visitation (long but need advice)

[ChezzaB]

Well my friend does in fact, BF has DD her and exp split up when DD was 3mo. In the 3mo he was absolutely useless, never getting up to help in the night never getting up early etc. When lo was very little he dropped her down the steps outside their house in her car seat and then never accompanied her to hospital with my frien. The list goes on!

Anyway the reason I am here..... BF and exp had an amicable split and he has had access to his DD at friends house DD is 23mo. This has never been a problem but he is ow in a new relationship and his DP has a 4yo, said 4yo was taken from DP for 3 yrs due to her having bipolar (or that is what has been said) anyway she has only just been returned to her custody and friends ex is now wanting unsupervised access to his DD!

Can my friend stipulate that she doesn't want new DP to have any contact with DD? Also what are the chances of her exp getting the visitation he is requesting which has gone from 2 hrs supervised access to 1 hr unsupervised on a week day evening for her dinner and then from 10am till 5pm one weekend day! Sorry this is so long and convoluted but any advice would be great!

I think the probability of contact being gradually becoming unsupervised and extended is high.

Parents with responsibility are able to decide what activities a child does and who they see during contact. The new partner has had her own child returned to her care so she is unlikely to be deemed a risk to children. Sadly accidentally dropping babies is not at all uncommon and not really a reason for contact to be supervised.

Ongoing high levels of conflict are more damaging to children than almost anything else and good contact for children relies on parents working together (or at least not working against each other!) As the split was amicable and there has been regular contact it would be a shame if the relationship between the parents deteriorated now.

An hours unsupervised contact during the week is a good starting point and my suggestion would be to negotiate a plan to gradually introduce unsupervised contact and extend the time from, say, an hour on a Saturday to two or three hours, half a day, a full day, then overnights, full weekends and holidays. An impartial family mediator could help your friend and her ex come to an agreement if they are unable to do so between themselves.

Perhaps your friend can be encouraged to think of the positives - children who grow up in secure relationships with both separated parents tend to have good self esteem and are less likely to have behavioural problems and emotional difficulties later on, once she gets used to the child being away your friend will have a break to socialize or catch up with household chores etc.

"Perhaps your friend can be encouraged to think of the positives - children who grow up in secure relationships with both separated parents tend to have good self esteem and are less likely to have behavioural problems and emotional difficulties later on, once she gets used to the child being away your friend will have a break to socialize or catch up with household chores etc."

I don't think it's fair to state that as a blanket fact. That will depend entirely on the quality of the contact. Children that are abused by the father, for instance, would not give the child higher self esteem or less behavioural problems; in fact, the opposite is far more likely.

For example, my children have emotional issues because of the contact with their "father". Of course, in an ideal world every non resident parent (and parent with residence) would treat their children properly, but sadly this isn't the case.

But there's no suggestion here that the father is abusive, surely? So mentioning the harm that might do to a child is at best irrelevant.

Maybe so, I question the accuracy of it at all though. That's really insulting to children that cannot have contact with the other parent for other reasons, it simply isn't true that every child that doesn't see the other parent will have problems, much as the other parent might like to use that as a reason to push for contact.