29. Part Three: Safe-guarding yourself from 'alienation' accusations - regular written updates & photo sharing apps

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, welcome to another episode of the post-separation abuse podcast. Thanks for joining me. This episode is part three of a series dedicated to helping you safeguard yourself and your case from accusations of withholding, gatekeeping and parental alienation. In the previous two episodes, I've spoken about supervised time between children and the other parent, unsupervised time that does not include overnight time, and using things like hair follicle testing and the backtrack system to help monitor drug and alcohol consumption of your ex-partner. Those are some of the things that can enable you to facilitate time between your children and the other parent and maintain a degree of safety for your children. These things will help to ensure that you are not perceived as a withholding, gatekeeping or alienating parent, even though you have safety concerns for your kids. Putting those things in place is often far better than completely stopping contact altogether. Hey, I'm Danielle Black and I'm the coach you need if you're dealing with post-separation abuse. I help you make sense of ongoing abusive behaviour after separation and help you take back your power and control. Let's go.

Speaker 1: 1:42

What I'd like to talk to you about today is the importance of communication when you're wanting to make sure that you're perceived in a positive light, something that is really understandable, when you're separating from a controlling, abusive person is wanting to distance yourself from them as completely as humanly possible, not just distancing yourself physically, but also distancing yourself even in terms of communication. Understandably, you just don't want to be having to speak to the other person. You likely don't want to be having phone conversations with them, in-person conversations with them or receiving text messages from them. I get it. I remember those years all too well. Unfortunately, if you pull away from co-parenting communication with your ex, that may lead to you being painted in a negative light. This can be harmful to you and ultimately harmful to your children, if any of those accusations actually take root and gain any credibility, particularly if things end up in the court system. So how can you ensure that you're communicating with your ex-partner in a way that's safe for both you and the kids and in a way that isn't going to inadvertently fuel ongoing conflict?

Speaker 1: 3:02

What I recommend to all of my clients is that they no longer meet face-to-face with their former partner wherever at all possible. I know this can be challenging if there are in-person changeovers of kids, but it's really important that those changeovers are not used to discuss parenting matters. If your ex-partner tries to bring up a parenting matter with you during an in-person changeover. It's important that you respond to them that you don't want to discuss parenting matters in front of the children and request that they send you an email regarding whatever it is that they're wanting to communicate.

Speaker 1: 3:42

Keeping things in writing is so very important. Controlling people, abusive people, people who have personality traits consistent with one or more personality disorders like putting you on the spot, and they don't want there to be any written record of what it is that they have said to you. It's so important that you keep as much of the co-parenting communication in writing as possible. This also means not answering the phone when your ex-partner calls, unless the children are currently in their care and it's reasonable for you to assume that the call could be related to one of the children. Obviously, you don't want to be ignoring the phone if there's any chance that one of your children might, for example, have sustained an injury of some kind in the care of the other parent, but when your children are safe in your care, it's best to avoid all phone calls with your former partner. If what they're wanting to discuss with you is truly important, they can put their concern in a text message or in an email.

Speaker 1: 4:48

Insisting on email communication the majority of the time is also important. Text messages are way too immediate and the reality is that most of what these people have got to say to you really is not that important. It's not important that you need to stop what you're doing and respond straight away. In fact, responding straight away is only going to lead to more messages and more expectation that you stop what you're doing and give your full attention to your ex-partner straight away. This is not the dynamic that you want to be continuing after separation. It can be helpful to set up a completely new email address for the purposes of communication with your ex-partner. If you're going to maintain using a current email address to communicate with them, please ensure that there's no way possible that they could gain access to your email. Make sure that you change any existing passwords. Make sure you don't share any Apple ID with them. Make sure that you've logged out of any shared device.

Speaker 1: 5:48

There are apps and programs that are specifically designed for written co-parenting communication. One of the most popular ones is called Our Family Wizard. You might like to Google it. It's a co-parenting communication platform that can be used via desktop or also as an app. It has a lot of other functions besides just back and forth communication, and the great thing is is that nobody can delete the messages. It's ultimately far preferable to email, but there can be pushback from ex-partners when you suggest using it, because it does come with a yearly cost and for this reason many men will push back against downloading the program or using the program. I do recommend that people request all co-parenting communication go via Our Family Wizard if they're planning for mediation or if they're going through the court system.

Speaker 1: 6:42

However, if you're not yet at that stage, insisting that co-parenting communication occur via email unless it's an emergency or a time sensitive change of parenting arrangements, you can put this calm request in a text message to your former partner letting them know of your email address, requesting that they put communication with you in email going forward, with the exception of genuine emergencies, in which case they will be able to text message you or call you on the phone. If your ex persists in calling and texting, which is quite likely the case because they're just going to assume that you will give in to them eventually, it's really important that you only respond to them via email when they're contacting you about something that is not an emergency and, again, most things won't be an emergency. In an emergency situation, a genuine one you're likely not going to be the very first person they call. The first thing that they do would be to call triple zero if it was a true emergency. It's really only if the children are in their care and the children are hurt something like that that they would really need to be texting you or calling you. Or if they were running a few minutes late to a changeover or were unwell and were not able to facilitate the visit that was going to be happening at some point that day. They're the sorts of things that would be reasonable to send a text message about.

Speaker 1: 8:19

Anything else can be communicated via email. This gives you an opportunity to choose when you would like to check your email, when you would like to respond to the communication and to help you to draft communication that isn't emotional, that is factual and that isn't fueling any ongoing conflict. Written communication like this via email creates a little bit of a distance between you and your ex-partner. Your ex-partner may not like this, because they likely feel very entitled to your attention. They likely feel a need to be in control of you, to have power over you and to be able to elicit your attention whenever they like by calling you or sending you a text message. Insisting that the majority of the communication occurs via email allows you to create a bit of healthy distance, which is not just good for you, it's also good for your kids. It's going to help you to calm and soothe your nervous system so that communicating with them becomes less and less triggering over time. This is important because resisting or refusing communication with your ex can be a huge problem in how you're perceived. Additionally, being at their beck and call via the phone or text message can also impact your credibility if later on you're relying on being taken seriously when you raise allegations of family violence.

Speaker 1: 9:50

You can also use email to be sending things like monthly updates to the other parent. This can slot in really nicely if the time that you've been facilitating so far has been supervised only, or if you're resisting a jump to overnight time, either because of the young age of your children, other developmental needs that they might have, perhaps you've got neurodiverse kids, or perhaps the concern that you have around the capacity of the other parent is significant enough that you don't want overnights to start anytime soon, not including overnight visits with the other parent can also be related to the accommodation of the other parent. It's common for former partners to be living with their parents and for them to have an expectation that children co-sleep with them, sleep on the floor or sleep in the lounge room, things like that. Perhaps they're sharing a room at a mate's place, perhaps they're living in a share house? Either way, none of those environments are appropriate for overnight time with children.

Speaker 1: 10:59

Sending monthly updates, potentially even fortnightly updates, to the other parent not only gives the other parent some important information about the children and what's going on in the kids' lives, but it also helps to paint you in a more positive light If your situation ends up in the court system. The fact that you've been sending these monthly updates helps others to see that you are doing what you can to facilitate some form of relationship between the kids and the other parent. You're providing the other parent with some information that they can then perhaps use to initiate conversations with the kids, for example. So with a fortnightly or monthly update, what you would do is have a heading of each child's name and then some subheadings underneath the names with things like daycare, kinder or school, or maybe education. There could also be health slash medical. There could be extracurricular, where you're talking about. You know the basketball training or the football training. You could include in there some pictures of some artworks that the kids have done. You could be simply letting your ex know that one of the kids has had a cold but is on the mend. You could be letting the other parent know that one of your children won a student of the week award at school or that they've been learning about responsible pet ownership and that that's something that they're really excited about.

Speaker 1: 12:29

The information that you provide only needs to be brief. All you're providing is a brief update of the kids. There might be more that you need to add. If one or more of your kids is neurodiverse, perhaps their medications have changed, perhaps they've had some specialist appointments and maybe those specialists have made some recommendations. You may like to provide a very brief summary of those, without getting bogged down into too much detail. You get the idea. The key here is to be keeping things brief, focused on the kids, and not revealing to your ex any information about you or the children that you'd rather they not know at this point in time, in addition to monthly email updates or updates via our family wizard.

Speaker 1: 13:16

If your ex has agreed to use that co-parenting communication platform, you can also sign up to a photo album app that will enable you to share photos and videos of your kids with other selected people. So that might only include your ex partner, but it might also include other members of your ex partner's family where that's appropriate. You're able to upload photos and videos of the children, and your former partner is able to upload photos and videos that you can then show the children. They're designed to be child focused and a way for your ex partner to maintain and facilitate a meaningful relationship with the children, particularly when they're not spending significant time with the kids, when perhaps the visits are supervised or when there are currently no overnights in the time that they spend with the children during the daylight hours only. If your ex agrees to use this app, it's really important that you watch any videos that they send first before you show them to the children, because, unfortunately, some co-parents will take that opportunity to say inappropriate things to the children, oftentimes involving them in the conflict, even to the point of trying to create an opportunity where they can be influencing and coaching the kids on their particular narrative. For example, they might say something like I really wish I could be seeing you more often, but mum won't let me Words to that effect. If anything like that appears in any of the videos that are uploaded, it's really important that you don't show that video to your children. Your ex might refuse to engage in the app at all, and that's okay. I still recommend uploading things to the app, preferably on a weekly basis.

Speaker 1: 15:07

Again, photos of your children, perhaps just doing something that they enjoy doing. Maybe a short video of them doing something maybe they've just learned how to do a cartwheel, for example could be a photo of some artworks that they've brought home from school. That sort of thing. It doesn't have to be too onerous on you, it's just something fairly brief. But again, it's you doing your bit to keep that co-parenting communication going to be facilitating a relationship between your children and the other parent. And also, again, this is the purpose really of this series of podcasts will help to optimize your outcome if things go to court. It will help to ensure that you are not painted in a negative light. Rather, you will be seen as a mum who is doing what you can to support a meaningful relationship between your children and the other parent.

Speaker 1: 16:01

The great thing about providing these monthly updates and the photo and video sharing is that it's not requiring you to have face-to-face contact with your ex, it's not requiring you to talk to them on the phone and it's not requiring you to be offering additional time with the children. There are things that you can do whereby your children are still going to be safe and you're going to be safe. The purpose of doing this is not to be getting any responses from your ex. They may not respond at all, and if that's the case, that's going to paint a pretty clear picture of them. The important thing is that you keep your focus on your side of the street. You focus your time, attention, energy and other resources on the things that you can control, and that's your behavior. So whether they're replying to monthly updates or not, whether they're also uploading anything to the photo sharing app, that doesn't matter. You focus on you. You continue to provide the fortnightly or monthly updates. You continue to upload something each week to the photo sharing app.

Speaker 1: 17:07

This is about you safeguarding yourself and your case from false accusations of withholding, gatekeeping and alienation. I've shared a few ideas with you over the past few weeks, from supervised visits, unsupervised time, but only during daytime hours and no overnights. Hair follicle testing for drugs, using the backtrack system to assess any alcohol problems, and now we've also spoken about keeping communication in writing, providing fortnightly or monthly email updates and uploading things to a photo sharing app. All of these things will help you to create a foundation that you are a co-parent who is wanting your children to have a meaningful yet safe relationship with the other parent. If you'd like some personalized support with helping to safeguard you and your case from accusations of withholding, gatekeeping or alienation, I strongly urge that you jump onto my website, danielblackcoachingcomau. Book a free discovery call with me. We can have a chat and together we can decide whether or not working with me moving forward is the right thing for you and your situation. Thank you so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon.