Quote: Then he asked if I had a nice weekend. I said, yes, thank you. Then he asked where I went. I told him the general area. I was wondering if he would ask who I went with, but he didn't. I would have just said, someone you don't know.
Why on earth didn't you take this opportunity to just answer "oh, I went on a date with X to Y"????
Because he probably knows through D who I went with and wouldn't consider him a 'rival' in any way.
Quote: Yesterday I told D I didn't like what she had done in one of her school books - she had done shoddy work, scribbled in it and torn pages etc. She looked at me and said "I think it's funny!"
My blood turned cold. This is the sort of thing that H thinks is "funny". Whenever I used to call him on some bad or inappropriate behaviour, he used to laugh evasively. You could never pin him down to admitting he had done anything wrong or inappropriate. And I am talking about times when I was deadly serious, NOT laughing matters. It scares me to see that smirk on D's face.
I have a big problem with rudeness from D as well. Any ideas on how to handle it?
I'd be careful about the possibilty of overreacting to D because you are afraid she will turn out like H. She may imitate certain behaviors or phrases from H, but that doesn't mean she's destined to grow up a weird NPD person - so try really hard to separate out what is reacting to HER and what is carrying your baggage with H overinto your R with her. (MY H used to do this a lot with S18 - get mad at him for what he perceived as "bad traits" that bothered him in his R with ME).
This is a very good point Ellie - I am very aware that how I feel at the moment (recent interaction with H, thinking about him, or the situation, or whatever, influences the way I react to D and her bad behaviour. I am trying SOOOO hard to step back and see myself as D's parent, with a job to do, as it were, rather than taking everything she says and does as a personal attack against me.
She is also so sweet sometimes (often). The other day she was singing a song about how lovely her Mum was and stuff like that, making up the words to the song...
As for the disrespectful stuff - I know, it's hard without another adult backing you up, isn't it? I love it when my H interevenes and calls the kids on it if they speak disrespectfully to me. But bear in mind - children in these sitches act up with the parent they feel SAFE with. She probably doesn't feel like she can express her "bad side" to H because she might lose him - so all her pain and fear about the sitch comes out as bad behavior with you.
Loving detachment - I guess that's the key - don't personalize her behavior so much, just set some clear and firm boundaries and then love her to pieces.
Will do!
Ellie
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
