Reply #22: My answer would depend a lot on details you didn't discuss [View All]

Is the visitation occurring at your house with your supervision, or at his house without you there?

The reason I ask is that your daughter might be reacting to tension between you and him - and left alone with him she might be fine. When I got divorced, we tried working out visitation amongst ourselves, and there were arguments about when they would occur, who would drive, discussions about the unpaid child support. Unfortunately we allowed some of that to happen within earshot of our kid for a while, til we got smarter. Any of those talks NEED to happen without her there - with her playing outside while you are inside on the phone having those conversations, or while she is asleep. No matter how much of an ass he's being, it's your responsibility not to bring your fights with him into her world.

The best thing I did was get friends of the court to work out the details for us once I realized it was causing us conflict. He viewed it as me being vindictive and not working with him. From my perspective, though, the big advantage was that they handled everything and child support was no longer my problem to enforce, therefore I was no longer emotionally wrapped up in resentment, stress over feeling I should raise the issue, all of that. It was just a big swooooosh of relief that we didn't ever have to have those conversations again. Likewise, they worked out which weekends a month he'd have her and a rotating holiday schedule, so it just wasn't an issue after that.

If your relationship with him is toxic, reduce your contact with him to just picking up your kid and dropping off your kid. Emotional blackmail is most effective (for him) when you let yourself get emotionally wrapped up in what he's doing - and he gets "rewarded" by seeing you upset. You can't control the fact that he's trying to do that, but you can control your reaction, at least on the outside. Learn to keep a neutral face (whether your daughter is present or not) if you have to see him, learn to say "ummmhmmmm" or "we can talk about this later." And STICK to that - and make those conversations happen on the phone or better yet email so you have a record of the conversations if you need them, so you have a chance to edit your words carefully, and so he can't hear the reaction in your voice or see it in your face.

Part of what you posted implies that you think he's letting her cry because he knows it will get a reaction out of you. See my point here?

That's not putting the blame on you at all, I'm just saying that you might want to look at whether or not your reactions are fueling his motivation/actions and sort of enabling the situation to continue.

(Take or leave all this advice as needed - it's a stab in the dark obviously since I don't know your situation - it's just speaking from my own experience which may or may not apply.)