Maarit: When Extracurriculars Become an Alienation Tactic

Swim team practice meets every morning at the pool near one parent's house. It is an hour and a half from the other parent's house. Nobody said a word about custody, and the summer schedule changed anyway.

Maarit runs Blended Family Frappe, the blended-family and high-conflict co-parenting resource she built with her husband Dan once their kids reached eighteen. Each of them brought a child of the same age into the marriage, and each had an ex who made ordinary co-parenting advice useless. Her high-conflict parenting-plan checklist, the thing that first put her on Been There Got Out's radar, began as an email to her sister, an attorney whose own divorce lawyer kept drafting clauses that read when both parties agree.

Maarit and Lisa work through extracurriculars as an alienation tactic, which she describes as a Trojan horse because the activities themselves look so ordinary. Sign-ups timed to swallow the other parent's days. Programs booked on the weeks the child is at the other house. Fees that were never agreed to and cannot be argued about afterward. And the message delivered alongside the schedule, that the other parent is unsupportive, does not understand, does not really know them.

They also cover what a parent can actually do. Capping the number of activities and splitting costs in the order rather than leaving it to agreement. Replying to a schedule argument with a statement of values, which is harder to push back on than a counter-proposal. Long-distance custody and fighting for summer blocks. Who is responsible for the gear a child leaves at the other house. Attending games when the other parent will not acknowledge you, and why Maarit thinks performing a friendly family in public teaches a child something you do not want them to learn.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why activities make an easy alienation tactic: nobody questions a sign-up
• How practice locations and start times can absorb the other parent's days
• What to put in a parenting plan about activity limits, approval, and cost splits
• Answering a schedule argument with a values statement instead of a counter-argument
• Long-distance custody: protecting summer and holiday blocks from the season calendar
• Who is responsible for forgotten gear, and why Maarit puts it on the child
• Whether to sit together at events, and the case against performing a happy family
• Why being the unpopular parent can be the more useful thing to model

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 The checklist that started it, and a lawyer's own divorce
6:00 Blended families, two exes, and rules that stop applying
9:00 Extracurriculars as a Trojan horse for alienation
11:00 Swim team and after-school programs: how parenting time disappears
14:00 "Your dad just does not care": the message layered on the schedule
16:00 Fees, sign-ups, and putting limits into the order
20:00 Leading with values instead of arguing about the calendar
24:00 Long-distance custody, summers, and packing the gear
29:00 Games and recitals: seating, being ignored, and whether to fake it
35:00 Being the unpopular parent, and modeling boundaries for your kid

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Blended Family Frappe: https://blendedfamilyfrappe.com
🔗 Blended Family Frappe on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blendedfamilyfrappe/

🎧 More with Maarit on this podcast
Ep 74: Stepparenting in High Conflict

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.