he has been spending the weekends with his dad since we split up when he was 1, he is now 8 nearly 9. His dad also had him for some of the school holidays, bank holidays .
Around 4 years ago exh met someone new and moved in with her and her 3 children. Everything was fine except for the usual squabbles between the children up until 2 and a half years ago when exh new partner became pg. Since then things have changed, allthough he was still having ds at w/ends bank holidays and school holidays have all but stopped.
Exh and new partner are fighting alot, mainly over the children, I know that they are having problems with 2 of the children regarding behaviour. Ds comes back most weekends upset because of the fighting. They argue about the children infront of them, exp shouts about his dp children's behaviour, dp argues that exh thinks ds is perfect when he isn't.
It is causing trouble between the children as they are being compared against each other and I'm sure it's upsetting for all of them. Ds did go to his dads for a week during the summer holidays but he came back after 3 days due to an argument where dp shouted at ds about his "perfect" behaviour and his dad had to take him out for the day to get away.
Ds has started spending some weekends with my sills which exh has admitted is to get him away from the house. We've had problems in the past with exh hitting ds when he has been told he has to by dp, there have also been times he has taken ds out of the room and pretended to hit him allthough I've put a stop to this
It's now affecting ds health, he comes back on Sunday's complaining of stomach pains, which I think is anxiety due to the constant fighting. We have also had the problem that the older children arnt fed lunch and it's got to the point where he is afraid to ask for food. A few weeks ago he went down to his dads late and they'd allready eaten and as he didn't dare ask he had no dinner
He loves his dad and wants to see him but we can't keep going on like thus, any suggestions as to how access should be changed. I don't want to stop it all together as I dont think it would be in ds interest, sorry for long post