AIBU to refuse travel sport training during our custody time?

[MonkeyMaze101]

Posting here for traffic. It will be long but don't want to dripfeed / leave out anything that might be relevant.

For background context: DH & I work FT. He has one teenager from a previous relationship and we have 2 preschool aged children together. Stepson is 50/50 between here and his mothers home.

Now the AIBU: Last year SS mum signed him up to a travel sport without discussing with us. Essentially he would have 2 training sessions a week (one on her day, one on ours) and a game / tournament most weeks. These games are minimum 2 hours drive away from our home. Whilst obviously we are happy that he is playing a sport, we couldn't physically get him to the training during our access because of our work schedules and needing to collect other kids from childcare and having to feed everyone etc. For a few weeks his mum collected him from our house and dropped him back but she was always making nasty remarks about how we were lazy and unsupportive. We took him to pretty much every game / tournament which often meant lugging the young kids along or my DH missing out on a full day with them if it was too far. After a few weeks his mum just stopped collecting him during our days. He also missed probably 50% of the training on her days.

There have been half-term and summer camps that stepson has been signed up for and that we have either paid fully for or contributed toward. Out of a total of 9 days, he attended 2 days of the camps (on our time).

This year his mum has signed him up again and the revised training means it is 75% during our access. We live a 30 minute drive from the training grounds. We physically cannot get him to one day of the training (50%) again because we won't be finished work, collected from school and daycare and home to feed everyone before the session starts. My DH told his ex that we cannot take him this day and to facilitate it (because she's being quite nasty again saying we aren't supporting and we are full of obstacles) we could swap days so that the access arrangements all change by 1 day. That would mean that she took him every week on Wednesday (the day we can't do) and we would take him each week Friday. She has denied this and said its unreasonable because she wants Friday evenings with stepson too. That's fair and makes sense but the training sessions go on until 9pm so there's not really much Friday left unless of course she wasn't taking him?

We suggested that we just have that arrangement during the sport season, meaning it's only half the year. That was a no go. We suggested we trial it for a few weeks and see how it works, that was a no go. She has suggested that she will collect stepson and bring him back on the Wednesday. Are we being unreasonable to say that no, that doesn't suit us? Midweek one or both of us are often working late at night and we don't want to have to go to the meeting point at 9.30pm to pick up Stepson.

YABU: Just suck it up and struggle so he can do the sport, even though it's less than ideal for the rest of the family.

YANBU: You have offered solutions and the other parent needs to compromise too.

Lots of parents have to adapt to meet the requirements of sport for their DC. We have two doing high level sport. Training multiple times a week and games at weekends. We work around it and to different directions the weekend. It’s not necessary to do everything as a family. You’d still have Sundays together?

We live in Ireland.... Id say at least 60% of the country is rural. That's not something we can change.

We don't see it as a negative. My DH (or sometimes me) are out every other evening / weekend that SS is with us doing other sports. They are in the car together for an hour each day.

I just wanted to know if our solution (a swap of one day) was reasonable or not to make this work.

It’s what parents up and down the country do all the time. Solo parenting 🙄 giving the wee kids tea and putting them to bed.

What is a “travel sport”?
What is your SS saying about all this training and camps he has missed?

He says he wants to do both. One he has played for 8 years. This new sport he just took up last year, he says that he wants to do it again but has no answer other than "I didn't want to" or "I don't know" when DH asked why he missed lots of sessions last year.

I don't have any issue solo-parenting.
I certainly didn't intend my comment of DH not seeing our younger kids for a whole day as a negative thing about solo-parenting. I actually meant it that we did that because we wanted to support SS.

Oh I know, it wasn’t a dig at you OP! I was more laughing at the ‘solo parenting’ remark as if both parents are present at all times in any household!

By travel sport I mean the games or tournaments involve a great deal of travel. The nearest competitor is 2 hours away. So a game or tournament will always take an entire day or weekend. It's not like a football game that is 20 mins away and the whole thing is wrapped up in 3 hours.

Actions speak louder than words. If his Mum won’t swap days or facilitate him going on her days there seems very little point you messing around your family life to accommodate. Especially since I would imagine the team/coach will get utterly fed up with his lack of commitment and ask him to leave and/or he won’t play well if he doesn’t practice.

Has dh asked if anyone on team could give son a lift to training and he could pick up?

He can only do both if Ex agrees to swap custody days during the sport terms.

Or acceot that he can just go to the ones Ex can get him to, and competitions you can take him to.

Sometimes it's just not possible to do everything you want to do.

We have adapted for his other sport.
Not always being together isn't an issue. We are more than happy to divide and conquer... thats part of having kids

Our issue is that we have adapted our work schedules already and work flexibly to facilitate his other sport plus various school or daycare pickups that we genuinely would struggle to try to adapt again on a Wednesday also. We offered a solution where he stays with his mum on Wednesday to attend the sport and stays with us 1 other day but she doesn't agree with that... my AIBU is why are we the unreasonable ones?

You are not the unreasonable ones OP.

Why do you all need to come home and be feed before the sports practice? Surely you deal with the younger two and DH deals with older son. If you have to take him with two younger ones in tow, then so be it, this happens in lots of families and I would suspect that if he was your biological son it would be happening too.

It is very likely his Mum has signed him up as it’s something he wants to do. As I’m sure you will do for your biological children when they are older and I’d bet this months wage you’d facilitate them getting there!

My child played elite sport, training 3 evenings a week and match on a Saturday, their refused to take her at all if it fell on his time. So I used to pick up, take them and drop back to Dads so they didn’t miss out. It did effect their relationship, it will affect your SS & DH relationship, especially as it sounds like he is prioritises his new family over his original family.

I think you might need to have a rethink about what your next decade might look like. You both seem to have to work really hard at work, logging back in at 9pm etc if you drive a child to a sport. Because in terms of time taken up: using a nursery which runs eg 8am to 6pm is a lot easier than when they get to school and all of a sudden you have 8-9am, 3-6pm mon-Fri and 13 weeks of the year holiday to try to rally around. Add in that your own dc will also need ferrying around of an evening to their various sports in a few years time, and with your current jobs, there simply won’t be enough hours in the day. This particular one clearly isn’t that important, as he does other sports too; but you will definitely need to have a rethink for going forward how it will all work. I only know a few families where both work full time, and they outsource so so much as they have no choice if they want their kids to keep up their sports, which they do.

DH has to go straight back to work when he arrives in the door. He is already cutting it fien if there is a delay with the bus or traffic etc. I leave to get the younger kids just as or just before DH & SS arrive in the door. When I get back it's 6.15 / 6.30 and SS would need to be gone already by then. He would have a 30 minute maximum turnaround time to eat and get some schoolwork done, get change into his kit etc.

Yes, we obviously know he wants to do it. We never disputed that. But we facilitate his other sport every other day he's with us too, we are offering a day swap to facilitate this which was rejected.

My DH is prioritising holding down a job and keeping a roof over our heads. This sport was not a thing before our other children came along. I can guarantee that if I only had biological kids, a new activity or sport that was a genuine struggle to attend just wouldn't be on the cards in the first place.

Why would SS mum not allowing a swap in schedule be the reason SS and DH relationship is affected? Why are we more unreasonable than her?

I think you might need to have a rethink about what your next decade might look like.

DSS is a teenager now. In far less than a decade he'll be an adult. There won't be a 50:50 schedule and presumably he won't be relying on his parents to ferry him around to sports practice.

The school timings don’t make sense to me. DH has to leave work early to drive 20 mins to pick him up from the bus and they don’t get home til 5.30?

Why are you missing work hours to take him to the other sport? That’s doesn’t seem reasonable tbh.

I think you need a proper look at your working hours because what you’re doing now just isn’t sustainable. You need to be working the correct hours each day and if DSS can’t do all his sport then, well, tough. Most kids activities have to fit in with parents working!

Exactly. So far mine are primary and I only have one in a team (so 2 week nights and a Sunday morning) and the second will be joining one soon. They love sport and I anticipate this will be the standard teenage juggle all parents have - and im glad for that, it’s great for them if that’s what they like.It’s also looking more likely me and their dad will split and I really hope we will both do everything we can to support them both to do the same things they would have done if we were together and I hope be flexible around schedules - he’s a great dad so I’m positive for that at least. Blended families and especially half siblings would make this way more complicated of course but you have to remember how the older ones would be treated in a standard set up

op they don’t become less time consuming as they grow just different needs and later nights / mornings. and yes it’s completely normal to have weekends and evenings spent with one parent with the older one and one with the younger one(s), that’s life with more than one kid.

If it was one of your shared DC that wanted to do the sport I'm sure you'd find a way. One of mine did it and the youngest was at matches and training with us, along with many other younger siblings.

Yes, you are being unreasonable because you are writing 'we' do this, 'we' do that. This isn't really anything to do with you. Your husband needs to step up and parent his son and part of that is enabling their hobbies, inconvenient to you though that may be.

Poor SS! It’s not his fault his dad chose to deprioritize him and set up a whole new family. If his parents were still together and he didn’t have little step siblings in the mix, this wouldn’t be a problem. You’re being way too prescriptive, OP. Two of mine do sports all over, matches and tournaments constantly on the cards various distances away both Saturday and Sunday. Training days literally confirmed this week for the next academic year. DH and I then plan our working weeks around who’s best placed to take whom where and that’s the rota until next July. You can’t say that this wasn’t planned or Wednesday etc… This is the situation you’re dealing with now. Make it work. Sounds like SS is being penalised because of the way his parents have chosen to handle things.

YANBU - swapping days was a reasonable fix, it sounds like the ex is just being difficult on purpose. However I wouldn’t be signing a child up for a sport he had not attended regularly the previous year, if it was expensive and logistically challenging.

School end sat 4.30, bus arrives at bus stop at 5.05 / 5.10.
DH works about 50 mins from from school bus stop. So he leaves the office at 4.15pm. He needs to make up 1.5hrs but the other days SS is here after school he can't always make them up immediately as he needs to go back out to other sports / sort SS food. So sometimes he's logging in later at night, or working later some other evenings when SS isn't here to make up the time. Sometimes his projects mean he has to go back to the office to use specific equipment.

We have always made it work previously because if DH couldn't take him due to a work commitment I would take him. But we always had a few nights in the week where we could make up the hours. But we would literally be run ragged if we had to add an extra night. Our solution is his mum swaps a day so he can still go. We'd still take him to 50% of that newer sport and all the other sport. But tbf the poll is suggesting we are unreasonable.

What are you talking about?
We took him to ALL of his games.