Advice regarding mediation and safeguarding

[Birdgirl21]

Hi,

I am primary parent to my 3 year old, I live in a different country of the UK to England where her father lives. I left due to his anger issues and his lack of support.

He has always been erratic and impulsive and angry, but for the majority of the time we can be amicable - until he decides we arent. He has always been a very emotional, angry man which I know comes from a place of fear.

He wants me to bring her to him more often, leave her there and he will bring her back to my country. He sometimes visits and stays in my house as I am doing my best to facilitate contact even though it is not easy for me and leaves me very unsettled.

He visited this weekend with 24 hours notice, barely looked at the child as he had 'too much work to do' however I was polite and respectful, we were fine, and the moment he landed home he began the predictable behaviour, making demands, verbally attacking me, trying to control. 2 days later he has arranged mediation to force me to bring her to him more regularly - ie every school holiday.

However - I cannot commit to regular pinned down dates for a variety of reasons

(TW - suicide)

• finances (CMA has been a difficult battle)
• Work commitments - I fly to his country for work regularly and cant afford to go once for work and once to deliver child.
• safeguarding - most importantly.
• 2 months ago rang at 8am drunk telling me that I was making him want to commit suicide.
• 6 weeks ago rang to say he jacked in his house in England and was coming to live in my house - without informing me of any of this. Obviously I gave short shrift but this demonstrates his lack of insight, poor judgement and irrational decision making and lack of respect for my wishes or personal space.
• He has no permanent job after December and therefore I cannot be sure he will have secure accommodation. He has very little support in his country.
• ADHD diagnosis - if he is focusing on something else he doesnt appear to react to my child when she tries to get his attention. It affects his sleep, his reliance on alcohol, his controlling of his emotions. I have been instrumental in getting him a diagnosis and treatment.

Obviously I need to make a judgement as to his mental state and his level of support each time he wants to have her. I have always tried to be as kind as possible, making the safeguarding decisions for myself - ensuring he has one of his parents with him when he is looking after her solo.

I am nervous about my approaching mediation meeting. Ultimately, he is not a bad bloke, I feel sorry for him but also confident in my parenting decisions.

I feel backed into a corner now. Can anyone advise what might happen if I mention these potential safegaurding issues in mediation? I'm managing it fine on my own but now that he is pushing mediation I am afraid of detonating a bomb we can't recover from.

Any advice gratefully received.

You can mention them but assuming he has PR and is her father, he can push for more regular, scheduled, contact and I can’t imagine he wouldn’t be awarded it.

If you push the safeguarding concerns they may decide it should be supervised contact which could be one of his parents for example. But adhoc contact as and when you decide isn’t “fair” for him and even a court probably wouldn’t be happy with you wanting it that way. There does need to be scheduled times.

With regards to finances, typically the parent who creates the distance (if it’s a big distance) has to bare the burden of the cost which it sounds like would be you.

Disclose all of your concerns in mediation but be aware that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn’t make him an unfit parent, lots of parents have ADHD and have their children full time.

@Mrsttcno1 thanks for your reply - its really useful to get some perspective from another angle and I really do want to be as fair as possible. Thats why I want some opinions on how to deal with the mediation really, as it's obviously quite an emotional time.

It's not that I want to 'push' the safegaurding in mediation - if anything I would prefer if there was less intervention for his sake, I don't want to make his life any more difficult than it must already be. I really want us to have a good relationship and for my child to thrive in both of our company, but it's really hard to predict his demands as they change frequently and unexpectedly.

Apologies if I was flippant about including the ADHD diagnosis. I don't think there is correlation about his fitness to parent - just that as he is only beginning to have insight into how his symptoms impact his life and how to implement coping strategies. I have no doubt he loves her wildly, his ADHD is no barrier to that. When he is truly present and coping he is a great dad but he can flip on a dime and lose focus very quickly - this may have nothing to do with his condition as you are right that other parents with ADHD don't exhibit these tendancies.

I will have a think about the scheduled time. In principle I can absolutely agree with having scheduled times but his behaviour and past history with us both gives me pause. I have brought her over twice now and booked flights for her to stay with him for the approaching Christmas, despite two days ago he said he wasnt able to commit to Christmas as he didnt know where he would be living. It's not that I'm not taking her but that he makes the demands with very little notice, and flakes on his plans with her with very little notice. So it is hard to predict.

I hope that the mediator can see that I have tried really hard to accomodate him and his circumstances - obviously the picture is more complex than I can fit into a short forum post and there will be things that I need to improve on my part. Hopefully mediation will help us both improve our communication with each other. I'm just really nervous and always feel like I am treading on eggshells in case he explodes.

I do really appreciate you taking the time to reply for me to think more deeply about his perspective. I will be as open and honest as I can with the mediator and try to come to an arrangement we can both live with that has our childs interests at heart.

Definitely be completely transparent with all of these worries with the mediator. It sounds like scheduled time would even be better for you really as it gets rid of the “bring her in 2 days” situation you mention. At the point you have an agreed contact schedule he either sticks to it, so you know what is going on, or he cancels his time and that’s okay- you made her available at the agreed time, he declined, your job is done.

Good luck x