Reddit reviews Divorce Poison New and Updated Edition: How to Protect Your Family from Bad-mouthing and Brainwashing

On top of advice already given here, grab a copy of Divorce Poison by Richard Warshak. I know parents in a situation similar to yours and they told me this book was really helpful.

Buy and read this book ASAP. It saved my custody case when I went through nearly everything that you described!! Here’s the description:

>> Your ex-spouse is bad mouthing you to your children, constantly portraying you in a negative light, perhaps even trying to turn them against you. If you handle the situation ineffectively, your relationship with your children could suffer. You could lose their respect, lose their affections-even, in extreme cases, lose all contact with them. The conventional advice is to do nothing, that fighting fire with fire will only result in greater injury to the children. But after years of consulting parents who heeded such advice with no success, Dr. Richard Warshak is convinced that this approach is wrong. It doesn't work, and parents are left feeling helpless and hopeless. DIVORCE POISON instead offers a blueprint for effective response. In it, you will learn how to distinguish different types of criticism, how and why parents manipulate their children, how to detect these maneuvers, and how these practices damage children. Most importantly, you'll discover powerful strategies to preserve and rebuild loving relationships with your children.
>>
>>DIVORCE POISON is a time-tested work that gives parents powerful strategies to preserve and rebuild loving relationships with their children-and provides practical advice from legal and mental-health professionals to help their clients and safeguard the welfare of children. Whether they are perpetrators of divorce poison, victims of it, or both, parents who heed Dr. Warshak's advice will enable their children to maintain love and respect for their parents-even if their parents no longer love and respect each other.
https://www.amazon.com/Divorce-Poison-New-Updated-Bad-mouthing/dp/0061863262

Unfortunately this is pretty typical.

There are a lot of great books about parents badmouthing each other that might give you some strategy tips:

Divorce Poison

Divorce Casualties

Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome

There are also some books for young kids to help them handle divorce like Two Homes, Dinosaurs Divorce and The Invisible String. Kids really need examples of other kids in their position to understand they're not alone, and books can help with that.

I know this is really hard, but it's also a relatively short time since they split up (year & a half, right?) and there is a definite adjustment period. Just stay positive and don't bash her dad in return. You can respond with things like "I'm sorry your dad feels hurt" or "I'm sure it feels like that to him" or similar neutral statements, but you don't want to put her in the middle by saying he's a liar.

Most of all, you cannot change anyone, no matter how shitty he's being, so make a plan that doesn't involve him suddenly starting to respect you. You have to work around that and find other ways.

The best thing you and your wife can do is lead by example. Stay positive, change the subject, show by your actions that you're good people who are not doing whatever he's accusing you of.

In the meantime, DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. If you end up in court, you will need to show a history of his negativity. One of the custody factors judges weigh is which parent is more likely to foster a positive relationship with the other parent. If one parent is repeatedly bashing & badmouthing the other, the judge will not look kindly on that.

You may also consider family counseling for you & your wife & daughter.

Good luck. I've been there, and it is no fun whatsoever.

::internet hugs::

My ex was abusive, so I understand. The lies can do a lot of damage. The problem is, as many as you recognize as such, there are lies you haven't recognized yet. I am nearly four years out and just today realized another lie she told me! The term is "gaslighting" if you want to look it up.

Beware the quiet. He is probably winding up for something - either a big attack or a big push to get you back.

My children were young adults when I told them, so they had some maturity. I stayed for them until they were grown. It's a decision I'm still conflicted about, but I think now it was on balance wrong. I did protect them in most of the ways I had hoped, but left them open to things I was ignorant of. The family was dysfunctional so there's that too. There's no getting around that with an abuser.

Co-parenting is difficult with these types. I haven't read it, but my support group recommends Divorce Poison by Dr. Richard Warshak.

Glad you are already feeling better! It's an unusual time. For me, I went through some of the most difficult times ever, but was also happier than I'd been in my life. Quite a roller coaster!

Yep. Any time I got back home from spending the night at a friend's house or simply went away from nfather to hang out with a friend, and I came back cranky, it was all my evil friend's fault that I was "acting like such a little bitch!" It couldn't be that I was tired from riding my bike with my friend, staying up all night, swimming, or doing any other activity that would cause me to be tired and cranky.

Right before I got married, my nfather told me he had a dream that Mr. Starry kicked me out of the house because (in the dream), I was an alcoholic. Something about this just didn't sit right with me. Why would you tell me this? Especially right before I'm getting married. I called him a few days later and expressed my discomfort, telling him that it took a few days to process things in my mind about how it didn't feel right for him to tell me about that dream. I told him I felt like he wanted Mr. Starry to dump me so I would have to come back home and live with him. He told me "Sounds like your mother has divorce poisoned you against me!" Nfather just loved to accuse my mother of divorce poisoning me against him, when he was the one who brainwashed my younger sister and I against her when he got a bogus order of protection against my mother in order to get her kicked out of her own house so he could move his girlfriend and her kids in. In other words, nfather alienated us from my mother, and not the other way around. Ns love to project, and for a while there, I truly believed that my friends were bad people simply because nfather said they were. It took me a long time to learn to truly think for myself without nfather's influence.

Ahh OK. Well good luck. This book might help Divorce-Poison-New-Updated-Bad-mouthing