Author of
The Global Guide to Divorce
Trust your gut instinct when negotiating shared care. If supervised visitation is warranted – then speak up.
Your child’s safety is paramount, especially when there is a narcissistic parent who is focused on themselves.
An eminent psychologist told me that narcissism was the main personality disorder that needs supervised visitation.
Janice was in an acrimonious court battle over the custody of their five-year-old. The father would attempt to get at Janice through their daughter, such as buying the five year old inappropriate clothing geared more towards the exotic dancer profession.
The judge was at wits end saying the case was more about “he said, she said” which made getting at the truth difficult. Janice insisted that there should be supervised visitation, but that was not heeded. She ran out of money midway through the proceedings and was assigned an inexperienced legal defender after her solicitor stepped down.
Janice also expressed her fear of having the girl around her father’s construction business.
Little Ellie was a victim of parental alienation and would tell her mum that dad said she was a liar. In a quiet moment when she, Ellie and the cat were cuddling, Janice said this is what safety and truth is. Feel it in your heart. When something does not feel this way, it is an untruth.
Parental alienation started to fade after Ellie learned this technique. She later told her mum that dad said something bad about her, but she knew it was not true since it did not feel right in her heart.
Ellie had a premonition of her death. She confided in an adult family friend that she would not be here much longer. Janice had bought Ellie a look-alike American Girl doll for Christmas. The daughter asked if that was so she would have something that looked like her after she was gone.
Although Ellie’s talk of death was disturbing, the mother had stopped asking about having supervised visitation. Soon after, the father accidentally ran over Ellie with a bulldozer on the construction site.
He refused to take responsibility for the girl’s fatality and told the distraught mother that Ellie “had committed suicide.”
He insisted upon an open casket funeral and demanded that the undertaker patch up the body parts.
Janice has this advice to share with others.
Be the squeaky wheel that gets results – keep demanding supervised visitation when the co-parent is a narcissist. Narcissists are so focused on themselves and projected image, that they often do not pay much attention to others in their vicinity.
Narcissistic parents parade kids around their job sites to play the good daddy/mummy role and then may lose interest in them.
Another example is of two boys who confided that they were dumped in the doctors’ lounge for hours after their father marched them around the hospital to garner accolades for being a great parent.
Not paying attention to his daughter’s whereabouts cost Ellie her life.
In other cases, the narcissistic parent’s inattention to their kids, resulted in a concussion, broken bones and stitches.
These parents were too busy being in the limelight to do adequate childcare.
Janice does not know if listening to her daughter’s premonition regarding her death would have saved her, but feels that supervised visitation would have done so. Pay attention to your intuition if something does not feel right.
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ABOUT WENDI
Wendi Schuller is a nurse, hypnotherapist and is certified in Neuro-linguistic Programing (NLP).
Her most recent book is The Global Guide to Divorce and she has over 200 published articles.
She is a guest on radio programs in the US and UK. Her website is globalguidetodivorce.com.