Ok so I'm new to this, please be gentle. DS is 1 year old and his father , despite coming to see him once a week for a couple of hours or less! ( and pays mantinence ) has never seemed to want to do any parenting! We don't co parent or parent together in any way and he doesn't involve himself at all. It's seems like he comes when he thinks he is obliged to, pays and then that's it until the next week. He has his seperate life with his family, work , friends and football, Then it's the same again the following week just sitting there and chatting to DS, sometimes he doesn't even say hi to him when he sees him and sits looking bored and yawning. He has never bathed our son, put him to bed, fed him dinner, hasn't changed a nappy in months or anything. He comes in and sits with his jacket and hat on the full time. I encouraged him to do the bottle feeds and nappy changes up until our son was about 6 months old but I had to ask him to do everything like that. He has never asked off his own back or just done it the way he should have been. Even when I brought stuff up to him about not doing the feeds etc he would say well you should have asked me. I gave up asking because he isn't a child , he needs to take the initiative to do it. He acts like father of the year to his family and they all think he's a great dad but they don't know the way he acts. He doesn't take any interest in what DS does during the week. It's coming to the point where DS is screaming hysterically when he sees him now but then of course that's all my fault in his eyes. There has been issues in the past where he has showed anger towards our son when he cried and said things really out of order to him. I had a serious talk with him about that but otherwise I've always encouraged contact but now I sometimes think what he is doing now is having no benifit on DS life whatsoever , but now I'm so scared he will take it to court and then get unsupervised access if I told him not to come back because I dont trust him because of what I've witnessed before ( I don't really want to do that either though ) . This is especially worrying me now as DS has been getting increasing distressed by him and he actually admitted himself that DS was 'wary' of him. ( I feel like a failure as a mother when I see my son so distressed by someone who is supposed to be his other safety net, but I can't control the way his father acts) What would you do in this situation? Should I encourage him again to come and do these things when it doesn't seem like he even cares or wants to or should I just leave him to it?