Issues with swapping weekends

[balia]

Need some quick advice oh wise MN'ers. Have posted about my DSS before, you may remember.

DH's ex has mental health issues that have, over the 8 years we have been together, made for some huge problems in terms of contact. Recently we have made some small moves forward in terms of holiday contact, resulting in DSS being able to go away with Daddy for 5 days of half term. This is a huge step forward and in order to secure it, DH 'swapped' a weekend in November into half term - thus no 'extra' time in terms of hours, but a larger 'chunk' of time. (IYSWIM)

One of the reasons Ex agreed to this was because her older son has exams coming up and needed some peace to revise in.

Now she says that older son didn't get anything done (she's been having some problems with him, we gather) and so she wants to swap another weekend in November 'into' half term. In one way this would be great - DSS and DS could go trick or treating, and he could be part of doing up his new room.

But that would also mean an entire month without overnight contact (DH does see him during the week but as he takes him to an activity he doesn't get to spend time with him, really). DH feels this is too long - but does want to co-operate with Ex because of the recent moves forward. This is particularly important to him because due to the way the contact pattern falls, we won't be seeing DSS over the Christmas period except for one court-ordered overnight. DH is very keen that the progress in terms of holiday contact keeps going so that we actually have extra contact in the holidays.

Any thoughts?

[balia]

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[Petal02]

I agree with MJ ? don?t swap this ?extra? weekend, because a month is a long time to go between ?proper? visits.

I?m a bit suspect about her reasoning for the swaps, because in a ?together? family you can?t usually farm-out younger siblings just because an older child is studying for their exams.

[balia]

Thanks ladies - I think MH issues are tied up with time - she was adamant that there had to be a swap but has now agreed to move a weekend in the middle so it'll be two fortnights between two contacts instead of a month. I hadn't thought about the reason for the swap - we know from DSS that there has been a lot of difficulty in the house recently. Due to her MH issues she is enormously controlling of both boys and her older son is, I think, rebelling. Also she has hoarding issues so there is very limited space - it is a 3 bedroomed house but DSS and his brother share a room, do homework on the floor (no surface space) so expect things are difficult.

However, we do need to break the 'extra time' barrier so we'll see if, having agreed to this, DH can make some headway for Christmas.

[balia]

We are trying very hard not to have to resort to professionals after a protracted and very expensive/stressful court case to get contact going in the first place.

She isn't as bad as she was - originally she would calculate contact in hours and it was that and no more. She still calculates in hours but has accepted that if, for example, she wants us to have 2 daytime contacts, DSS will want to stay the night rather than go home in the evening and be picked up the next morning (this is a break through!) but she may only be allowing this because DH takes the boys away in the caravan and clearly it isn't possible to come home each night. This may not apply if it is just for Christmas.

When I say 'the boys' BTW, I mean DSS and DS - DSS's older brother isn't DH's and he has no contact with his own Dad.

We're going to ask that we have an extra couple of days added to the single christmas overnight we currently get and see what happens.

[Purpleroses]

If she's spending a lot of time adding up hours, maybe it would help if your DP tries to ask for "extra" contact for specific purposes? Eg - could he take his DS to visit his parents, out to the cinema, etc - it makes it clearer that the contact is about doing things together that they both enjoy (and giving her some time to herself, or with her other DS), rather than being about rights being exercised.

In the long run, could you get some additional holiday time that is above and beyond the regular weekly routine? That's what a lot of people do.

[balia]

That is what we are hoping to do but it is very complicated due to ex's MH issues. Asking for extra time (for whatever reason) simply results in her subtracting the time from regular contact.

It kind of works like this - if the court orders contact, then ex doesn't have to take responsibility for the outcome. Making decisions and taking responsibility for them causes her extreme amounts of stress. For example, when we had an issue with immunisation (ex against, DH for) her reasoning went like this - if she got DSS immunised and he was damaged by the immunisations, that would be her fault as it would be a result of her action. If DSS got one of the diseases and was damaged, that would not be her fault as she had not caused it to happen by her actions, she had not made a choice but was still thinking about it. It had just happened.

We don't pretend to understand, we just try to get the best deal for DSS within the realities of the situation. So, the court have ordered contact, so if she sticks to (her version) of that, she feels she can manage.

If we went back to court I'm relatively confident they would order increased holiday contact, but DH is really keen to try and move things forward without doing that as it was so much stress last time - and if the primary carer of your child has MH issues worsened by stress the last thing you want to do is stress them out!

[balia]

DH could self-rep, he did last time after we ran out of money for a sol, with the help of an excellent MK.

BUT - it was an awful, draining, frightening, time-consuming and exhausting process, only started in the first place because DH had nothing to lose (in terms of contact with DSS) as ex had refused any contact at all. Ex threatened to do terrible things and made foul and abusive calls to my house at all hours of the day and night.

And this time DSS will be far more aware of what is going on. We had lots of 'Daddy is trying to put Mummy in prison' type hysterics in front of him last time, and he has to deal with the fall-out of both her mental health issues and her very high level of aggression, because he lives there and we don't. (Not that I'm saying she is violent to him, you understand, but she does punch walls/furniture near him, throw things, calls DH foul names etc when she gets upset. All very distressing for him.)

Things are relatively calm now, and we have seen some progress, so right now court is a final option, IYSWIM.

[Purpleroses]

Sounds like your DP might be right just to let things carry on as they are - let her swap the hours you take as extra - maybe in a year or two she'll be a bit better, and you could negotiate something better, or go back to court. Could your DP chat on the phone to DSS, or skype him if he does have a long gap between contacts?

[balia]

No, phones give you brain cancer, as 'everybody knows but the government try to hush up' so no phone contact. Although when DSS is here, he has to phone her twice a day (on her mother's phone). She hasn't got skype - this was suggested by the psychologist who did a report, but she doesn't like the idea. (too much effort)

I think DH is probably right, too. I am a bit worried about the swapping thing, though. This was a huge feature of contact prior to the final court order and was a big problem (DSS not knowing where he was going to be when, us not able to plan anything etc) and it seems to be gathering steam again - like she has seen DH's willingness to swap in order to have bigger chunks of time as a green light to start beggaring about with contact generally?

Yesterday DH was told that DSS had been invited out to a cinema trip on Saturday (should be with us and we have planned to go to a friend's bonfire night party). In a normal situation, no problem - we would drop him off for his cinema trip and pick him up in time for the bonfire party - but ex can't cope with that so has refused to tell us what time he is going, where, or what time he will be back. She says we can pick him up in the evening. She has agreed to a call tomorrow to give a clearer idea of the time to collect. We can make up the time 'sometime'.