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The most heartbreaking dramas that sociopaths create are those that involve children. Many sociopathic parents stand up in court proclaiming that they “only want what is best for the children.” They’re lying. What they really want is to use the children as clubs to beat their ex-partners into submission.
There is no such thing as a simple phone call to find out what little Johnny needs to bring to soccer practice. Every phone call or e-mail is an opportunity for the sociopath to manipulate, denigrate and infuriate the ex, through lies, innuendo and misinformation. For the parent trying to protect the children, it’s exhausting.
A few months ago, Lovefraud published a letter from “Penny,” who is in this situation. She wrote her Tips for co-parenting with a sociopath. One of Penny’s recommendations was that parents request that all communications with their former partners go through Our Family Wizard.
Our Family Wizard
Our Family Wizard is a website designed to facilitate communications between separated or divorced parents in relation to their children. It promotes “cooperative parenting:”
Parents can coordinate shared custody and joint custody parenting time schedules, health records, immunization histories, expense sharing, school information, virtual document storage and much more on a website specifically designed to deal with the issues that arise in co-parenting situation.
Our website is committed to removing conflict and improving the lives of children. In fact, judges in all 50 states order families to utilize the site in contested cases to reduce conflict.
The Our Family Wizard website is a great tool for managing difficult parenting relationships. The website provides excellent documentation to help reduce conflict that may arise from ineffective communication. Should you need to return to court, all pages are printable and most come with a preformatted print option with all the necessary data you will need to show that you have met your parenting obligations.
The service costs $99 per year per parent. “This fee is worth it,” Penny wrote. “I know this because the judge hearing my case ordered that communication between my ex and I take place solely on the Our Family Wizard website. The judge also ordered that no verbal communication is to take place between the parties facilitating the exchange of my child.”
No creative language
Thousands of families use Our Family Wizard, according to Jainarain Kissoon, CEO. One reason why it helps in high-conflict situations, Kissoon says, is because the website’s structured format allows no room for “creative language.”
“Phone conversations used to turn into heated battles, then the battles moved to e-mail,” Kissoon says. “The site helps compartmentalize what everyone is doing. In co-parenting classes, they emphasize businesslike communication. The site provides organization—there are no long e-mails back and forth.”
With Our Family Wizard, parents can limit communication to filling in the blanks—soccer game, what day, what time, what the child needs to bring.
Features
Our Family Wizard includes the following features:
- Calendar—each calendar event, such as soccer practice, includes which children participate, the location, the drop off parent and the pick up parent.
- Journal—entries can be shared or private. It’s a place to document any incidents, and all notes are time and date stamped.
- Message board—With no outside e-mail servers, there are no lost messages and always a way to verify a message has been received.
- Info bank—A place to manage all family information, such as schools, childcare providers, immunization history, emergency contacts, insurance and more.
- Expense log—tracks shared expenses, automatically calculating each parent’s contribution.
Documentation
An important benefit of Our Family Wizard is its level of documentation:
- Each entry is time and date stamped—who created it and when
- Every page is stamped with the last time both parents viewed it
- Messages cannot be altered or unsent
- Dates on journal entries cannot be altered.
- One parent cannot change the other parent’s information
- Nearly everything can be tracked back to an IP address
- An accurate chronology of events can be produced
- All pages are printable
The software includes the option of third-party accounts, so, if necessary, therapists or guardians ad litem can monitor communications. If a parent engages in abusive behavior, it is readily discovered and difficult to deny.
With Our Family Wizard, it becomes easy to tell who is complying with court orders, and who is not. Kissoon relates why one judge said he liked the software: “It gives people enough rope to hang themselves.”
In an early pilot program for the software, a judge ordered 40 families to communicate only through Our Family Wizard. For two years, none of the families were back in court.
Testimonials
The Our Family Wizard website includes testimonials from parents. “Manuel S” wrote:
I am thankful to this avenue of communication. It has controlled the nasty phone calls from my ex-wife to me and my wife, and has put an end to her foul language since she is aware the content of messages is monitored. I have documentation to avoid he said she said situations and her violations of my rights to see my kids!”
Penny says the website works. “Please mention to readers that they can request that Our Family Wizard be ordered by the judge hearing their case,” she wrote. “The judge can order the Our Family Wizard email as the sole means of communication between couples litigating a child custody/visitation dispute.”
For more information, visit the website below. If you decide to subscribe to OurFamilyWizard, Lovefraud will earn a commission from your purchase.
EB – well, it’s out there in the universe now, and i’ll see if it comes to me, cause sweetie i can’t go to it. i have to pay rent and it is the food bank next week. there is NO money. remember a while ago i said i had boots and sandals and no shoes? – that wasn’t a style choice. EMDR (and I checked tonight) is now $140 a visit and it would take a few visits.
dinner with friends was VERY fun. we played board games – we laughed a lot. they made me a creme caramel (friend who hosted is a pastry chef), so no candles, but a fiend showed up with the five-zero kids candles and cup cakes yesterday, and i got about the best card i have EVER seen. and i got to spend the a few hours at the conservation area yesterday. going to that that place has held me together for the last couple of years.
tonight was pretty good. 🙂 i did feel a bit disconnected, but not nearly as bad as i expected to.
One…no, I wasn’t referring to EMDR….I’m not even sure what that is?? 🙂 Or stands for……
I was referring to your ‘plot’….and the toll that may be taking on you….
I’m glad you were with friends….it’s importand and a good tonic!!!
ah, okay. i don’t think that is it. actually i think waiting this long has taken a toll on me.
i have been like this since fake he fake died. it’s just gotten worse. and as the other stressors mount (money, work health), it’s gotten worse.
i had some structure before, and a paycheck and it was grindingly hard to meet my obligations – i had to work hours of over time to meet my time lines.
and i do ask myself this question, and i do listen for answers. and i will keep on doing that. i never hear much, beyond, ‘ do it’.
I TOTALLY understand…..this need….I do, I do…..
But I wanted to ‘remind’ you of the ‘gain’ vs ‘cost’.
That’s it…
🙂
🙂
I’m pleased that I’ve stumbled upon your blog and website, OurFamilyWizard! We need to learn new tools, develop fresh attitudes, and start forming co-parenting teams to enhance all our lives. Our parents in split-families and broken homes need to be given a chance to raise kids who thrive without being encumbered by the emotional battlefield that has become normal once parents no longer live together. We need to change tack in our parenting methods and styles, and we need new strategies that work when our children and teens are living between two homes and diverse cultures inside what they call their own family.
Great blog and website, OurFamilyWizard, we will be looking into your website offering in more detail, as we (Complex Family) operate in a complimentary market – focusing on support for families touched by separation, divorce, or some form of family breakdown.
Complex Family understands the complications, and the uniqueness of split-family parenting (parenting beyond separation or divorce), when we no longer live together – and we are here to walk beside parents throughout the journey. And OurFamilyWizard appears to be a complimentary service that we could promote to our customers to make life easier!
Jill Darcey
Hi Jill:
Welcome to LF.
I do want to point out one MAJOR issue that differentiates the coparenting issues.
Coparenting with someone the demostrates Cluster B personality disorders is a totally different ‘ball game’ than with a ‘traditional divorced parents.
Yes there is anger and feeling of betrayal in a split up, but coparenting with someone who is not capable of empathy and compassion towards ANYONE is impossible. When one party demostrates these behaviors, it’s only ‘buying’ time through a childs younger years.
A healthy parent has no control over the alienation and lies the toxic parent displays continuously. Life is only about power and control to them, punishments and awards and wins.
In order to raise healthy children in a two (separate) parent environment, it takes cooperation, self control and discipline (of the parents)…..and the 2 persons believing in the value and health and wellbeing of the children.
If one person see’s the children as their ‘trophies’, tools and prizes,……its a barrier that can’t be pushed down.
It’s not just about not living together…..it’s about abuse, staying safe, keeping the kids emotionally healthy and protected, so they have a chance at future.
“Parents are parents – typically doing the best with all we have.” This statement is again, fine when dealing with ‘normal’ conflicts and emotions of traditional divorces. NOT with a disordered personality.
My children were kidnapped, lied to, manipulated, stalked, harassed (directly AND indirectly) abused (physical and emotional), split and alientated from all extended family, exposed to drug environments, fed drugs….forced to do illegal acts for their father, used as a front and a cover for illegal activities, lies and deciet etc…..
HE exposed this all to them……THEY saw it all and disapproved BEFORE I EVEN KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON. They lived it, they hated it and they were expected and told…..NOT to tell your mother, or it will be the end of our family. THEY want nothing to do with their father.
We have had 2 stalking and harassment orders extended and 3 TPO’s extended………the latest last month….my eldest (18) has filed his own!
Please tell me……How do I co-parent from there? This person is disordered and NOT a normal healthy person. I believe he is a sociopath and have been told such by his psychologist….yet undiagnosed…b.ecause he bolted prior to the heat getting hotter on him.
It sounds great to be able to coparent in split family relationships, and I greatly admire those who achieve this (and I most certainly DO believe healthy coparenting Can be achieved in ‘most’ split families)…..but I can guarentee you……NONE of those split families are dealing with a sociopath in this mix!
I have always maintained…..If I could wave a magic wand over the spath and ‘make’ him a decent human being for his children…..TO THIS DAY, I would! Not perfect……just the father any child deserves.
It was not my wish to have it end like this……my kids do NOT have a father……they have a sperm donor who has attempted to destroy them. THAT IS NOT A FATHER!
BTW……I think your site is very informative. And I also think it could benefit from some research on co-parenting with a Cluster B personality disordered person……valuable infomation!!!!
Thanks
EB – precisely. Spath does not – DOES NOT – have the best interests of the child(ren) in mind, EVER.
Hi there Erin,
I sincerely agree with you; parenting with a cluster B personality disorder parent (or any serious disorder for that matter) is totally different to traditional split family parenting.
While we have a resident Psychologist on our team, unfortunately we are not setup to cater (at this stage) for parents in this situation. This is an extremely specialised and delicate situation (as you’re well aware) and requires extensive experience to assist, guide and support parents and families in these types of situations.
You and your children have certainly walked a very challenging path, and by the sounds of things, admirably in the face of adversity!
My post was acknowledging OurFamilyWizard.com’s website services, which may assist and compliment our services for (traditional) split-family parents, single parents, or co-parenting situations.
In situations with our clients, whereby parents are able to communicate with the other parent (not necessarily constructively), or a parent has passed away, or a parent is in jail etc, then we focus on assisting and teaching the children’s cooperative/remaining parent to teach their children the necessary tools to cope and deal with their new life situation. We firstly focus on teaching the cooperative/remaining parent tools to assist themselves to adjust to their own new life situation, and to improve it one day at a time; as parents can only be of significant benefit to their children if they themselves are in a loving and healthy space, enabling them to ‘give out of an abundance’ to their children – as opposed to from an ’empty well’.
The best that we can typically do (as parents) is to focus on teaching our children how to identify and heal the hurts and scars they are living with. We can also only ever have the best relationship that we can with anyone … and sometimes that may have to be solely within ourselves (eg. the other party is deceased, mentally ill, in jail etc) in the form of acceptance (not condoning) and forgiveness in ourselves (again, not condoning the actions of another).
Thank you for your feedback about our website – and I will certainly pass this onto our Psychologist for his consideration, with the goal of posting information on our website to assist parents in similar situations to yours.
Warmest,
Jill Darcey
Jill, you won’t find any “normal divorced co-parenting couples” here–we are all dealing with SERIOUS issues of abuse and survival, not just who gets junior for Christmas and who for Christmas eve. I am afraid you won’t find any “traditional” split family parents here.
The reason that Ourfamilywizard is or could be helpful to co-parenting with a psychopath is that it gives a timed undeniable log of what was said and when which can be used in court. Psychopaths are pathological liars and this is very necessary.