We’ve been living under a child arrangement order, whereby the children live with mother and can choose to visit their father or not. There are days set out for the to provide these contact times To them, which periodically they don’t take up on but at the moment at least one of them will visit for a few hours.
Unless the children specifically request it (extraordinarily rare) they don’t have any contact outside of the court pointed provision. They never pick up the phone to call their father, and all phone contact is initiated from his side.
I know that he will push to continue the court order provision way beyond its expiration. The difficult I have is that, on the one hand I want to be as neutral as I can by supporting their visits, whilst at the same time supporting their right to refrain, yet on the other hand, I am concerned that there is already difficulty with the current situation as it stands, so I wouldn’t want it to go any further than it has to.
What I mean by this is that, one of the children is autistic and rules and habit are followed strictly. This means that there are times DC really prefer not to have the contact, but feel they have to force themselves to, because the invitation has gone out and involves a court order making that provision. it would be easy to extend a court order to beyond the age of 18 when it no longer replies, thus trapping someone in routines, expectations and duress.
I was wondering what other people do in a situation like this? I’m not really talking about a situation where the children have 50-50 split, because that is not the case with us. I’m more thinking of the traditional alternate-weekend arrangement or a single-day periodically, but never overnight. I’m guessing in the situation like that, a lot of the time children just refused to go (as is sometimes the case here) but children will often try to forge as much of a relationship as they can, which I support as long as they are safe, and so I do expect there will be something of contact still.
I would say it’s not exactly something that they dread, but they do feel obliged to go and often really don’t want to. Occasionally they can say no, but they’re nice people and a lot of the time they’re desperately trying to please or stick to the rules and the established routine. I should probably say that the rules and the routine are pushed by the contact parent without much consideration of what’s best for the child. there’s a lot of manipulation and guilt-tripping which doesn’t help.
The other thing is, of course, that quite selfishly, I don’t want my ex to keep turning up at my house to collect any of children - as per the (expired) court order - until they’re 30! I can actually honestly see this happening with our child who has autism because independence is a struggle at the moment. Catching a bus or cycling is out of the question. but at some point, I would really like to have my own life where my ex doesn’t come to my home. When I say Home, I’m not even talking about being invited in for a cup of tea, but it does things like stop me from being in the part of the garden where I am visible from the front. As you may have already guessed, there was an abusive situation in the past and so they won’t be a friendly parent situation sadly. Having said that, I do my duty in providing as much adherence to the court order as the children can cope with and choose to have, and genuinely support them having as good a relationship as they can possibly have with their father because that is in their best interest.
I don’t actually know an awful lot of people who have a non-50-50 split, or one that the children often don’t want to attend, or one where Autism is involved, which can slant things in one particular way. I suppose I’m not even just asking about how it would work out for a child with autism reaching the age of 18, but more anybody, neurodivergent or not.
I was wondering, do children gradually reduce contact or increase contact in their teen years and then make their own way to and from meeting the other parent once they’re 18? Or is it simply that 30-year-olds are still adhering to court orders that were established in childhood? I’m honestly wondering how the transition goes for people whether there is any commonality.