It's enough to drive someone crazy...

Meg has written an an excellent post about Alec Baldwin's outburst to his child. No one, including me, likes to see such an outburst against a child, but there are some contributory factors that must be understood. Baldwin has been fighting for his daughter for 6 years, you can bet he feels more guilt then anyone could lay on him. Someone described it very well, it builds up like a volcano.

You can read it here:

Any female who is being honest...

I caught part of this news because of Meg's post, and I must compliment Meg on her understanding of a very poorly understood problem. I would say that no one, and I mean no one, who has not experienced this first hand could possibly understand the anger and frustration that PAS and child custody games can have on someone. I am surprised how well Meg has understood this problem. As bad as my situation is, at least my son is not being turned against me.

My wife insists she wants me to have a relationship with my son. She has been very convincing to the court who parrot what she says followed by a big “But”, It amazes me how gullible the court is in such a transparent control play.

My wife is using my son as leverage against me in court. She's preventing him from seeing me to increase pressure on me, to gain concessions from me, to get vengeance on me, and to be in control. She, being overprotective, does criticize my parenting to the court to gain support for the lower than minimum visitation, that I now have.

The courts and the media take things out of context, overreact and in a misguided effort to protect the child they in fact aid in the abuse of the child. I have nearly been bankrupted in 2 years of child custody litigation. I have attempted to shorten the case in every way possible, but an abusive lawyer is extending the case. When an angry wife makes an accusation, it is assumed true, regardless of how outrageous and the Father's rights are taken away until he can prove himself innocent.

As any reader of my Blog knows, this takes a tremendous toll, especially over time. For the first six months, I was able to handle this just fine. After the first last-minute Christmas visitation denial attempt it started to get to me. My Blog starts at the 18th month so you see things after they have had plenty of time to build up.

In Baldwin's case, with more money, come more games. He has been screwed with for 6 years. But it's really not just him, it's his daughter. It is important that when talking of these child custody games, the child always looses. Baldwin's words sound terrible, inexcusable, impossible to understand.

That's because, until you've had the court interfere with your relationship to your child thanks to your ex, you can not understand the level of anger and frustration. I have been in my share of battles, and I can take plenty. But to see my son cowering behind me screaming and crying, pleading and begging to stay just a little longer, while his mother tries to tug him away, is something that pushes your emotions far beyond the worst adult argument you can think of. Despite that I remained as outwardly calm as possible (although inwardly furious) as I asked my wife if I could have 5 or 10 minutes to calm him down and bring him to her apartment. NO NO NO! She needs to be in control, best interest of my son be damned. Would 10 minutes matter, to her it would mean loss of control. To my son, his frustration could have been calmed down. Which is more important?

I put his interests first, she puts her desires first. We're different.

When my son repeatedly asks to see me and the biased Guardian refuses to grant that request. Then after all the hurdles the Guardian put up, the opposition extorts me to sign an agreement with even more restrictions or loose Christmas visitation. When the bias Guardian saw the extra restrictions she told the judge that it was disgusting, what did the judge do? Nothing! So the judge took the adversarial oppositions view rather than the mother biased Guardian (who's supposed to consider mother/father/child). So if the judge was going to use the most restrictive visitation recommended by my wife's lawyer, why was a (supposedly unbiased) Guardian appointed? More fees?

I understand Baldwin's phone frustration, because of my very limited visitation, I too have an order granting me phone access. My wife always puts it on speaker phone, listens in, and on occasion has cut our call short. My son is older now and occasionally has been so frustrated that he asked her to let him talk to his father privately. I have to adjust my schedule in order to take advantage of the phone contact and sometimes she doesn't allow it. After changing my schedule or creating quite an inconvenience, I'm denied my court ordered right.

I remember one of my co-workers commenting when I worked overtime and couldn't get home before the scheduled call. So there I was sitting outside the data center with my phone reading "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" to my son. He stopped and marveled at my perseverance in maintaining a relationship with my son, despite the restrictions. He asked me, how is it that they don't understand how much you love your son and how terribly wrong this restricted visitation is?

Compared to Baldwin, I'm lucky, my relationship with my son is undamaged despite my wife and the court using him as a pawn in their hurtful, deceitful game that they justify "in the best interest of the child". But I do understand his frustration, mine is directed at the court, the officers of the court and the system, rather than my child. I am criticized for my justified frustration. I was ejected from judges chambers for stating that using my son as leverage was child abuse. The truth hurts.

These are just words. Meg has also written good words. But words are so limited in their ability to explain something so complex.

What Baldwin said was wrong, and no one is more pained then he is that things have gotten so bad. But something caused it, and that is wrong, and that's what we should be talking about.

If you haven't lived it, you will have difficulty understanding it and you should thank God for that.