I have a residency order for my two DC’s, 7 and 10. Abusive ExH has a contact order for every other weekend.
Yesterday I took the children out of school, mostly to protect them but also to ease the pressure on class numbers as they’re down to skeleton staff (quite a few parents are NHS workers). I haven’t spoken to ExH about my decision as he will disagree and be unreasonable about it.
I work from home and we live rurally with lots of outside space. I’m going to home Ed DC’s, encourage us all to get outside more, i.e grow veg, build dens, long walks etc. My elderly parents and grandparents are already isolating, so in a week if we’re all symptom free we can visit/have them here.
Although life is going to be incredibly different, I take comfort in knowing that I can protect them in a kind of bubble (probably not sustainable I know). However my main concern is my ExH disregard to this virus and managing contact arrangements.
Both him and his partner have two small businesses with high levels of social interaction. They don’t agree that this virus is any big deal and think I’m a paranoid idiot (his words). Their children are still at school and so higher levels of exposure and I worry my kids will pick up the virus during contact and bring it home meaning, I won’t be able to support my elderly family members. I totally get that this might go on for a very long time and it would be unreasonable to expect contact to stop, however I don’t know what to do to manage it.
Ex is intimidating and abusive so will play on my anxiety more and do the opposite of what I ask. Any advice? How are other separated parents coping?