My stbxh and I were taking our 16year old dd to the nearest city for an awards ceremony where she was picking up a prize for an Academic achievement at GCSE.
Our divorce is not amicable, but nor are we at each others throats, so the hour long drive to the city was a little bit tense at times but alright. I had wanted to take DD a few hours earlier to fit in a bit of shopping before the awards ceremony but stbxh really wanted us all to go together and insisted on driving us so I relented.
At one stage in the journey he was doing nearly 80mph on a dual carriageway and proceeded to take both his hands off the wheel in order to take his mobile phone from its holder and open up compartment behind the gear stick and start fumbling around trying to connect the phone to a car charging cable. I asked him to please ask me to do something like that rather than take his hands off the wheel at 80mph. He said ok fine and the rest of the journey went ok. He has form for speeding and trying to do multiple things while driving at high speed like use mobile, open crisps or sweets or fiddling with the radio, im not a particularily good passenger so i try to not say anything as it usually ends in a row but i could not let that go as i felt it was really risky.
When we got to the city centre car park he reversed in to a space. We all got out and i was distracted getting my coat and bag out of the car, stbxh said the front of his car was sticking out too far and he was going to reverse it back further. There was a car right behind us parked and about a metre between them and he wanted to back his car right up to the other car as close as possible. He got in to the car and started to reverse but I was horrified to see my dd standing between the two cars in the small space as stbxh reversed up to her. I said to her quite sharply to move out of the way and she said but Daddy told me to stand here...I asked her to move again and told her she should never stand behind a reversing car so close to it.
I am prob v sensitive to the risks of this because last summer a driver reversed out of a space over the heel and side of my foot and i hadnt seen anyone in the driver seat because unknown to me it was a left hand drive so it was pretty scarey and painful.
stbxh got out of car and i said to him I told dd to move out of the way as you shouldnt stand between a reversing car and another car esp one so close and he looked at me scornfully and said "FFS i asked her to stand there because my rear sensor beeper is way too sensitive and i needed her there to drive up to she's fine arent u pet" my dd just looked really cross and fed up, stbxh dismissed me totally and made out like i was hysterical over nothing, and then my dd told me later on that after i had left them to go to another shop stbxh had kept on saying to her "youre fine arent you pet, your mother was making a fuss about nothing "etc which annoyed dd.
AIBU to think this was a bloody stupid thing for him to tell dd or any child to do for that matter and also that he was BU to be going on about it behind my back and upsetting my dd on what should have been a nice occasion? I wish now that i had just done what i wanted to do which was to take dd to the city earlier to do our shopping and to meet up with stbxh at the venue where the award was taking place.