- “that’s a good start ... it sounds accusatory and questioning ... like an ultimatum” - “there’s no judgment” (I felt very judged) - “I’m blunt ... because we’re up against the clock” (that makes sense; why should my ego be coddled while she suffers; and yet...) - “you can make it so much simpler ... there’s a box of tissues on that table. there’s a stapler next to it. i can hear voices coming from outside the walls. when i hear those voices, i [feel ... ?]” - “she’s not getting the experience of you that she needs ... attention ...” - “she already feels a sense of responsibility for what happened ... she thinks she’s in charge, running the show ...” - “she’s guarded” - “she’s parentalized[/parentified]” - “when a parent self-blames, it shifts a lot of responsibility onto the child” Let them be kids, not confidantes. “ John Bowlby looked at what he called "compulsive caregiving" among the anxiously attached, as a result of a parent inverting the normal relationship and pressuring the child to be an attachment figure for them.[8]” “Emotional Parentification The child is expected to take care of and fulfill the emotional needs of the adult. Some examples of emotional parentification are: reassuring the parent that they will be all right when upset, shielding the parent from the emotional consequences of their actions and adjusting behavior to suit the parent’s emotional interests. More here: http://lightshouse.org/lights-blog/parentification-of-children#ixzz28llNPHQf” hey btw, this rings some kind of bell: “Narcissistic parentification occurs when a child is forced to take on the parent's idealised projection, something which encourages a compulsive perfectionism in the child at the expense of their natural development.[14] In a kind of pseudo-identification, the child is induced by any and all means to take on the characteristics of the parental ego ideal[15] - a pattern that has been detected in western culture since Homer's description of the character of Achilles.[16]” and this: “In the 1944 movie “Gaslight”, a jewel thief cons a woman whose aunt has bequeathed her some gems into marrying him and proceeds to manipulate her. He makes small changes to objects in her environment, secretly moving items with which she’s familiar and dimming the gaslights in the house. Every time she says she suspects something funny may be going on, he invalidates her and brainwashes her into thinking nothing is wrong — that her suspicions simply mean that she is going insane. As the film progresses, his repeated insistence that she is losing her faculties has the desired effect, and she begins to believe him. She ultimately loses all confidence in her own perception, doubting herself and substituting his lies for her reality. Toxic and abusive people manipulate people in this way so commonly that the writers of the story soon found they had a very popular thriller on their hands. The film was so well-received and so accurate, in fact, that decades later, the term “Gaslight” is still used to refer to abusers’ attempts to prevent their victims from trusting their own awareness of what is taking place. More here: http://lightshouse.org/lights-blog/gaslighting#ixzz28lmQzJ4u” “In the U.S., there is no such thing as “Grandparent’s Rights”. Grandparents may certainly TRY to get access, but fit parents may always deny it. This is a supreme court ruling, so there can be no exceptions made to this rule in any of our 50 states. * “The custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder. A law that allows anyone to petition a court for child visitation rights over parental objections unconstitutionally infringes on parents’ fundamental right to rear their children.” # Supreme Court Case, Troxel vs. Granville, Year 2000 More here: http://lightshouse.org/lights-blog/toxic-bad-abusive-grandparents#ixzz28loEN3JL More here: http://lightshouse.org/lights-blog/toxic-bad-abusive-grandparents#ixzz28loAOChd”