Children's dad not wanting to bring them to extra curricular activities

[Alohapotato]

Children's dad does not want to bring children to activities they have been doing for few years and they really love them.
It will be every other week, how this will impact the children? How will impact their performance on these activities missing half of the lessons? They are now very sad knowing they will be missing their activity every other week.

Activities were arranged before dad started to have weekdays contact. ( he only wanted the children during weekends) . He does not have 50/50, only every other weekend and the week children dont see him during the weekend they go to his dad for 2 nights.
we live in a small town with not lot of clubs, studios etc..
Dad lives 10 min walking from the clubs.

I feel sad they are going to miss so much, my oldest is really good at football but him missing training every other week and some matches won't help him , same with my daughter who does ballet...

@Alohapotato Can you ask whether you can take them? I know it's shit- but it's so difficult for a kid to be part of a team if they're only there half the time. Sorry to make it worse...

It would be helpful to know why he has said he doesn’t want to do this?

He has limited time with them so maybe he has ideas about how that time would be spent. He could be right or wrong in his approach. Maybe he will change his mind.

I don’t think you should interfere if you have already told him the kids like doing these things and it’s part of their social life. But it’s ultimately his call during his time.

Given that he has quite limited contact a practical approach could work.

Would it be possible for him to have a different mid week day when they don’t have a club? Can either child move to a different club for the same thing (even if it’s in the next town or something?) If the timing is straight after school could a friends parent take from school to club and then dad pick up?

Are the kids of an age that they could walk to and fro themselves? Or will they get to that age in a year or so if you facilitated it a bit?

So unfair on the children!

The lengths women have to go to compensate for men who are too selfish to practically support their children’s interests is ludicrous.

I wish that, as a society, we set the bar for men higher and said ‘of course you should fit in to your children’s lives; doing the logistical bits is parenting and is in the children’s best interests’. Instead we treat fathering as the exception and encourage Disney dad attitudes - where no one expects him to do anything but the nice, easy, fun bits.

Because these fathers don’t pay the nursery fees but still expect to get tickets for the nativity. They don’t take the kids to training, but they’ll turn up for the cup final (and act like they have been something other than obstructive about the child playing football at all). They want contact on the child’s birthday, over Easter and at Christmas, but the don’t want to do the mundane bits.

It’s a pathetic contribution to raising a child.

If myself and my husband split up, it's common sense that any activities I arranged for our daughter would have to occur when I had her and likewise for my husband.

Really?

Say your daughter was having swimming lessons every Saturday morning and her father looked after her every other weekend. He refuses to take her to them on "his" weekends. Presumably you wouldn't care if your daughter missed half of her lessons that you're paying £15 a week for?

You could ask him about working your days around clubs. But don’t offer to drive them on dads days. If dad doesn’t consider what the kids want to do that’s on him. The kids will be the ones with the negative consequences from missing training or games, and hopefully they will let dad know how they feel. Enjoy your time to yourself, it won’t last long.

So when my daughter, who lives to dance, moves up a grade and some of the classes are now on her dad's night that's me being mean and spiteful?

If my ex was being obstructive and not taking the dc to their swimming lesson, I'd be arranging lessons after school on my days.

Unfortunately even a judge cannot force a parent to take their dc swimming/dancing/football training/classmates parties on their scheduled contact days, and the other parent shouldn't be booking stuff if it clashes with contact.

Luckily even though my ex is a vile and abusive arse, he does recognise the importance of children's hobbies and that I can't control which day they fall on (particularly the ones that switch evening as you get older)

In most places there isn't a pick of nights for every hobby at every level

I also know as children get older if they refused to go to dad's on a certain night because they wanted to do a hobby he wouldn't take them to that most judges would respect that.

(My children's dad turned his hobby into an incredibly lucrative career which I imagine helped)

If it's not court ordered then don't let him have them on the nights they have their clubs?

Their activity time is more important. I had this out with XP in mediation. Non-resident parents should be read the riot act for doing this to their dc's.

If he refuses to facilitate their activities he can probably kiss his relationship with them goodbye the moment they are teens.

Agreed my daughter's not yet in her teens and she's very clear that if her dad won't take her to dance then she won't go to his.

Could the two weekday contact nights be on days they don't have clubs? He sounds selfish but you can't force him to do it.

I think it depends on how often they are at after school clubs, but you need to go back to the court or mediator and get an agreement. We've all seen the parents on the swimming lessons circuit who are a martyr to running their kids around multiple clubs - it this where the term ""soccer mum" came from? Having an activity during his contact time needs to be a mutually agreed arrangement, otherwise its unfairly cutting into his quality time with the children and restricting what they can do at weekends. If they are going to be a world class ballet dancer or footballer then that is one thing, but otherwise clubs shouldn't come before quality time with parents.

The clubs shouldn't be chosen unless both parents accept the responsibility of taking them each week.

The child and rp should ask the nrp.

And this is often why it’s so shit to be a child of separated parents. Very often there’s an NRP who not only doesn’t support the child, but actually blocks them from being able to do things they want to do.

as others have said, children aren’t stupid. They can see that one parent is taking them to activities, ensuring they have their friends round, and generally trying to facilitate their life and the other parent expects everything to revolve around themself (often himself) and actually makes the child feel guilty for wanting to go to football or their friends.

I do this. The kids shouldn't have to suffer because they have a shit dad. Nice to see there's so many others in the same situation as me on this thread

I don't believe this is a "shit dad" situation.
There are very more variables at play here like distance etc

What makes me laugh about this is if the NRP was to say to the RP this is happening every week they would soon kick off about it.

@CharliesAngels81 The OP has said it's not far-distance is not an issue. The rest of your post makes no sense.

I understand it perfectly well, if the non-resident parent was to arrange an activity and tell the resident parent that X, Y or Z activity was happening during the resident parents time then the resident parent would kick up a stink.

It's what a lot of posters here are saying but in reverse, telling the OP to tell NRP that it's happening like it or lump it.

We had this throughout our entire court case. Cafcass said the dad was entitled to spend his time with the children, not take them to activities. Result was that DD stopped seeing him as soon as the court case was over. (He "won" but his legal aid ended so he stopped bothering.)

@GuinnessBird But the arrangement was made before the contact arrangements were made. It's ridiculous that either parent should stand for purely selfish reasons between a kid and a club they love. Whether the parent is R or NR.

Exactly. My daughter is very clear that if her dad stands in the way of her hobby /passion then she just won't go on those days.

Similarly DSS wanted to do something and his mum refused (we would have paid) and he still talks years later about the opportunity she took away from him

This isnt about about what mum wants /dad wants but what the child wants

Something the court /cafcass (quite incredibly) seem to forget too sometimes