a child's bond w/ their parents are pretty much cemented by the time they are 5 or 6 and nothing others can say about the parent causes much to change for the child.
This thought bouys my spirits b/c D and I have a great relationship and I know she'll probably hear some bad things said about me in Indiana.
This is good news for me as well. However, I've heard and read in several places, that saying bad things about a co-parent to the child directly or indirectly (i.e to friends or family), has a huge impact on the child's self esteem. Development experts agree that the child views both parents as an extension of themselves. Saying to a child that "dad is bad" is no different from telling the child, repeatedly, "you are ugly".
In my sitch I've recently learned that my wife has told one of her best friends, that she thinks I have "feelings" for our D5 (her gut told her this 5 months after she dropped the bomb). However, since then she has had no issues with me giving D baths, or taking her on multi-day overnight trips. I've stewed on this for two weeks now, and have been afraid to talk with her about it because I'm DB'ing, etc. But no more... this is really not fair to me, nor to our daughter. This is not the action of a wife or a friend (she says she wants to be friends)... She is welcome to her feelings and fears, I'd rather she talked with me about them. However, her actions clearly are to use this to rationalize her walk-a-way actions and to demonize me. DB or not, I plan to take a stand on this one.
