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<blockquote data-quote="klmno" data-source="post: 330495" data-attributes="member: 3699"><p>DDD, believe it or not his current therapist (the one who was doing so-called family therapy as well) suggested that I tell difficult child everything (so did GAL for that matter)- what happened with my uncle, my bro, the situation with my mother, etc. While I can see the point that difficult child is at a point where he deserves some explanation of what is going on and he knows I "have issues" but has no clue what they are really, I am not in agreement that it's in his best interest to dump it all on him right now or that it would help our relationship. </p><p></p><p>on the other hand, I am comfortable that this doesn't have to be an "all or nothing" scenario (the judge was in support of not telling difficult child right now but waiting on an appropriate therapeutic environment). It would not be so much an issue if either 1) we were completely separated from these people but my mom would call GAL and stir up **** with the courts if I tried that and my bro will not stop until at some point he either has custody or at least communication with difficult child, or 2) when there is communication with difficult child these issues don't come into play but they do- remember we are talking a seriously dysfunctional family. You might not be familiar with that enough to understand it but it pretty much means that they have not shown ANY ability to communicate with difficult child and not make snide remarks, suggestions, etc, that keep things stirred up, feelings hurt, basicly toxic stuff, and continuously manipulate difficult child. We're not talking about just obnoxious comments- I'm talking about remarks and actions that lead to trouble with difficult child. It's hard to explain for one that hasn't lived thru it. It's emotionally abusive if not directly leading to sexual abuse. </p><p></p><p>As par for the course, this gets worse as he gets older. From what I am reading in more than one source, if it is impossible to completely keep the child away from the family (which is the preferred way and I probably should have done that from the beginning), then it is urged to keep the family members supervised and to role model healthy familial relationships to your child(ren), and let the child see that you put up a healthy boundary with the other family, and teach the child gradually what is going on. You don't preetend that the problem isn't there. They say if you don't address it that despite your efforts for yourself alone, you are keeping a "family secret", making it your own burden instead of a family problem that needs to be dealt with as a family problem, and that it can "skip" a generation and your child grow up to still model the dysfunction in one way or another. Also, this helps the child see that all the problems are not him/her alone or the parent alone- it's a long standing family problem and we are going to work together as an immediate family to keep it from being passed down to another generation. They give suggestions on how to do this so it isn't more a sutuation of a parent expecting a child to take on adult repsonsiblities or burdens. Obviously, there are still more aspects of that for me to deal with individually, just like difficult child has his own stuff to work on.</p><p></p><p>One article I read used the example of having to be around a physically abusive uncle who beat his wife on holidays. You don't sweep the issue under the rug, it said, you teach your child that this is wrong (if you have no choice but to be around the person). If you don't address it with the child, you're still passing along dysfunctional tendencies. It's not enough to tell yourself that you know the child knows this is wrong so it doesn't require addressing. That is an extremely brief synopsis of about a 3 page long article on this and how to accomplish better parenting. LOL!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="klmno, post: 330495, member: 3699"] DDD, believe it or not his current therapist (the one who was doing so-called family therapy as well) suggested that I tell difficult child everything (so did GAL for that matter)- what happened with my uncle, my bro, the situation with my mother, etc. While I can see the point that difficult child is at a point where he deserves some explanation of what is going on and he knows I "have issues" but has no clue what they are really, I am not in agreement that it's in his best interest to dump it all on him right now or that it would help our relationship. on the other hand, I am comfortable that this doesn't have to be an "all or nothing" scenario (the judge was in support of not telling difficult child right now but waiting on an appropriate therapeutic environment). It would not be so much an issue if either 1) we were completely separated from these people but my mom would call GAL and stir up **** with the courts if I tried that and my bro will not stop until at some point he either has custody or at least communication with difficult child, or 2) when there is communication with difficult child these issues don't come into play but they do- remember we are talking a seriously dysfunctional family. You might not be familiar with that enough to understand it but it pretty much means that they have not shown ANY ability to communicate with difficult child and not make snide remarks, suggestions, etc, that keep things stirred up, feelings hurt, basicly toxic stuff, and continuously manipulate difficult child. We're not talking about just obnoxious comments- I'm talking about remarks and actions that lead to trouble with difficult child. It's hard to explain for one that hasn't lived thru it. It's emotionally abusive if not directly leading to sexual abuse. As par for the course, this gets worse as he gets older. From what I am reading in more than one source, if it is impossible to completely keep the child away from the family (which is the preferred way and I probably should have done that from the beginning), then it is urged to keep the family members supervised and to role model healthy familial relationships to your child(ren), and let the child see that you put up a healthy boundary with the other family, and teach the child gradually what is going on. You don't preetend that the problem isn't there. They say if you don't address it that despite your efforts for yourself alone, you are keeping a "family secret", making it your own burden instead of a family problem that needs to be dealt with as a family problem, and that it can "skip" a generation and your child grow up to still model the dysfunction in one way or another. Also, this helps the child see that all the problems are not him/her alone or the parent alone- it's a long standing family problem and we are going to work together as an immediate family to keep it from being passed down to another generation. They give suggestions on how to do this so it isn't more a sutuation of a parent expecting a child to take on adult repsonsiblities or burdens. Obviously, there are still more aspects of that for me to deal with individually, just like difficult child has his own stuff to work on. One article I read used the example of having to be around a physically abusive uncle who beat his wife on holidays. You don't sweep the issue under the rug, it said, you teach your child that this is wrong (if you have no choice but to be around the person). If you don't address it with the child, you're still passing along dysfunctional tendencies. It's not enough to tell yourself that you know the child knows this is wrong so it doesn't require addressing. That is an extremely brief synopsis of about a 3 page long article on this and how to accomplish better parenting. LOL! [/QUOTE]
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