Parents have been known to do some pretty despicable things to get back at their ex. But Elena Ursu allegedly broke the cardinal rule of single parenthood. Her ex, Gabriel Burulea, claims she taught their 2-year-old daughter Elena to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee: just to make him mad.
Dad says Mom created a YouTube video (pulled down by the site for violating content rules) that shows the little girl puffing on a butt and sipping from a coffee cup. He's using the video as proof to the Romanian authorities that his ex-wife's custody should be revoked.
With the venom that comes out in custody battles, it's hard to tell who is being honest here. Burulea has a lot to gain by casting aspersion on his ex -- he doesn't have custody of his daughter, and he clearly wants it. On the other hand, there's video proof, and the story he tells makes a sane parent sick:
When I am allowed to visit her I can see that she is so desperate for a cigarette that she even grabs the ends of cigarettes and puts them in her mouth. It's sick.
Sick is right. No 2-year-old should have a cigarette in her hand, even if it's just to fool around in a YouTube video. And no kid should get pulled into the games their Mom and Dad are playing with each other.
You don't love each other anymore, so you're divorcing. Fine! But leave the kids out of it! Nothing is more disturbing than sitting at the park while my daughter plays and overhearing a couple of moms kvetching about their ex in earshot of the kids! That's your child's parent too!
Even worse are the parents who play the kid against the other parent. Even if you don't go to the extreme of putting a cigarette in your toddler's hand, don't think that you're innocent if you fill your kid's head with horror stories about Mom's new boyfriend just so he'll spit them out at her on the next visit. Or how about the mom who files for full custody not because her ex is a bad father but because she wants to hurt him? Or the parent who goes out and buys stuff for their kid that the other parent expressly forbid? The list goes on, but suffice it to say, the one really getting hurt here is the kid.
Can you believe someone would go to such lengths to hurt their ex?
Image via YouTube