Divorce Poison: Protecting the Parent-Child Bond from a Vindictive Ex

Success Story
Dr. Warshak's book has helped tremendously. When my daughter went to spend a week of vacation with her father, I was served with a motion to modify custody and he refused to return her to my care, saying I was abusive. A month later after a temporary custody hearing and an 'unfounded and retaliatory complaint' ruling by Child Protective Services (for the 3rd time in 6 years) she came home despondent, rude, hateful and deceitful. It was as if someone turned a switch off.

Following Dr. Warshak's advice, I put together photo albums of all of the fun times we'd had over the past 6 years (the time I've had custody). I left them on the coffee table with an off-hand comment that I'd finally gotten around to putting the photos together. I had a friend come over and was flipping through the pictures, remembering vacations, sleep-overs, holidays. I left them there for her friends to see when they came over (who were perplexed by her sudden change in attitude). Whenever I saw something on TV that reminded me of a happy time, I'd speak of it. When I could tie in brainwashing references to movies and TV shows, I did. I remained carefully consistent, still requiring household rules to be followed but gently.

It has been seven months now and I still don't get an "I love you, too" at bedtime but I got my first voluntary, spontaneous hug the other day. Who would have thought an act I took for granted a year ago would make my day now. But the tide has turned because I know what to do to demonstrate to her I'm not a monster and I'm still the same Mom I was all along. So I'm calling it a success even though I haven't gotten the "I love you" yet.

Thanks for understanding that this is REAL. And it's hurtful to the child, not just the other parent.

hindsight is 20/20
simply put, this book is a must for anyone thinking about divorce or just dealing with a relationship where your partner seems to be manipulative. Inform yourself. I wish I had before I lost custody of my children and had my life "raped" by my ex-wife.

Great Book and Great Service
This is a great book to learn to deal with
x-husbands, wives, etc. You can't change them
but you can change how you react. It's so sad a child
is placed in the middle of one parent who uses
the child to get back at his/her ex by demeaning
the other parent. It's not healthy for the child
to feel they want to defend the parent but can't
and a child feels powerless to say anything. The child may
begin to treat the parent in a demeaning manner
because they have heard it so many times over the
years. Children should not be messengers either.
Great Book!

Read entire book overnight, got results beginning the next day.
My step-daughter has suffered from the actions of my husband's bitter ex-wife for years. As things became worse and worse, my husband and I poured our efforts into doing research and reading multiple books in attempts to improve the situation with his ex-wife. Most of the books we read were geared toward people who were going through the struggles of custody and other divorce issues with another parent who loved the child, but just didn't come to agreements with you on all the issues. They were based on the assumption that both parents had the best interest of the child at heart, even if they couldn't get along themselves. That, unfortunately, is not the case in some situations, and it was not the case in ours-- we are dealing with a mentally ill, vindictive, and unfortunately negligent mother whose prime goal in every action is to punish my husband and his daughter for their loving, close relationship. Other books could help little to none when the general idea behind them is to try to get the other parent to see how their actions are hurting the child. My husband's ex knows the damage full well-- she thrives on it, lives for it, delights in seeing her daughter miserable, anxious, hurt-- tells her that she is unloved and worthless and will amount to nothing, then sits back to smile at the effects of her handiwork on her daughter... just as she finds joy in frustrating my husband at every turn by using his beloved and devoted daughter to punish him. (Court appointed child protective workers have been involved in her home for years. She is well known to the court and social services for her inability to parent.) One of her favorite modes of punishment was to restrict my husband's access, then tell her daughter, "I wonder why your dad didn't want to see you today? Must be he doesn't love you anymore." We were dealing with that kind of mother.

I found Divorce Poison in a bookstore one day, and stayed up the entire night devouring every piece of information in it. I cannot explain the wonderful sense of hope this book gave us. One monumental piece of information was the simple concept that you do not have to remain silent when your child informs you that their other parent said this or that damaging, untrue thing about you. For years, we elected to remain silent when my husband's daughter would fill us in on some malicious, fabricated story her mother had told her about him, when she would repeat this litany of bad-mouthing, father-bashing falsehoods she was exposed to daily. We always held to the belief that it is wrong to say a negative word about the other parent, and we took the high road countless times in that area, stewing silently over the injustice of it all, hoping that maybe at some point, his ex-wife would tire of her behavior. Of course, our passiveness in her abuse did nothing but create a bigger monster, and we realized we needed to do something better in response to the horrible things she was implanting into my step-daugher's head. This book taught us the wonderful, effective, and simple concept of DAMAGE CONTROL. We learned the great disservice we were doing to my husband's daughter by letting her be exposed to such horrible things without correcting the misinformation... without telling her that her mother was wrong in saying or doing such a thing... without letting her know that such lying is unacceptable. We learned the many, many tools we could use to not just correct the damage that had been done (well, some of it-- counselers are also working with her to try to address the huge emotional toll that years of her mother's abuse has taken), but also to protect his daughter from further damage-- information about techniques to use that give the child a foundation of logic to help them counter the malicious bashing on their own-- be able to see through it for what it is at the very time the other parent is attempting to use such brainwashing on them. Pre-emptive damage control... I can't overemphasise the power we gained from that. A power to protect a daughter who was completely innocent and deserved none of what she'd been living through for years.

We were amazed the first day we tried some of these simple, "why didn't we think of that" tools-- such as asking our daughter, regarding all the nasty things her mother had spent years trying to convince her, "does that sound like the kind of person your dad is? Take a minute to think about what you know of your dad, compared to the person your mom is trying to portray. Do those sound like things your dad would ever say or do?" She replied, "No way! I KNEW mom had to be lying! But how come when I told you stuff before, you never said anything? If I heard someone at school say mean stuff like that about me that wasn't true, I'd be yelling and freaking out that someone said that! You've never said anything before-- evem though none of it sounded like stuff you do, you never defended yourself, so I wondered why!" It was an eye-opener. Our silence had caused damage we never even realized.

I could write for hours on what we learned from the book. The "don't stay silent when you're being bashed by the ex" is just one of dozens of things we found out overnight. I will end this just by offering our most sincere gratitude to the author, who really did help change all our lives. My book is dog-eared, underlined, and has jottings written down on probably 75% of the pages. It is the single most important resource we happened upon in this maddening, unfair, and sad ordeal of dealing with a parent who has absolutely no interest in her child, other than her usefulness as a pawn in her vindictive obsessions. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The Poison of children and divorce
For any who believe in the resiliency of children who can bounce back after most anything, this book is for you! It is also for the parents who made that decision and MUST face its consequences. For the sake of loving, stable marriages for our children, find this information!