Surviving Divorce & Separation

I think that when parents are married, they should (most of the time at least) get together & discuss what kind of rules they want for their kids & what kind of punishment there should be if the kids don't follow those rules. This should be done when no one is mad and the child should also know the rules and what will happen if the rules are broken. For ex, when we got our girls cell phones, we told them that the phones would be taken away if they went over the allotted minutes, which they shouldn't have to do since we had free nights & weekends. This was one of the few times when my 2nd ex & I actually agreed on something that was a rule for both of our kids.

Now if you look at your DH's behavior objectively, what is he like as a father? Do his rules make sense? Does he just have knee-jerk reactions? Is there any time when he has a good relationship w/ your DD? When you say that is discipline style is "extreme", that doesn't sound too good to me. It sounds like my 2nd DH (the bipolar one). The cell phone incident was one of the few times when he actually thought about something, made the rule ahead of time & it was reasonable. Most of the time, you never know what would set him off, then he would end up doing something like berating his DD, yelling and even calling her names. It would go on for so long that I would have to step in cause I just couldn't stand it any more. Or he would go extreme, as in saying that he was going to take away her cell phone, computer, TV, basically everything that makes life tolerable for a teen, then he would calm down, realize he went too far and back down. So as a result, his punishments didn't really mean anything cause he would always change his mind. What ended up happening (before his DD left home) was that his DD just became very adept at being sneaky and lying. It became a power struggle, so that even when he came up w/ a reasonable rule, like not being on the phone in the middle of the night on a school night, she wouldn't obey it. First he told her to leave the cell downstairs, so she would sneak downstairs after we went to bed, she would take out the SIM card & put it in an old phone or she would just text so we couldn't hear her. I think if she is already questioning him now, things are just going to get much worse during her teen years.

So in one way, of course someone shouldn't get divorced cause a 12 yr old tells them to, but you do have to look at what she's saying. What could happen is that she will end up not having much of a relationship w/ either one of the parents because you allowed her father to be mean to her (if that's how he's acting) and she won't respect you because you let him walk all over you. Plus she will have a bad example of what a married relationship should be like. I think this is a good issue to bring up w/ a counselor.

Honey,

You are in a very difficult situation right now.  Sometimes when you are in the middle of something, it is almost impossible to be objective.  We never want our children to dictate our lives but I suspect there is something more going on in your situation.

I look at things based on where I was in my relationship with XH.  There are a few words that you have used that ring a bell with me and cause me concern.  You repetedly called your H "controlling".  If you are like me, the word "abusive" didn't enter my vocabulary until someone gave me a copy of "why does he do that" by Lundy Bancroft.  After reading this book, I was able to see clearly that my XH was a verbally and emotionally abusive man.  Verbal and emotional abuse does not leave visible scars for the world to see and is often dismissed by the general population as not being real abuse.  Make no mistakes, verbal abuse is just as damaging as physical abuse and it sure as heck sounds like your H is tip toeing close to that line.

You talked about frequently being on "pins and needles" nervous (frightened) of your H.  That is not a healthy situation for you and your dd.  You describe yourself as "submissive".  Submissive is not a healthy word and suggests an unhealthy situation.  Are you begining to see where I am headed.

We aren't living your life and only you can ultimately decide whether or not to stay or go.  I will say one more thing.  Controlling abusive men do not get better or change.  My X dictates how my dd9 dresses - often making her change, and has forced her to cut her hair on more than one occasion even though she has made it clear that she wants to grow it longer.  He has crossed into being obsessive about things and the word controlling isn't strong enough for how he can be.

Keep in mind, there is a huge difference between setting limits and rules for your children and being controlling.  Controlling is distructive and I'm grateful that I finally saw this and got out. 

Good luck and keep posting,

D

You might be interested to do some reading on the Parents of Teens message board to see the kind of opinions that different parents have about what to do when their kids misbehave. My personal opinion is that first of all, the punishment should fit the "crime" and give some kind of instruction, like natural consequences. For ex, if you can't control yourself w/ a cell phone and talk on it when you're not supposed to (like late at night, or go over the minutes) then maybe the cell phone has to be taken away. If you are supposed to come home at a certain time, then come home late, maybe the next time you have to come home earlier, or you won't be able to be trusted w/ the family car. I think our job as parents is to teach kids how to be responsible and to make mature judgments. As I tried to explain to my DD, when she was going to go away to college, I wanted her to be able to make good decisions on her own, not just because she might get caught. Now w/ my DD (and my ex always said I wasn't strict enough w/ my kids) I have really had no problems at all (she's now 20). I don't worry about her being away from home & what she's doing.

As far as my former DSD (who's 19), ex was very strict on her and as I said, all she learned was how to sneak around & not get caught. So now she's living w/ her grandma, who she always wanted to live with. She quit college after one semester, even though she did well and she's working at a donut shop. If you look at her Facebook page, everything on there is about drinking, getting drunk, partying, staying up really late, not getting any sleep & having to go to work. She got arrested for shoplifting. My ex took away her cell phone recently since she went a few hundred $$ over and refused to pay for it (typical, this has been going on for years) and he got some messages on her phone that implied that she is using drugs. So what did she learn from his strict discipline? Absolutely nothing! Now that she is on her own and grandma doesn't know what's going on, she is just going wild. She never learned how to control her own actions because everything she did was just based on whether or not she would get caught & punished. If my kids did something I didn't like, I would have a talk w/ them and discuss why I didn't want them to do a certain thing. Now the fact is also that since my kids know I won't "flip out" if I find out they did something wrong, they actually tell me everything they do, whether I want to hear about it or not. Oh yeah, and my DSD has absolutely no contact w/ her dad now, except when she wants money. Now that his work hours got cut & he really can't afford anything, he has outlived his usefulness to her, so she doesn't talk to him at all. No birthday or Christmas presents, not even a card. What's really sad is that after we got div, he tried to keep up a good relationship w/ his DD, made some overtures to her about getting together for lunch or something, but it's kind of too late. And his health isn't good--he has many medical problems, including cancer.

My personal opinion is that your DH is abusive. There is no reason for name calling to a child. He is on a power trip and it's only going to get worse when she gets older and more defiant. As a mom, I think it's your job to protect your DD from his abuse.