's sad for their mother because she will realize later in her life that she's done them all a disservice. It's just sad.

The system needs an overhaul.