Expert: Jennifer - 7/7/2008

Question
QUESTION: My wife and I are getting a divorce for which she filed. She was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder - the effects of which have been traumatizing over the years. Currently, she is in a manic phase which causes her to be aggressive and verbally antagonistic. I am the target due to the separation. She is filling the kids with negativity against me, their grandparents and family members, as well as previous friends. She has the kids call me to yell at me using her derrogative phrases, and stating they don't want to ever see me again. We have not finalized our divorce yet. I am trying to ensure the children have involvement by both parents (she accuses me to the kids of trying to take them from her forever), but this is getting worse every day. How do I get all of us through this when I'm not there anymore to temper her violent verbal assaults? I feel like I have finally saved myself and now I am losing everything.

ANSWER: My mom grew up with her bipolar mother who went through her entire life unmedicated, and the one reprieve for her whole family was when my grandmother became an R.N. and would work as many 12 hour shifts as the hospital would allow her to.  I can say this because I saw it myself -- my grandfather spent a lot of time following behind his wife & trying to smooth things over or apologize to people.  I don't know if your wife is currently medicated, or if she has a pattern of going off of her meds as she chooses, but regardless of what the case is, the children you have with her are entitled to have a relationship with each of you until such time as they reach an age where they can decide for themselves (my idea of what age that would be is halfway through high school, but that's something that's open to interpretation.)
  Having a relationship with your children is the most important thing, and how to go about getting to that point with them will depend on their relationship before and presently with you as well as with their mother.  However, it's going to be a lot easier than trying to have a relationship with any of the other adults that you've mentioned.  What your wife is taking advantage of is the personal element between you and her, and right now you're giving her enough fuel to continue indefinitely.  The only thing that you can do to change things is to remove that personal element.  You need to make it a priority to find a lawyer that works primarily with family law cases.  I say primarily because there are some lawyers who have a more general legal practice, and during times where family cases end up being the majority of their business that's what kind of law they practice - and then another shift comes and they'll be back to what they did before.  Having an attorney representing you is a good way to make sure that you get the time you have every right to get to spend with your kids, during which you need to tell them you love them, that you aren't going to try to take them away from their mom and never let them see her again, and set something up in the way of how they can get in contact with you whenever they want or need to.  In addition to legal representation, you have to always make sure that you take the high road.  This means you have to always be polite, refrain from any negative comments about your ex pr the situation to the kids or anyone else, avoid letting yourself be drawn into a fight with her no matter what she throws your way trying to pull you into a conflict, and of course do everything you can to make your relationship with your children a good one.  Good does not mean that you should try to be their friend, something that needs to wait to happen until they're adults.  You need to be viewed as an authority figure, which doesn't mean you can't be emotionally available to them, but you're going to want them to actually follow the rules that you set, and they should be able to respect you.  It's quite possible that their time with you will be the only place that they can always depend on for stability in their lives.  Unless they're being put in serious danger, they should have the ability to continue with their relationship with their mother, which should include living with her primarily unless there's sufficient reason why they shouldn't - or in the event that she is hospitalized in the future as a temporary arrangement.  Being a weekend father doesn't make your role any less important, however, it is a good idea to provide a stable arrangement for where they're living, especially during the school week.  If you have any urge to do something to help your ex as far as how her bipolar is being treated, my suggestion is that you limit yourself to praying (or hoping, if you don't have any religious affiliation) that she realizes for herself that she hasn't been taking care of herself as well as she should, and decides to resolve that on her own.  Your choosing to act in the way that will take the majority of what she has to fuel her aggression and causes her to take her anger over the divorce out on everyone around her may just be the thing that ends up convincing her to be more responsible about managing the symptoms she has because she's bipolar, so that you both get to go to birthdays, graduations, weddings, and enjoy the grandkids sometime in the future without stressing your children out over it.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: How do I talk to my preteen and preschool kids about the extremely volatile issues stemming from the mother's bipolar disorder so they aren't confused and traumatized?

Answer
Sorry I took a little longer to get back to you, being that I don't have children of my own and thus decided that in the absence of experience in the area from myself, that I should do a little research so I could give you - at the very least - some places to start from.

 I'll tell you from the start that it was very surprising to find that with all the various things that there IS out on the web that are related to parenting and family issues, it proved to be a little more difficult to find something that addressed specifically the situation you are in.  However, I like to be thorough, and I also refuse to quit until I feel that I've done all I can - the websites I'm going to list below were what I was able to locate that you can check out and get information about talking with your kids regarding the situation with their mother.  

http://www.mhasp.org/coping/guardians.html

http://www.camh.net
   * publication 'when a parent has bipolar... what kids want to know

http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net
 * this site has more of a general approach about how parents can help their children during separation and divorce, and some other parenting tips for basically those who are single parents by way of divorce and what is important for kids to have

  There was only one site that I saw repeatedly coming up in the results returned by the search engine, and the only reason I'm even mentioning it is because I found it that offensive.  Any site that claims to have all the information that one could ever need - but that information is almost impossible to obtain on one's own - and then says it's all available...for a price... is a site that I would never ever ever recommend going to let alone consider to be a source of valuable & correct information.  Due to there being a very small chance I could end up in the position of being threatened with legal action, I am not able to mention the name of the specific site I have referred to.  However, this site or any other, where the only way to get any information - which is absolutely vital to have but then you have to pay for it first - and most of what is available to non-paying individuals is a lot of hype - should be avoided like the plague.  After all, if the information could be found by the person or people running such a website, then anyone can find it if they want to and actually try..  I hope that the information about the websites that I gave you is helpful, let me know if there's anything else I can answer for you.