What would you do?

[theredhen]

Been seperated from my ex for 8 years. DS is 12.

He's never been particularly reliable. He's supposed to pick our son up every other weekend at 6pm on Friday and drop him back 6pm on Sunday. This rarely happens. He works all sorts of strange hours and sometimes he picks son up at 10pm on the Friday or more often, not until the Saturday morning. I'm not normally informed of this until Friday evening, making it virtually impossible to arrange anything for myself or for DS on that Friday evening as I never know what is happening. I appreciate he doesn't know what time he might finish work or how long he will be stuck on the M25, but I still find it very unfair on us. More often that not, he doesn't want to pick DS up on Saturday morning as it means he has to drive a long way out of his way to come back and pick him up so he would rather DS sit up til 11pm and get picked up and then driven for another hour to his GF's. All this I can live with but it's quite annoying and not exactly ideal for DS.

What I am finding hard to deal with is when he lets DS / me down for the whole weekend on a Friday evening. He will just announce that he has to work and that he can't have DS this weekend. I'm not convinced that he only finds about work that day - I'm sure he has more notice than that.

Anyway, a friend of mine wants to organise a "warhammer" evening and sleepover (DS is quite into this) and would love to go. She has left it up to me to let her know a date. DP has 4 children who we have every other weekend too so as you can imagine, I quite look forward to having a weekend "off" and DP and I don't have any other babysitters so we really only get time together when DS is with his Dad and DSC are with their Mum.

So, do I arrange the "warhammer" evening on "my" weekend and send DS off while I stay at home with DSC and then hope that ex might take DS the following weekend or should I just arrange it for ex's weekend and then I KNOW DP and I will get an evening to ourselves, but also take the risk that I am saying to ex that's it's OK to just let him down on his weekend, something that I keep trying to drum into him is not OK.

Arrange it for your Ex's weekend and tell him in advance, or let your DS tell him, that he already has plans for that weekend.

Thanks. I get so sick of not arranging things to ex's weekend because he wants contact and then he lets him down anyway.

Anyone decent would see him after the party or at least phone him in the week, but it's been 4 weeks since he's had any contact even though I suggest to him he can phone whenever he likes or see him whenever he likes.

arrange it for your Ex's weekend. your son is old enough to have a social life and your ex will have to be flexible in order to accomodate this,, the contact isn't for his benefit it is for your son's so if your son wants to do somethig else it is up to him.

I'm with overmydeadbody - arrange it, let ex know well in advance, and suggest an alternate weekend for contact to make up for the lost time. As long as you give notice and don't do that regularly there's nothing wrong with doing this. DS has a life and it's down to his parents to accomodate his interests as far as possible.

Being flexible about plans to accomodate DS's interests while giving lots of notice is not the same thing as regularly letting DS down at the last minute. Don't even try to compare the two.

I'd not leave this to DS to arrange though. Contact arrangements should be a thing for the grown-ups to deal with, at least until the child is 15 or 16.

No, I do all the arranging because ex is really hard to pin down to anything and DS would be too vague. If I phone him on a Tuesday and ask if he is definetely having DS this weekend as I have plans and will arange a babysitter otherwise, he will tell me he will have DS, so I trust him and don't arange a babysitter then on the Friday morning text me to say he is working.

I now make sure I have a continguency plan which is really unfair on friends when I say to them can you have DS if ex lets me down.

My worry is that with this weekend, if I arrange it for ex's weekend, ex just accepts it and doesn't bother with DS for weeks and weeks. I feel guilty and that I am the one stopping DS from seeing ex. I know that isn't really the case as I have spent 8 years bending over backwards but I still feel guilty!

From what you've said it sounds like your ex often chooses not to see DS for weeks and weeks. If he subsequently chooses not to see DS for weeks and weeks this time, how does that suddenly make it your fault?

Try to stop seeing this as you stopping DS from seeing ex. You're not. What you're doing is asking ex to swap his weekend for a different one, as a one-off, to accomodate something that DS is interested in. That is not stopping anyone from doing anything, it's trying to be flexible and reach a compromise that means that everyone gets what they want.

Your ex changes the contact schedule to suit him as and when he wants. You'll be changing the contact schedule to suit DS.

You are allowed to do this. If ex decides to not see DS for weeks and weeks afterwards that's nothing to do with you, that will just be ex doing what he usually does but with a different excuse. It's still his choice.

I know you are right. I shall keep reminding myself that I have nothing to feel guilty about.

Just keep saying to yourself "I am allowed to do this". And, yes, I know that's easier to say than it is to believe. I've been there and I've done that. But the more you take these kinds of decisions I promise you that it will get easier.