Wow! I'm sooo glad I discovered this particular board and topic. I'm not new to ivillage, but my very first time on this board.
I am going through this same exact thing!! My girls are 10 and 11yrs old and are constantly subjected to whatever their SM wants. Everytime they go over there, she tells them they need a haircut. They need fingernail trims, they need eyebrows trimmed, need their legs shaved. She wanted my daughter to start shaving in 3rd grade!! I was like NO WAY!!
This last time, my 10yr old came home crying because SM took her to cut her hair. She told her she didn't want to and asked to please call me. They wouldn't let her call me! I had darkened her hair to a darker brown previously (for fun). SM told her that if I can dye her hair then she can cut it!! I was furious, and alot of it was because my daughter asked to call me and they refused. We recently moved away so I even had it put in my move away order that SHE cannot cut their hair. I got the same reaction from Ex and her "It's only hair".
Here's the icing on the cake though. When my older daughter was only 9 (NINE) yrs old, SM decided that she was "developing" and TOLD my Ex to take her to the store to buy her FIRST training bra. My daughter was mortified and didn't even tell me about it for three weeks. I went off on him like no other telling him that is NONE of her business making that decision and that it was MY job to take my daughter shopping for bras, not HIM, especially her very first one. They only went over there 4 days a month, so what the heck was so urgent that she felt he needed to take my daughter out immediately and embarrass her like that... at only 9 yrs old!!
My 11 yr old just experienced what it's like to get your EYEBROWS and UPPER LIP "threaded". I haven't even done that, but waxing and plucking hurt like ****. Once again, this happened without my knowledge or consent.
This is the same 11 yr old, who experienced the bra thing at only 9 yrs old. We just moved to PA and their dad still lives in CA. He came out to visit last weekend and apparently thought my 11yr old was in such dire need of facial maintenance that he forced her to do that. Against her will, might I add!! Worse yet, it was at a kiosk in the mall, in front of random passersby, and he lied to the lady telling her my daughter was 12 yrs old (like that's any better) and even though the lady insisted she was too young, he manipulated her into doing it anyways. My daughter was extremely embarrassed and told me it hurt real bad. Thing is... you can't even see any facial hair on her, but he's repeatedly told her she's got a unibrow and apparently now she has upper lip hair. I kid you not, you CANNOT tell at all that she had anything there. Not to mention again that she's only ELEVEN years old!!
Worse even yet, I said something to him about it and my daughter tried last night telling him that she was upset he made her do that and all he did was trash talk me telling her it was me forcing her to tell him that and that's not how she really feels and that she's just my puppet and that he will not deal with MY b.s.
My daughter hung up the phone crying and now wants nothing to do with him. However, if she doesn't talk to him on a regular basis, he will hold ME in contempt for brainwashing her and not giving him "access" to them (I quote).... when I had absolutely NOTHING to do with this situation.
Any ideas on how I handle this??? How do I force my daughter to interact with a man that does these things to her and that's she verbally said many times that she doesn't wanna talk to? Dad or no dad, this is how she feels.
Yikes! That sounds incredibly frustrating! It reminds me of an article I was just reading last week...
How Young is Too Young?
Over dinner last Tuesday, my friend Beth showed me some pics of her adorable two-year-old niece. This little girl looks like a carbon copy of her mom, aunt and grandma, thanks to a gaggle of uber-strong genes. But among the physical traits this toddler has inherited – curly dark, dark brown hair, big brown eyes, ethereally pale skin – there is one problem feature rearing its stubborn head: A unibrow.
Beth is meticulous about maintaining her appearance and her brows are perpetually groomed to a T, so it’s not like she walks around looking like Bert from Bert and Ernie or anything. But Beth is a grown woman, and grown-woman beauty rituals like waxing, manicures, pedicures, Brazilians, and such are all fair game. Her niece, however, is still young enough to count her age in months. She thinks a dandelion is food and won’t learn how to pee in anything other than a diaper for a while still. The world is pure and innocent to her; to inflict the kind of pain that accompanies an eyebrow wax on her would be horrific. And yet, there it is: A single eyebrow, topping her gorgeous eyes like a thick squirt of mustard dressing up a hot dog. I’m not trying to be cruel – she’s a beautiful little girl and has a loving, emotional, laughter-filled family who worships her. But they also have noticed the eyebrow sitch and are worried. What will happen when other kids start to tease her? (And they will tease her – children make fun of each other for far less offenses than fuller-than-usual eyebrows.)
Yikes! I read that article and that is a tough decision. I think if my child looked like Bert, then I might have to consider helping her if she was being subjected to ridicule at school.
In this case, we're not even remotely close to that. Not one single member of my family has ever noticed or commented on any facial hair she may have. He did that to her to get to me, to prove to me that I can't stop him.
Regardless of what he did, I'm left with a situation that my daughters (both of them) are fed up with his games and don't care to deal with him anymore. I can't tell him that, as he will use it against me (parental alienation), along with the fact that he won't believe me. He doesn't even believe my daughter when she told him herself.
She asks me everyday if he's called or texted me, with "worry" in her voice and facial expression. I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing I can do and for my daughters' sake, I have to ease them through these next few years until they can speak up for themselves. I feel so bad for them.
