Ex FIL angry at DC's when they visit

[HairdryerMary]

Split up about a year ago. I instigated the split and stayed in the family home. Ex refuses to come here.
He moved back in with his parents. Sleeps on their sofa. He says he has no way of being able to move out which is probably true as we live in an expensive city and he is a retail assistant.
Therefore one day of the week, I drop our children (7 and 8, one has additional needs) to his parents and pick them up at 6/7. His parents are older and had looked forward to having a bit of peace. I can feel that my ex FIL is annoyed at having to share his weekends/ home/ tv with small children again.
Recently he has been shouting at them and being short tempered in general at them. Sometimes there is a reason but mostly it's for relatively small things. The worst thing is he stays angry at them (not saying bye and being off with them/ sitting in a different room). The kids notice and say that they don't want to go there anymore.
I completely understand that it must be frustrating having to share your house with a grown up son and small children again but it's one day a week and it's not my children's fault. If he wants to, he could say to his son, my ex, that he needs to move out. He could kick him out and see if he would be able to get social housing (unlikely I know).
Until then I don't know how to protect my children. They're not angels but they deserve to feel safe and loved and valued. I don't want them to go somewhere where someone rolls their eyes and walks out of the room when they come in.
Has anyone found any magic solutions? I know in the summer it's easier for my ex to take them out all day but in winter it's cold and he doesn't have limitless money. On one day after school they stay in a cafe for four hours with him so they don't have to go back to his parents house. It's far from ideal.

@Flyhigher Where does OP say she was an addict? I must have missed it, though I just reread her posts. I took the "would you call a mother who was a recovering addict a loser" comment as meaning it's wrong to say that about her ex.

Sorry-I'm in the not letting the children go to him unless he makes better arrangements. Not sure I blame the fil for being a bit grumpy, to be honest-it's a shit situation.

Could he make an arrangement with one of his brothers to use his bedroom on the days the children visit? Then at least they could watch TV.....

You can't fix him and you can't save him, only he can do those things. It might be worth you getting some support around this, like attending a support group for families of addicts, you sound very enmeshed still. Even if you sell your place and uproot your children it sounds like he won't be able to afford a mortgage and what happens if he falls off the wagon? That money could go down the drain. I think the best thing you can do is encourage him to get support from more appropriate avenues rather than you.

ETA; Just seen a later post about giving the deposit to the letting agency directly, are you seriously considering selling your house to give him a rental deposit?

You sound lovely op. I can see why you feel as you do and tbh any spare money I would use to get some therapy for yourself as this guilt you’re feeling seems to perhaps be a trauma response.

Your ex is an addict, who isn’t seeking professional help. It is therefore more likely he will fail.

If he attempts suicide, this is on him, not you. Sorry to sound harsh but you cannot put this upon yourself.

Please stop trying to fix him when he isn’t doing everything he can to fix himself.

I understand that you want the best for your children. The best isn’t trying to fix your ex. The best is putting boundaries up.

Do not. Do not. Put your financial future at jeopardy for him. Giving an addict money is too much temptation so trying to be kind to him could spectacularly backfire. How would you feel if he used that money and overdosed?

If he wants to move out, he can get a room in a flat share. Right now that isn’t on the agenda and I can understand why.

If he is able to secure a tenancy on his own (unlikely), he only needs one week’s rent placed in a deposit insurance scheme, which is non refundable.

As for him spending money on your kids, he needs to save up for that. Is he paying rent at home? How much money does he have at the end of the month?

If you want to help him, maybe talk finances through with him and make suggestions on things he can do with the children. That is as far as you should go tbh. Everything else is treating him as a third child.

I don’t know why everyone is being so hard on you OP. It sounds like you’ve done everything right. You’ve protected your kids from this situation by getting him out of the house. I think you’re being very fair to understand that a lot of this situation is beyond his control. I have no idea what the solution is but it sounds like you have good instincts.

I don't know if someone already suggested this but if your town has a nice library they could spend every Sunday there and have a lovely time. Many libraries have board games and puzzles, sometimes video games and tvs where people can play together, comfortable chairs to read together, could be fun programs on the weekend like music, crafts, art fair etc. If the library allows food they could bring a picnic lunch.

I would suggest talking to FIL.

yes it is annoying but he shouldn’t take it out on children!! He has agreed to house his son and to this arrangement after all, and it is his grandchildren!!
he needs to sort himself out, that’s unacceptable unless he wants to be left without grandchildren at all

I stopped counting when I got to the 2nd “early dementia “post.

Can the armchair psychiatrists PLEASE stop saying this!!! Early onset dementia is an horrific disease and manifests itself in way more ways than someone being a bit grumpy and unreasonable. So please FUCKING STOP IT, unless you have either lived experience or psychiatric qualifications.

Im going to hazard a guess that the children’s grandfather is being a bit of a grumpy bastard because he has 3 adult children living with him, one of whom is sofa surfing there whilst struggling to manage his addiction (well some to him if he’s managing to stay off his substance-I also have experience of an addict in the family) and he’s also then having to deal with said addicts children who in the words of their own mother “aren’t angels”.

I think I’d be a bit of a grumpy bastard if this was how I was living too!

He needs to get a second job if he can’t afford rent not take money from you.

if you have disabled children it would be so unfair to make them move when they’ve already had their parents break up.

You sound lovely OP but I actually think you are possibly harming your children by allowing them continued contact with their dad who is an addict. My mum was an alcoholic in my childhood and had many, many relapses. In my experience it is nearly impossible to get clean and stay clean without professional intervention. I don’t get from your posts that your ex has gone down this route? Which means the likelihood of a relapse being extremely high.

Honestly, in your position, I’d not allow contact until he’d got proper help and had somewhere safe for his kids to visit. You have to protect your kids from this. You can still be kind and tell them that Dad is poorly and needs to get better before he can see them again. If he is suicidal, there is not a single thing you can do to stop this and you need to harden your heart a little because you cannot expose your children to this sort of stuff. Don’t continue contact for your exes benefit over your childrens.

If that's what it takes, then maybe. At least alternate Sundays would probably make a huge difference to the FIL. Alternate Sundays at two alternate venues even better.

It's only whilst the weather's bad too. He ) and you) need to be more resilient/amenable to options like this, not doubting them.

You cannot help or save an addict who is refusing to get professional help. It just isn't possible without becoming a part of the problem. You've done the right things so far. Do not enable him though by doing for him what he could do for himself with professional support. And don't sabotage your family home just to help him out. He does have parents. You are not his parent. And he is an adult anyway.

I speak from experience.

Where did he reside and how did he support himself before he got with you??

Lots of good suggestions here. There isn't going to be just one solution, probably more like a patchwork of them. But their dad needs to be leading this.
Might it be possible to change the contact day to Saturday, to open up more options?

This might sound harsh but your ex needs to parent his children. Either that or the op stops them going for so long.
Strange isn’t it how a full time parent ( usually a woman) manages to entertain and parent her children all day everyday 24/7. Yet here is a man who cannot do that for one day a week.
I don’t blame the fil and mil here.
They have been lumbered with their adult son, an addict, who now lives in their living room and brings his children round every Sunday. Instead of entertaining them it sounds like he dumps them at his parents house so they now have an addict plus 2 children to deal with.
I’m guessing the ex isn’t cleaning the house ready for his children’s arrival or cooking meals for everyone, or keeping his dcs quiet, engaged and entertained either.
It sounds like the fil is fed up with this arrangement and merely tolerating his son out of necessity.
Sad that he doesn’t seem to engage with his grandchildren but probably expects piece and quiet on a weekend.
Sounds like he didn’t parent his own dcs rather he left it to ‘the wife’ so he won’t change.

I missed the bit about having 2 other adults living there as well.
So they are elderly and should be enjoying retirement.
How old is fil?
No wonder fil is angry.
I would seriously reduce contact.
I doubt being at the fil’s house is good for their well-being.
Plus I wouldn’t be telling the fil to be nicer or less angry.

My thoughts exactly.

OP, you are a very caring mother and looking for a solution that works for everyone. There isn't one. Your main objective is to provide a safe and happy environment for young children and that excludes spending a whole day at your ex's parents. It is nobody's 'fault' (and I feel huge sympathy for the grandfather) and you're not responsible for your ex and his decisions.

Cut the visit to a couple of hours or to once a month so they don't lose all contact with him (perhaps pay for them to sit in a McDonald's in the winter?). My teenage grandson has only ever seen his father once a month for various reasons and it can be made to work.

Please do not even consider selling your children's home as they need all the stability you can give them and don't lose sleep over what might happen to your ex - he's an ex for a reason.

I agree with all of this.

I realise that you're trying to help so that your kids don't grow up without their father in their lives. My heart broke when you posted about the 8 year old who is growing up without their dad because he committed suicide.

Please don't sell your home. Your ex has to want to see his kids and want to do better and be better. At the moment he has everyone, including his parents keeping him wrapped up in cotton wool so that he doesn't regress or do something to himself.

There is absolutely no guarantee that if you were to sell your home and put a deposit on a place for him that he still wouldn't regress. None. The only guarantee is that you would be down money, and without a home of your own that you worked hard for and your kids would be discommoded because their safe space wouldn't be there any more and they would be in an unfamiliar to them.

I can see that what you're trying to do is help and that is genuinely a very kind and decent thing to do, but honestly, until your ex is in a better place in his own mind, you would really be throwing good money after bad at this particular juncture, in my opinion.

Do the swimming. that will take at least an hour after changing, an hour for lunch, then park or museum if it's bad weather, go back to his and do homework, then watch a film.

OP, you have to decide how bad this grumpy and shouting is. Because I'd say unless it's really bad then you kind of have to accept that you don't get to control what happens on the exes watch. That's the reality of divorce. If you went to court then the court would not stop access unless it was causing distress and harm to the kids. And I can't tell how quite how bad it is from the posts.
Your ex DP sounds like he's in a rough place and at least he's making an effort and even if the cafe is not ideal, better than nothing. So you can make some well meaning suggestions as PP have said but you can't really make him do anything different. So unless the kids are in active harmful situation I'd just try to make the best of it and let it be

To be honest-I don't think this is an ex-fil problem. It's not fair to blame him for the children's father being useless.

@CurlewKate he's not being useless. He doesn't have anywhere else to go or take them for the whole day. Could you keep your kids out of the house all day in winter with no car and limited money? Every Sunday and Monday??

@Firefly2009 he's never lived anywhere else. We had been together since we were teens. He's been homeless as a teen when he fell out with his parents. Had a social worker for a while. Then we lived together but I wouldn't buy a house with him. He did live in the family house.

@HairdryerMary Does he have any sort of plan for the future which does not involve you selling your house? A short term plan which involves him perhaps seeing the children for shorter periods more often? Maybe a McDonald's one day after school, the library another, a film at his parent's house (by arrangement) another? Is he doing anything to make things better?

Sorry I don't have a solution, I don't think there is one. I just wanted to comment that "quality over quantity" probably applies here.

He is better off spending less time with them (half a day on weekends, maybe taking the eldest for dinner or a cake on a weekday after work?), but creating good memories and focusing on them, rather than absolutely trying to spend that full day each week and them remembering it as unpleasant/him being distracted by his grumpy parents etc.