PA and schools

Over the years that I was apart from T, I experienced some very uncomfortable feelings when it came to dealing with schools, for the most part, teachers, the women in the office and even the headmaster or head of year were deeply suspicious of me.  From the first nursery that T attended through to the last secondary school before T came to live with me, they have all displayed suspicious and at times, unpleasant attitudes towards me.

For the most part I believe the reason for these attitudes is because my ex spoke to the schools about what was happening in T’s life and explicitly told them that I was to have no contact with T at all.  I had parental responsibility and had a court order and even after going into schools with this evidence they still treated me with contempt.  My ex had told the schools his view of the situation first, what should happen and what sort of person I was and of course even though it wasn’t true, anyone who has two sets of information will have to take both sets of information and try and  figure out which one is telling the truth and possibly the information that comes from a father (why has a father got custody of the child??) will have more sway.

I would suggest to anyone that has school age children and are going through difficulties that look like PA.  Print out some description of the alienation symptoms and write a covering letter stating that you have parental responsibility.  You should be able to have access to reports, they should ask you to attend parents evening, even if your child does not see you.  If they are not agreeable, write to the LEA and the governors.  You have the right to know how your child is doing at school.  I worked hard at giving a different impression of myself than the one presented by my ex.

It is awful, if you have to go to these extremes  and I wanted to stamp my foot (and did) because it is so unfair.   For me it was my last hope of maintaining some contact with how my son was doing that drove me because nobody else was telling me anything anymore.  Slipping out of your child’s life is all to easy when you have a manipulator who is hell bent on getting you out of their life and your child’s life too, staying in it takes some courage to stand up for your rights.