My two are still quite young and impressionable. S8 has AS, as you know, and is a couple of years behind in his emotional development compared to his peers. S4 is NT (as far as we can tell). Together they are still somewhat succeptable to the constant influence that their mother and their mother's mother (the nasty MIL) inflict on them every day. Even with their own already strong and developing wills, it is not surprising that they accept xW's story and the values she places upon OM and his family and friends.
I do realize that some day they will be teenagers, and then young men -- sooner than I would like or expect. And, yes, I do realize they will form their own opinions about their mother and her actions and her value system.
But I also know that she is trying to undermine their developing foundations -- now is the time that the very base of their lives and of their own value systems are being formed. If she can establish in their minds that D is not only a "necessary evil" but also a benefit to achieving one's own "happiness" -- and that the collateral damage is meaningless as long as one saves one's self, then the discovery of their mother's selfish ways and the real cost to their own lives will not have the same impact when they do come of age. They will have already been benumbed and made callous by her own example.
I find myself confronted by xW's constant effort to buy my kids off. She keeps promising them new toys and more visits to theme parks and special events, under the pretense of eliciting their good behaviors. If I reciprocate, two things happen. (1) It continues a never ending "arms race" with each parent trying to one-up the other, and I am already struggling financially because of her D and her lawsuit against me. (2) It deadens my S's fledgling value systems, turning them into materialist opportunists who can only think of what they get out of any deal. It undermines the very reason I am compelled to father them, which is to instill my values and faith in them, to give them the foundation they need to live and thrive in the midst of this lost world.
I already hear in my S's words, how they find the easier, more rewarding worldly path their mother holds out to them to be all that more desirable. It's almost to the point that I'd have almost welcomed that xW and I were both fiscally bankrupt and scraping to get by. Better that the both of us limped along in providing for our boys than to have them accept the world's materialistic ideals.
So, I am gravely concerned that the battle to secure my S's spiritual health will have been lost before they reach the age they will make their own way in life.
I really hope I am just over-thinking this. But when even the children of parents who have done everything right are still lost to the World, I have all the more to worry.
