Hi all! I think sometimes we forget Ella is only 12 years old. Just like any normal 12 year old (especially going into the terrible teens!) she's going to misbehave, she's going to rebel, throw tantrums, test boundaries, act out, all of that is normal for any kid her age. But add in the reality of her life and it would be scarily unnatural if she wasn't having meltdowns. That doesn't mean she's a second AE in the making. Nor does it mean she's solely on her mum's side or IG's side. She's being torn between the two with AE constantly trying to force her to choose her, threatening abandonment, new fathers, self-harm and probably even suicide if she doesn't choose her, has tried to mediate between her parents and fix their marriage for years, looks like she's a secondary mother figure to Elsie, facing daily neglect, emotional and potentially physical abuse from her mother, parental alienation from the one parent who actually loved and parented her, and coping with all this in the public eye for all her peers to see, on top of all the issues kids her age have to deal with. Her life is seriously fucked up, is it any surprise she acts out sometimes or that her behaviour is often contradictory and confusing? For all of us adults here who have had r/ships with narcs, we know how insanely confusing, unstable and just crazy it can be for us as adults. Ella is literally still a child, trying to cope day to day with a narc relationship, one that many of us as adults still struggle to make sense of and heal from.