Do your kids miss out on things because their dad/your ex refuses to take them?

[FlowerP0w3r]

I'll preface by saying I know I cannot control or dictate what he does in his contact time with our child but as he is deeply un child focussed, I wanted to ask if others encounter this type of behaviour and what do you do??

DD is primary age. She does EOW with her dad and has a midweek overnight. She gets on well with him, loves him, but has just always had a natural preference to be at home with me as everything is here. Her school, friends, my family.

Her dad lives 50 minutes away and I know she struggles with the midweek overnight. It's all court ordered with no possibility of varying just yet as we've only recently ended proceedings.

On several occasions, I have asked her dad if he would be be able to take DD to either a party or activity that's on her weekend with him. He's flat out refused. Only citing that they're "busy". Busy sitting around watching TV as he doesn't actually parent her.

DD can't have her friends over to his as he's alienated himself from my parent friends by acting appallingly towards me in front of DD and me.

The final straw came where one of DDs best friends had a party on his weekend; they tried to organise it on her weekend with me but due to venue availability it just wasn't possible.

He refused to take her, refused to let anyone else take her, refused to drop her off. DD was so upset.

I've now got to a point where I just want to stop asking or telling DD that on her weekends with her dad we can't ask him to take her.

Unfortunately, she's just going to have to miss out.

I've rearranged her extra curricular activities after school so they don't fall on the midweek overnight but some days she's doing two activities a night and is exhausted as she's had a 50 minute journey to school in the morning as opposed to a 3 minute walk. It's only one midweek overnight so I didn't dispute it in Court as I knew I wouldn't win but I can tell she finding it hard.

I understand that her time with her dad is important but he is a controlling, abusive narcissist and it's really difficult navigating these issues.

Any tips? Or experience of others who have been through the same?

What a selfish arse. You sound like the most lovely mum and so sorry your DD is missing out on things. No advice just to say i’m outraged for you, and when she’s older she will truly understand. x

If he lives 50 minutes away it doesn’t sound reasonable for him to have drive 50 minutes to pick her up and then to have to drive her back to a party where you live, just to have to drive her back to his for the rest of the weekend and then drop her back to you.

his time with her is limited and unfortunately sometimes that means she misses out on other things.

Sadly that’s life and she will learn she can’t go to everything. I would argue a relationship with her father is more important, she can see friends every day at school. You wouldn’t like it if he arranged things when she was with you?

Could you do the midweek overnight once a fortnight and just do local teatime on the other weeek? (Doubt he'd agree)

That's what the court would say.
But from the child's perspective of course she wants to go to her best friends party she'll have been gutted to miss that. Only a lazy parent wouldn't take their child to a party they want to go to.

I wouldn’t quite call it lazy parenting. My husband lives an hour and a half away from his daughter and if his ex asks him to take her to a party on his weekend it has to be a no. It’s just not logical for him to drive a 3 hour round trip to collect her and bring her home to ours, just to do that again to take her to a party and back here and then do it again to drop her back at the end of his weekend with her.

I think it depends. Your dd seems to thrive and live an active life with friends so it's not the end of the world if she misses out on some parties on dh time. What broke my heart is my ds has a friend who's really lonely due to him being different : arfid, high ig never gets invited to parties. My ds invited him and 8 other friends and he was so happy. Well, his dad said no. Wouldn't let the mum nor me pick up and return. Just said it was his week-end. So next time we'll plan for it to be on mum's week-end. He was crushed so we ended doing another activity with him but it's not the same...some parents are really selfish.

Why is she doing so much in the first place?

Our child does not go to every single event they want to go to and we are together, there is life outside of all these events married or not

I'm sure if her close friends had parties the weekends OP has her she would take her?

Surely, if it was a best friend’s birthday party, only a once or twice a year occurrence, any normal and non controlling/abusive person would work together to make alternative arrangements?

eg skip your weekend, do two weekends on the trot, or pick the kid up Saturday afternoon after the party and move your Wednesday to Monday that week to make up the difference. I couldn’t imagine not doing everything in the world to ensure my DD didn’t miss her best friends party, at primary school, your best friends and birthday parties are the most omportant things in the world.

it’s like having tickets to the FA Cup final in your pocket, and being told you can’t go.

It’s not always that simple. Weekends can’t be changed due to work patterns and children have birthday party invitations constantly all year round. Where do you draw the line to which ones you say yes/no to.

my husband only gets to see his DD EOW, their time is precious and we have friendships and family where we live to nurture and for her to spend time with.

it’s just life.

I was this child. My dad wouldn't take me anywhere or do anything with me. I had to amuse myself in my room whilst he watched snooker or football or darts on the tv.
I danced during the week and we had a dancing show. These shows only happened for 3 days every 2 years. One of the performances fell on his days and he wouldn't take me. My mum even offered to go collect me and return me to him. He refused. I had to turn down doing a solo as I wasn't going to be in one of the performances. He also wouldn't come to watch me on the other performances.
This was one of the final straws and when I got to being old enough for my views to be considered, I just refused to go to my dad and our relationship disintegrated.

Selfish if he'd refuse to let her to go to her best friends party for a few hours, it's her time as well. Ew.

She's not going to have much of a relationship with him when she's grows up and realises he prioritises sitting watching TV over her happiness. Kids aren't stupid. It's just going to breed resentment and she'll end up refusing to go when she's older.

If it was "I'm very sorry the party is too far away and you can't go, but we are going to do X/Y/Z fun family activity instead, won't that be nice?" At least he'd be making an effort.

I actually see both sides here. It is rubbish that she's missing out on parties, but I also see why he doesn't want to drive 50 mins each way for a kids party when he only sees her EOW and one night mid week.

It‘s not just that he is unwilling to spend the weekend driving her to and from these activities - it’s that he doesn’t seem to do anything nice with her when she is there. Just TV. If that’s really how he spends quality time with his daughter then she‘ll be voting with her feet as soon as she is old enough to do so. Ultimately it will be his loss.

I totally get that it would have been unrealistic to expect him m to drive back and forth for this party. However, a reasonable father would have been prepared to swap weekends. He is anything but.

Add to this the fact that he doesn't do anything with her, doesn't take her anywhere at all, leaves her to her own devices.... In other words, a shit dad.

OP, you can only do the best you can, and don't give him the satisfaction of showing him how angry or upset you are. However, I also think that two mid-week activities on a school night is too much.

I have so much empathy for you here OP. I have lived through exactly the same. I find it laughable that some parents lament a 50 minute drive to facilitate their child's life and relationships (I.e. being a parent). I drive my kids round most evenings going to their various sports and hobbies, adding up to many more hours than my ex would be asked to do to cover parties etc.

In the end I took a tough line "x has so and so's party at the weekend. She will be going as it's her best friend. Let me know if you will be taking her or if we need to swap weekends to facilitate it." Bit of nonsense and push back at first but he now gets the message that our child isn't suffering because of our separation. Of course, if there are legitimate other plans from dad then it can't happen (though funnily enough, there never was...)I would have been willing to be taken back to court and explain my rationale to a judge. Of course, that never happened, as it would require a bit of effort.

50 minutes drive is nothing. Most parents I know routinely drive that much to get their children to activities, we wait for the duration, and bring them back too. That 50 minute drive is good parenting time, too.

All that will happen is that your dd will vote with her feet when she's old enough.

Mine were older when we split up, but exh made no attempt to put ds2 first and work around his social and extra curriculum stuff. Their relationship has pretty much disintegrated and ds2 is much much happier for it.

My step children’s mum is like this. They have missed out on a lot of fun opportunities because of it. It’s a 50:50 set up so it’s not as though my husband is setting up things which won’t ever impact him and his time. She didn’t do any of that before they split though so it isn’t a changer behaviour. She’d rather sit in the house and let them entertain themselves.

It makes me feel sad for them and am very aware there is some jealousy towards my child (not a shared child), because they do get to go to extracurricular activities, parties etc because that’s how my ex and I choose to parent. There’s no dying on the hill of “it’s my time” rather if there’s something that one of us thinks our child would enjoy/benefit from which falls into contact time with the other, we have a conversation and 9/10 times we go with it.

Yes my ex did the same he had them every Saturday so ballet classes ended up stopping as he wouldn't take them (lived 15 min drive away)

What happened was as they got older they started not going to him preferring to see friends. Because he hadn't built his life into theirs he just saw less of them. As adults now they see him 4/5 times a year. He's not in their lives day to day.

You could dig your heels in and say she's staying home for that weekend to attend party. Or she misses it and other future stuff and in the long run he will be the one who loses out as eventually she will be calling the shots not him. In a few years she will get a say in where she lives.

We had court ordered contact and he would never take them to clubs/parties/friends. They weren't allowed out to see friends as it was HIS time. And the evening he chose for contact was a known club she was in, so she had to leave.

Result was that by 11, she never spoke to him again. (He stopped bothering with contact once he'd "won" in court.)

Seems the consensus is that contact deteriorates once they can vote with their feet.