Does your primary school aged child have midweek contact with their father?

[SantaFeSister]

My ex will be having EOW contact soon and he will then want a mid week contact also that's overnight.

Ex lives 35 minutes away.

DD is in reception.

I feel like she's too little to be between two houses during the week.

I'm trying to put up an argument against this in that it will be hugely disruptive for her, won't allow us to ever be able to go on a holiday and that DD should know where home is during the week, an overnight contact during the week where she has to get up significantly earlier to get to school may mean she might be unsettled and impact her schooling.

I think a mid week overnight stay is fine if you stay in the same town or live close together but not in these circumstances.

Or am I wrong?

Does it impact your children?

Masive drip feed.

If he's only being allowed unsupervised contact now, and, if I'm reading your posts correctly, it's not going to be overnight from the start, then surely CAFCASS or whoever is overseeing this is going to want to see any changes happening in stages. So first it will be EOW, unsupervised. Then perhaps it's EOW overnight. THEN it's going to be EOW, with overnights, AND every Wednesday...

and as you go through this process, you decide, in conjunction with them, what's appropriate and right depending on how he's doing with unsupervised and how DD is coping.

Quite the drip feed 🙄

So at the moment he has contact in the community with a third party supervising..

That will end by summer time... then unsupervised every other weekend day contact starts.

Overnight is expected to start end of July.

We will have a review hearing after to see how it goes. He has asked for every other weekend Friday to Monday morning school drop off and a mid week intervening overnight.

I just feel its so much time away from the home she's been in with me every single day for four years.

I told DD her contact will be progressing and made it sound really exciting and said she'll get to go to the park and days out and daddy has a bedroom for her at his house.

She cried and cried and just said she'd miss me.

I don't get what I'm supposed to do.

It's too soon to decide. These overnights at end of July are just one night at a time I assume? I don't know how it works, but surely if he's asked for that, you reply (via formal channels) that while you're open to building up to that, you need to make sure that DD is happy with unsupervised contact, then unsupervised overnights, before increasing contact to Friday-Monday plus every second Wednesday.

That's a huge shift and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that to happen slowly, and in stages. You can't go from almost no contact with one parent to practically 50/50 in just a few weeks.

YABU she needs a relationship with her father, kids are resilient and adapt well, she'll be fine. Try and make it the same night every week and she'll get used to the routine

I wish my ex did midweek contact. Even if it's just taking them to maccies for a milkshake. But he only sees them 1 hour and 30 mins every other Sunday, so 3 hours a month there is no communication from him inbetween. I would LOVE for him to do more. Even answer the phone to school once in a while but he doesn't.
I think consistency is the key for children so if he can get into a good routine at his, even including a earlier bed times so she's up a bit earlier the following morning the I would go for it!

Would you cut her some slack. It sounds pretty stressful in her shoes.

Friday to Monday-morning drop-off and then a week/day is a lot when she has been with you 24/7.

But inch your way along it. It isn't all happening overnight. I know it's hard to believe it might work, but see how it goes on the EOWs. She might be ok with it by then and she'll be that little bit older by July and heading into Y1.

I'm sure you know this well already but document everything in case it is going wrong. Try to keep your exchanges to text and email so you don't get into a I said/he said situation. (I'm sure you are doing this already).

It's hard for us too to let them go when we are terrified for them, even when there is no abuse. I knew ex used to force them to go to sleep in a blacked out room. He thought them needing a toddler night light was fussy nonsense. Now they are still scared of the dark and sleep with full lights on. That sort of stuff used to make me so sad. The darkness terrified them, but of course it wouldn't kill them, but I would never willingly ignore them being scared. It's hard to navigate. I might be wrong but I imagine this is very hard for you given there is abuse history.

A male relative went to court recently and the judge agreed with this exact situation with 50/50 access , the child was 5 and in reception class . She has blossomed tbh .

Thank you, this is really reassuring and one of the more sympathetic comments. I'm sorry your ex did this to your kids.

My son did an overnight week day stay when he was in reception, very soon the teacher knew when my son had slept at his Dads. He was coming into school very tired. He slept downstairs on a sofa bed so his routine wasn’t great. I stopped it, he wasn’t happy and first took me to Mediation but the school were happy to back me up.

He know has to have him home by 7pm if it’s a midweek school pick and we do alternate Friday/Saturday

I think the overnight contact should be built up progressively - starting with one night (after doing some daytimes only). Going straight to Friday evening through to Monday morning (where presumably he'll be taking her straight to school, not unlike the mid week contact that you're so opposed to) is too much to soon.

You need to be open and supportive of the ultimate position of EOW and one night during the week, but push for a plan to get there gradually.