aibu regarding contact weekends and sick child/ not wanting to go child?

[watchoutforthatsnail]

i dont know if i am

DD is coming up for 6, came home from school friday in a foul mood. She has a mouth full of ulcers so hasnt been eating, and it hurts when she talks, shes obviously run down. She had a bit of a strop and ended up crying saying she wanted to go swimming ( lessons) but didnt want to go to daddys later.
She was really upset and i tried to change her mind but she got all hysterical so i called him and asked him to call me back.

he called back 40 mins later, by which time dd had calmed down and i got her to change her mind. We were just out the door for swimming.

I explained what had happened and said that it didnt matter, but that i would have said maybe saturday morning was better and he could have her from then.

Queue world war 3 with all the abuse in the world being thrown at me.

I understand he was annoyed... but i had been trying to talk dd round and managed it in the end. HE said he is the child she doesnt get a choice.

but where do i stand on this, at what point of dd saying she doesnt want to go, or if she is ill do i get to say no, shes not coming this time?

where possible I say you stick to the agreed access - otherwise, trust me, she'll wise up pretty quickly and start playing you off against him

Even when my DSS are ill DH's EXW still insists he collects them for contact so DH does his fair share of nurse-maiding as well as her.

If you start allowing your child to tell you when she does and does not want to see her father/contact then you are on a slippery slope.

If she is well enough to go swimming then she is well enough to go to her dads. We try not to change the weekends for anything small otherwise ds ends up getting confused and upset at the lack of routine.

yeah, i said the same to her. she played me didnt she.

she was hysterical saying she didnt want to go.

and then, when i said ok, she was hysterical that she did want to go.

and it caused a huge argument. I felt like i couldnt win.
Shes 6 in jan, do you think its ok for me to tell her that she cant do that? that she should not have a go at me for that? so she understands thats not acceptable and wont work again in the future? because it caused a HUGE argument.

I would just say very firmly that every other weekend you will be going to your dads and you dont want to argue about it again.

Tell her as well that you understand its all sad and confusing as well though - she was probably expressing her feelings about the situation as a whole so use it as an opportunity for her to try and express it a bit more.

its not a new things, we have been doing it for ages, i dont think shes confused at al or sad about it. I think she just felt like not going at that momment in time.

i have always said i won't force my kids into access with their father, thankfully they want to go and they have 'mummy weekends' and 'daddy weekends' but i would only let them stay home if there was a valid reason to them not wanting to go and they explained this to me and their dad.

if they are ill they are still sent to daddies, why should i do all the nursemaid stuff???

I know - my ds has been going to his dads at the weekend since he was 2 but he does go through wobbles occasionally - normally when his understanding catches up - I remember when he realised that it wasnt what his friends did and needed extra reassurance - its that mix of understanding and firmness isnt it.

I wish I had it though most of the time am just a screaming harpy.

Being run down with mouth ulcers but being able to go swimming is NOT ill - she should've gone to her dad's. Imagine if the situation were reversed you would want to see dd wouldn't you?

you don't, IMO. Look at it from a different perspective, if your dd started crying at her dad's saying she didn't want to come back to you, at what point do you think it would be ok for him to keep her with him?

It is not OK to stop the contact - you have to be the adult and state that it is her dad's weekend, she is going. Unless there are issues there like she is being neglected or abused in some way, the contact HAS to happen. She is playing you, I'm afraid.

she did go, i made her go, and had got her to agree to go in the end, before he started shouting at me.

i had been trying to get her to go anyway, i wanted her to go, i had plans :)

its just she went into a total meltdown basically. and she was saying ' please dont make me go, i want to stay with you, dont make me mummy, please dont make me'

:(

its bloody hard isnt it, so i said ok, and maybe he could come and get her saturday am instead and she was ok with that, so i called him... but he didnt answer, but because i called she calmed down and 10 mins later i talked to her about it again and she said she wanted to go.

i was trying to get her to go the whole time.

When mine are like that I try and do the How to Talk thing of saying, 'yes it would be great if we could do that, what if we lived in disneyworld and could just eat candyfloss and watch tv all day' the extreme wish fulfillment etc - if you make it ridiculous enough it sometimes diffuses the meltdown before it starts, usually with one of them saying 'but how would you get to work mummy?' or some such.

My DSD was ill with an ear infection a few weeks ago. My DP are I were due to have her for two long weekends but my DP's EX decided she couldn't stay with us because my DP sleeps to heavily and wouldn't hear anything (I don't exsist!). He was allowed to visit but that was it. Then he got a long email about how he didn't help when she was ill, how he wasn't there enough and she was just dealing with it on her own! If a child is sick they shouldn't be ferried back and forth but as a lot of people on here have said why is it always mums who nursemaid, dads want to look after their little ones too.

A little off-topic, but did you know that mouth ulcers are commonly caused by a nutritional deficiency in B vitamins? This deficiency also shows up in run-downness and inability to cope with normal stress. Alternatively, mouth ulcers can be linked to recurrent tonsilitis.
Once this round of ulcers clears up, perhaps you should look at your DD's diet to see whether she's getting enough Vitamin B? A great source is marmite and plenty of green vegetables. HTH.

Also Zinc and Folates.
Good sources of zinc include meat, seafood, liver, eggs, milk, and whole-grain products. Zinc supplements are available over the counter. Folate is found in liver, foods containing yeast, dark green leafy vegetables, legumes, and fruits.

I agree a 6yo doesn't get to choose one parent over the other. I think you'd have shouted it it had been the other way round?

If she was too ill to see her dad she was too ill to go swimming its that simple.

As others have said, if she is ill when it is his turn, thats his problem to deal with. At 6, sorry, she is the child, and really doesnt get to pick and choose in this aspect.

That's a tricky one OP. Must be hard to make her go if she is crying that she doesn't want to! Talk about pulling on the heart strings!

We don't let children do what they want otherwise many would never set foot in a school or never get out of bed or go to bed! You pick her up and dump her in his car. That is all there is to it.

If he wouldn't return her because she refused or was ill would you want that?

My kids still have no real choice as teenagers. My ex and I discuss the weekends between us. If there are events the kids want to go to then we factor those in but we have always felt that the kids shouldn't be allowed to choose 1 parent over the other and have that power. If we lived together then we wouldn't let them decide which relatives we visited on a weekend. Different when they are old enough to stay alone. Last minute changes of plan on a whim are definitely out, the parent who doesn't have the kids that weekend usually has plans anyway. we are both capable of looking after ill kids.
Our kids have never had strops about not wanting to go, apart from the usual small kid thing of just not wanting to leave where you are and go elsewhere eg moaning about going to their dads when here and vice versa. We have always viewed where they go as non negotiable and they get picked up from school on Friday by the parent they are with that weekend anyway so that reduces the potential for "I don't want to go" strops.
I think having a good relationship with both parents and the parents feeling they can trust each other to co-operate re access and allowing each other to build a loving bond with the kids is far more important that the temporary whims of a small child.
I would feel differently if my kids said their father abused them or they always came home back miserable.

Is your DD generally happy about seeing her dad and going to his house? The only thing that occurs to me when other posters have said things such as "You pick her up and dump her in his car. That is all there is to it." . . . is what if there was a real problem. Just be aware and listen to her if she wants to talk about why she doesn't want to go just in case there is more to it.

I think any child would be sad and confused by their parents seperating for a very long time. DC don't have the ability to understand, let alone articulate their feelings. It is true that she MUST go to her fathers but it should always be up for discussion why she doesn't want to. Picking up and dumping in the car is all well and good but your duty as a parent is to talk it through first.

DoMeDon I agree