Dear Sweetness,
It has been two weeks already since you boarded the plane and went back home. When you left you told me that during this cycle of us being apart, you were going to change how you communicated with me. Instead of one very long call every few weeks while you are distracted folding your laundry and cleaning your room, you were going to try and call more often for quick hellos and updates on things that happen as they happen. I was surprised when you actually followed through. About a week after you left, all of a sudden there you were, sending me video messages and sometimes video calling just to check in and tell me about your day.
This has not been true for your brother. I have only spoken with him once since he left without any other texts or communication. On the one video call we had, he was in the middle of the living room, the center of your open floor plan house, where I could see your dad walking by on camera. We are back to no privacy. We are back to one touch point every two weeks at best. Despite me doing what your brother asked, which is to call him more, my calls go unanswered.
I know, I know. When will I ever stop ranting about my access to you and video calls? Probably never. I understand acceptance is the only way out of this loop I fall prey to. Yet as hard as I try, I loop endlessly. I am your mother and this is my plight. Please bear with me. Or just skip this letter entirely because ranting is kind of where I am right now. Acceptance will come but not today.
Contrast your brother’s limited access to me when he's there with his access to your other parents when he is here. There, his phone is literally locked away in a cupboard. Here, both of your phones sit at the charging station. There are no limits. No set windows for when calls and texts are allowed. You have unlimited access to them when you are here, if you want it.
Your brother’s last video call in my house with your other parents took place after my insistent urging (nagging) for him to call them. It took some convincing, but he finally gave in and agreed to sit at the kitchen table while he ate his breakfast with all the doors closed to FaceTime them. Afterwards he was completely dysregulated. Upset because the entire call was focused on how much he hadn’t been calling or texting. When your brother tried to talk to them about how he didn’t want to play football in the fall, your stepmother accused me of putting him up to the conversation. She went even further and accused me of being in the room to monitor their communication. Your brother then panned the camera only to show our empty kitchen.
That same day when I was switching up which phone was charging, I saw a notification pop up on your screen from your stepmother complaining of the continued hostile behavior coming from my household. Lamenting about how your brother treated her so poorly on their video call and now she was so upset. That she knows this shouldn’t be your problem to deal with. Evidence to the contrary. I never said anything to you when I saw that message. I know I am allowed to look at your phone but It’s really none of my business.
It did however boil my blood that there it was in plain sight. Evidence of what I have always known as the truth lying right underneath our twisted reality. There is your stepmother once again talking to you about what she would describe herself as “inappropriate” or “adult” topics of conversation. Talking to you about the other parent. The meat of what I have been accused of throughout this process of losing you. Doing the opposite of what she and your dad laid out as rules in our current agreement. It was all there in one neat little package. There was proof on the screen of your phone in one text that it was and still is coming from inside their house and there is nothing I can do about it.
I decided when you moved away that I would no longer fight the small battles because there will always be a consequence. Some kind of punishment for you or for me that comes afterwards. I have however decided that once in a while it is worth it to restate in writing that your dad is breaking the agreement and ask for something like more access to you and your brother. Otherwise, in the off chance we do end up in court, I could look complacent to a judge. This is the new way I parent.
Yesterday I sent your dad such a message asking if we could switch video call platforms seeing that your house is Apple and our house is Android. He could pick anything he wanted but FaceTime. I also asked, once again, for you and your brother to have daily access to your phones to contact me, if you wanted it. He wrote back, although the way the message was written I assume it was your stepmother, saying he would be sticking with Facetime and that I should take into account your busy school, activities, and sports schedules.
I wrote back and asked what his resistance was to switching apps. Then I asked for a screenshot of your brother's phone usage for the past two weeks explaining that when he landed here for the summer it was flatlined to zero minutes for the two weeks prior. He replied saying that he would switch to Google Meet but complained that he shouldn't have to because we have been using Facetime for over a year. Then he said he was going to delete Marco Polo from both of your phones for “app space”. The app that you and I have been using for video messages. Because in his mind he was giving me something he then had to take something away. Here was our punishment.
Not even five minutes later your brother video called me using Google Meet from the back seat of a moving car while your dad was driving to get you from field hockey. More punishment in the form of sure you can talk to your son, but I will now be present.
I wrote back asking him not to delete Marco explaining it was the best way for you and I to keep in touch. I assumed he understood when you left me a message later that night while I was cooking dinner. Literally while I was watching the playback, I also watched as your account got deleted. More punishment.
I went over and over the events of the day as I tried to fall asleep, reminding myself this was just my parenting duty for the month. I did it to not look compliant, not for some great end result. I shouldn’t have expected a reasonable co-parent interaction, or that there wouldn’t be consequences. In fact, I knew there would be a punishment. I had to do it nonetheless. Also a good reminder of why I don’t do it more often.
Right after our summer visit, your brother was taken to your “doctor” (naturopath) after being with me for eight weeks as a follow up. I was sent a medication update but any appointment notes had been stripped from the office visit documentation. Redacted. If I want them I will have to go to court to get them. Just like if I want actual access to you as per our agreement I will have to go to court to get it.
Your brother will now be given yet another stimulant to be taken after school. This is on top of the lithium (even though he is not bipolar), the other stimulant he takes for ADHD, the anti-depressant, and the plethora of supplements he takes which are “prescribed” by his naturopath who can’t even sign the prescriptions she is recommending. For the medications, she has to get another actual doctor to do that for her.
In one of your recent video messages, I could hear your dad in the background, yelling at your brother through most of the recording. At one point you addressed the obvious and told me first, that your brother had been a little “kooky” lately. Then you corrected yourself and said, “Well that’s not true actually, he’s just getting in trouble a lot.”
What we have here is a chicken and the egg situation. If I am the instigator to your brother’s “kooky” behavior and my access to him must be limited, it seems like the last sixteen months would have then created the perfect environment to turn your brother around. By moving him away, limiting our visits and going beyond what the agreement says and limiting our communication, all should be made right. Yet your brother is now in crisis somewhat often. Three hospitalizations, two school suspensions, countless (you say almost daily) screaming matches, and various alleged injuries. Your brother is also punished quite often for “bad behavior”, like staying home from family activities, being grounded, losing phone privileges and screen time. I am gone and things are much much worse so what oh what could the agitation be?
I’ve seen several theories written by your dad to different professionals. One being that the parental alienation I did was so bad that this is just ongoing damage control. Things are expected to get worse before they get better. That any contact your brother has with me triggers him because our house is hostile to your other parents. No offense but they are the topic I would like to spend the least time talking about when the both of you are here visiting with us. Besides of course whatever you both want to share about your life.
To me the issue is obvious, but no one asks me. Not one professional or teacher or therapist has ever reached out to ask me what my experience is with your brother when he is here or to get my opinion about what created this tangled web. I know your brother’s issue is with them. It started when they were provoking him on video calls and really revved up when they called the police on him, the first time. And because they keep pointing to me as the problem source, it just fires your brother up to rail against them even more. It’s a vicious cycle. I agree there is parent alienation happening but the reason it hasn’t gotten better is because the parents doing the alienation are the ones being alienated. It’s coming from inside the house.
To further my rant more, I can’t help but point out that all of these medications and supplements are being given to your brother by the same people who testified in court, after three separate psychological evaluations, that they still didn’t believe your brother had ADHD. That his challenges were the product of my shitty home environment and my labeling of your brother as having a disability to “hold him back”. These are the same people who refused to let me medicate the poor kid as he struggled through years of school until the courts finally agreed and forced his hand to allow me to do so. Fast forward four or five years and the kid takes enough pills to choke a horse.
I reached out to your dad to ask why your brother was now being given a separate and different stimulant in the afternoon. All he wrote back was, “To continue the management and treatment of his ADHD/ODD treatment.” When I asked when and who had diagnosed him with ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), he wrote back, “You have all the necessary documentation for review.”
Well no actually, I don’t. AHHHHHHH! (Insert hair pulling screaming meme of choice here). I have tried all year to get documentation for your brother's care without much success. For some reason your dad believes he only has to give me updates in changes to his care, not access to his full records. He thinks the line he added to the agreement about “updates to care” means only changes and has decided that it overrides my rights as your brother’s legal guardian and parent. So he’s again punishing me.
The issue I have with this is that in the event that your brother gets sent to an institution or gets in trouble that requires him going to court, I really want all my ducks in a row to help him. Based on the pressure cooker of a situation he is living in over there, I fear this is the end result and I want to be armed and ready if I am ever needed.
After your dad's unhelpful message, I was left with the thought, why now? Why would they add a stimulant to your brother’s already rigorous treatment plan? Then I remembered football. Football is yet another double standard in our long drawn out history of co-parenting. If you remember there was a year your brother decided he lived and breathed football. He came home from a summer with your dad and demanded I sign him up for football. Tackle football, not just flag. He wanted the real deal. He was nine years old.
Your dad said absolutely not, he said it was too dangerous and the sport has a history of too much head trauma. I kind of agreed with him (shocking I know) and instead signed your brother up for soccer. After writing to your dad to let him know what I had decided, your dad then changed his mind saying he wanted him to play football. By then it was too late to register and I became the bad guy. Your dad signed your brother up for football camps when he was in his care leading up to being signed up for the real deal starting this fall.
Football practice is two to three hours a day, six days a week. I’m sure this has something to do with why they signed him up. Beat the snot out of him, get him out of the house so there are less incidents of violence and anger. Less time and energy for your brother to rebel against them and offload him into someone else's care. And now, ironically, your brother doesn’t want to play football anymore. He wants to join a swim team or just focus on his cycling, maybe sign up for some races. Your parents signed him up anyway and added a focusing stimulant to boot. What could go wrong?
I know I should be more trusting, less cynical, more hopeful. Maybe this time they will get it right and your brother will find his place, make friends, and everything will turn around. But excuse me if I can’t help but worry. About him, about the house you live in with him. I am doing my best to let go because I have no control. But honestly, most days it feels like I am watching the slowest moving train wreck with my kids on board.
In therapy this week I unpacked this idea that you and your brother were sent to live with you dad because of my supposed parent alienation and now I have to sit back and watch them as they try to alienate me from you both (as they always have) as they continue to only alienate themselves. It’s maddening. The pinnacle of psychological manipulation. The Mount Everest of gaslighting. The original story wasn’t true, it continues to not be true, and the crazy hasn’t ended even after they won. It just gets harder to take as evidence piles to confirm what I have been saying all along.
Today is your first day of eighth grade. This will be the first year you will attend the same school as your brother in a long time. Your other parents will not be able to divide and conquer as easily. Same schedule, same carpool or bus, same middle school. You will have a front row seat to what is actually happening, not just the version they give you.
As much as I understand your concern about how this will affect you and your social life, I am so glad your brother will have a witness. I know you can’t always be his advocate because there are consequences in your house for such things. You also have your own needs and your own ways of survival. But maybe you will be able to see with your own eyes what he is going through and help him survive. Maybe it will soften your position of wanting him to be compliant and instead help you understand why he does what he does and the role he plays in that house. Some of which is for your benefit.
I know one of your frustrations is that everyone thinks you are doing well because you are so “good” at coping. They look at you as the epitome of resilience. You have told me that you feel like no one understands that inside you are broken. That’s the thing about people pleasing, everyone looks at you and believes you are not only surviving but thriving. Our society likes to polarize coping. Compliance = making it. Resistance = broken.
The smile plastered on your face, the grades you get at school, the group of friends you surround yourself with and the outfits you so nicely have put together all scream making it. Whereas your brother’s anger, the hole in his bedroom wall, the fights he gets into with your parents, and the challenges at school scream broken. I don’t believe either one of you is broken but I do hear you that you feel that way. There are so many days when I ask myself, this is what making it feels like?
When I was on the video call with your brother I heard you playing guitar. Your brother commented that it was driving him crazy because now it’s all you do. It made me smile despite his annoyance because that’s the one thing you asked me to do with you this summer. Teach you how to play guitar. To hear you coping with something we did together made me feel more connected to you. More than video calls or how many texts you send me in a week. Even if it is driving your brother bonkers. Whatever it is you are feeling or going through, I hope you write it all into songs for me to hear later.
I want to make it clear, I am not waiting for implosion. I am still holding out hope that your other parents will wake up and realize they could stop all the madness. I also don't feel the need to point that out to their deaf ears anymore. I don’t necessarily have faith in them but I do have faith in the both of you and maybe finally in myself. That this will all hold. Even if it all explodes.
I know this letter wasn’t really just for you. I needed to vent about the ongoing frustrations about being the accused, scarlet letter wearing, away parent. I wanted to show you that while I might look passive in my waiting, I am very much active. Not just stuck in my anxious looping but actively holding space and power and momentum for when I am needed. I’m laying low on purpose. If I have learned anything in life it is that you never know what can happen. I am actively waiting for whenever you or your brother need me. When and if a shift happens, I will be ready.