Need appropriate response to this twatish behaviour

[MrsSnape]

I posted this in chat but meant to post it here.

The ex is supposed to have the kids from saturday to sunday every fortnight. He's always begrudged this and put everything else before them. One time he told me he couldn't afford to have them and then promptly took his girlfriend's kids to Flamingo Land.

Anyway, since he split with his GF he has moved back in with his mum so no longer has them over night hmm now he has them on a saturday and simply takes them to his mother's house before going to bed and leaving his mum to look after them (or rather, let them spend all day playing on the xbox while he sleeps).

I was getting sick of this and kept asking him "why don't you take them out??" and he always replied with "no money" hmm

So 2 weeks ago he text on the friday night and said "Can't have boys this weekend so will have them on friday when I get paid so I can take them out". So my weekend was all fooked up but more importantly, kids were disapointed but I explained to them "at least if you go on Friday, he'll take you out somewhere fun".

So Friday came, they wen't with him, returned at 4pm and I asked "where did you go?" and they said "grandma's all day and played on the playstation" angry ex told me "my wages were messed up so I'll take them out next saturday instead". So the kids were all excited...saturday came and he took them to...PC world where he bought some bits for his stupid computer and told the kids he had no money to take them out" hmm angry

Anyway, yesterday the kids said "can we go to dads today?" as it costs him no money hmm I assumed he wouldn't mind so I phoned him and got told "no, can't have them today as I'm taking my nephew out and can't cope with DS2 and him together" shock so he can take his nephew out but not his own kids??? he then said "tomorow they can come though". I asked "what time are you coming for them?" and he replied "dunno, whenever I get up" hmm

So this morning, kids got dressed nice, waited for him to turn up...I got a text at 11am saying "can't have them today, not feeling well". bastard.

"Not feeling well" basically means a hangover. I've been feeling shit for months with GENUINE, serious illnesses but do I get a break? do I hell.

I'm so pissed off with him. I'm wondering how I should respond, I don't see why he should keep getting away with it.

I'm thinking a sarcy "funny how you're always ill after a saturday night isn't it, but as you have no money, ever...it's not like it's a hangover or anything is it?"

Or a simple "kids are upset, you're out of order".

Or do I ignore him?

What would you do?

i have tried all avenues you have suggested. It always ended in me getting us geting absolutely nowhere.

I chose to ignore my ex, for 10 months after 2 yrs of what yuo are ging thru. I made no efort to 'help' 'explain where he might be letting them down' I closed up rank. I concetrated on dd. Now he is making more effort, after sulking for all that time.

dd had got to point just before this where she didn't trust him anyway and didn't wish to see him.

I know how angry it makes you, how upset i really do. I would ignore him. Not chase him up. Do nothing, and get on with things. Tell your ds's that you havent heard form him, that you hope he will call, come, arrange something but you can't control what daddy does.

how old are they? I would say you don't need an extra kid to look out for tbh. Oh and i'd also say that it does get easier, but you have to go thru alot of get there.

have replied on your other thread

Do you need him so that you can have a break, or rather that you are concerned about the constant cancellations?

Does he respond to authority? If so, perhaps you could suggest that since he is breaking agreements, that you would prefer that visits the children at a contact center?

I would ignore him and presume he will not have them so the children do not get let down.

Try and plan fun activities for them which are cheap or free and just get on with life without him to piss you off all the time.

It will be his loss in the end but I just could not bear the disappointment for the children.

Rant on here and we will support you and ignore the barsteward!!

He sounds a bit immature, like a teenager rather than a dad.

However as you have to be civil to your children's father, and ultimately get on with him until they are grown up, I would suggest a very cunning and subtle re-education plan. (DH has just added a male viewpoint to this, and said that he might be a bit scared as well, and he might actually need building up in confidence regarding how to deal with his kids).

I would rustle up a Saturday or Sunday lunch every week for a few weeks, and invite him along to that to see what happens. Get pre-prepared veg and a simple roast from a supermarket to make life easy for yourself, as you can't expect a lot of help from him at the moment, from the sound of it. If he doesn't turn up, then just enjoy having a nice meal with the kids anyway.

He will probably come for the free lunch as the line of least resistance. The kids will then get to see him, and you will start to get a bit of control back. You can then start a surreptitious retraining programme by making him go out to the park or cinema or whatever with you after lunch, particularly if the kids have been briefed to demand this.

Bit by bit, build up the time he is spending with them, and the variety of things he is doing. Then see if you can let go and allow him just to get on with it. Praise him a lot when you can so he feels he's doing a good thing. Even if he's being a bit hopeless, try really hard not to point this out.

Hopefully within a few weeks he will be feeling more positive and start to take the initiative, once he's worked out how to do it.

I would be very interested to know if people think this is good advice and also how it works.

My eldest is 10 so it's not as if he's suddenly been pushed into fatherhood. He's just a lazy twat, thinks more of pissing up in the pub with his childish little friends than he does about his own kids.

I invite him to every school play, every parent evening, every karate competition, every achievement assembly...he's been to a grand total of 0.

He doesn't even take the time to phone them during the week.

If I invited him around, he wouldn't come.

What a lazy tosser.
In that case, ranting is probably the only way forward!

Mrs Snape, your ex sounds very similar to mine, except mine expected it all his way, he would see ds when he wanted, so could be every weekend for 4 months then nothing for the next year (barring birthdays and Christmas, he always had contact then ). No maintainance, no help, no nothing.

He also says he has no money, but can go to Bingo on a regular basis, smoke, drink etc. Ok, this may have changed since he married (September), Im not sure, but know it was a given before.

Ds is now 6, nearly 7, we split just over 4 years ago. What finally made a difference was when I told him regular contact or no contact, and meant it. Xp knew that would mean no contact, including the good times. Lo and behold, he has had him every other sunday since. Ok, its not a lot, but it has been stuck to. Ok, he takes him to his new family and leaves him to play with his step-siblings, does very little with him, but does have contact IYSWIM.

As for assemblies etc, he has never been to ds's, but does go see his step kids, who are at the same school - thus if something whole of ks1 are involved in sees ds as well. (Well, it's something)

Do you have a court agreement on contact? If so maybe you could go back and get it revised if you want.

If you need the break xp having the children gives, is there anyone else who would have them for a couple of hours/a day/overnight on a regular basis? Your parents? A friend? Even if you share it, i.e. you have all children one week, friend has them in return next week.

Sorry this is a long ramble, havent yet learnt the art of a short post

No wise words but just wanted to say how terrible it is. I think you and LRB978 are both being very mature and handling the situation well - I would just want to go bonkers at him!

i think the above ideas are brill and so grown up but unfortunatly in reality when you are the parent having to deal with all this then you just want to kill the git that buggers off and doesnt look back. mrs snape i feel for you it must be driving you nuts and i wish there was a solution to your problem. rant and moan as much as you need to but men who behave like this rarely change ..

I have to say I wonder if you are right, JT109. How on earth do they end up so crap?

ive been there 'got the t shirt and the confused teenager (because of it) and this was 18 years ago. his dad is still the same.

Lukesmammy

Tried ranting, tried nagging, tried ignoring, tried everything else I could think of. Was affecting ds's behaviour, and in the end I figured he would be no worse off not seeing his dad than seeing him on such an adhoc basis, so I laid down the ultimatum, fully prepared to accept whichever xp went for.

Ds's behaviour is still a little off in the week after his dads visit, but much better than it was.

Can you enlist his Mum's help in getting him to stick to his commitments? Bit silly with a grown man, I know...

Same here.

At one point, my (very well off and extremely well-housed) ex had me driving over there to take her to Brownies and then round his house on a Friday after school, popping in on a Saturday to help, and then going over on a Sunday to collect her. Two hour trip each day. I had no life at all.

Then I suddenly thought, wtf am I doing this? Just so he can sit on his miserable behind and be so lazy?

There was never any proper food in the house and it was filthy half the time. He just ignored her, and one night when it was her 10th birthday and she was having a sleepover at his place (because I lived in a tiny housing association flat that was too small) he just left the kids in the house on their own and went to A and E because he had slipped over earlier in the day and banged his finger. I got a very tearful call from my daughter at about 10pm when they all realised there was no adult in the house, and I had to get a friend to go across who lived nearer than me (I was dealing with a fractious newborn at the time). He didn't see anything wrong with what he did and still doesn't to this day.

I believe the expression is 'knobhead'. DD is grown up so we don't speak now.

Sorry not to answer the OP, but I do have insights into your pain about this- my sister has had to put with a similar level of twattishnes from her ex for the last 3 years (although it was probably worse for her when they were togther).

I just wanted to glean a little collective wisdom to help her deal with the new sitaution he's landed her in.

She has 2 children, aged 5 and 7, who have had a large number of illnesses and accidents in the last year. She works full time to pay for them all to survive since twatex (TM) does not contribute a penny to their upkeep.

Now, due to the large number of days off she has had to nurse them during this year (kicking off in January with pneumonia and most recently taking her son to the orthopaedic clinic to have his broken arm (broken 2x this year) treated amongst other things), she has no annual leave left for Xmas. She wanted to bring the children to me as she did last year, from Dec 20th to 2nd Jan, coming down herself over the actual days of Xmas. He has expressed the desire to 'see his kids at Christmas', by which he means ON Christmas Day. I said he was welcome to come down to Devon to see them (he never actually uses his whole contact time, and always brings them back after 1 or 2 hours of the 7 he's supposed to have them).

There was a family court hearing a couple of weeks ago; he decided not to turn up, saying to my sister that 'they always do things in your favour anyway'. My sister asked about the arrangements over Christmas. The family court judge said she couldn't bring them to me and that he could not change anything since the person who started the whole thing (twatex) was not there. Which means that
a) my sister will have to take unpaid leave from her fairly high powered job to be at the beck and call of Twatex over the whole Xmas week, and he might never even come to see them
2) she is not entirely at the mercy of Twatex as he can now control her movements without even getting off his arse.

Any advice for my sister? (and sorry once again to OP for the hijack, but I was hoping to catch your posters as well. Incidentally, having experienced my Extwat out law, I can also only applaud you for being as mature and calm as you are being).

It's unfair on one level, but frankly it sounds like she needs a bit of a holiday over Xmas so really the unpaid leave might not be a totally bad thing.

Judge was ridiculously unsympathetic though - was it a bloke?

She is now entirely at the mercy of... must proofread before hitting post...

And yes, you are right Boffin that she almost certainly needs some time off. It's just that money is tight (she is high powered in the public sector) although at least she has no nursery fees to pay this year since her daughter started school.

Judge at this particular court is usually very sympathetic. Am not sure if she got different judge this time, but suspect from the response she got on this that they are bound by law because Twatex started the whole access thing (she had no money to start a case, he got legal aid although he is earning more than she is, but under the table).

Yes, but don't you think that whenever everyone in the family starts getting ill or damaged it is so often because the poor mum is stressed out of her box?

If she's public sector she might be able to beg for a bit more leave, say 3 days compassioniate, bearing in mind she has had to use so much up on her kids. Nobody will miss her between Xmas and NY, surely?

Plus I would shop him to the Inland Revenue if I were her.

She has a recently recruited former private sector boss who is turning out to be very unsympathetic to her children's needs. The place she works for is now a quango heading for semi-privatisation, and conditions are shifting very fast there (although not the pay). Actually her job is a nightmare in its own right at the moment, but much as she'd like a better one, there are so many variables at the moment that she doesn't want to upset her only source of income.

And yes, I agree with you entirely about the pace of their lives leading to the illness and injury. I can't imagine it's normal for a 4 yr old to get pneumonia for example...

Could she get herself signed off somehow, and get a bit of a break before or after Xmas?