Sd has vastly reduced her visits

[Lex1975]

My Sd (13) always spent. 50% of her time with us. Her mother remarried and decided she spent too much time here so through mediation it got reduced to 5 days a fortnight. Since October she has been 4 times. These visits started the week before Xmas . She was meant to come yesterday but did not answer attempts to contact her. She has never been this way ( I've been her sm for 11 years). She has a 4 yr old sister and 3 yr old brother here, and they get really upset that she is not visiting. Her mother is divorcing again, could this have caused decreased visits? Her mother will not encourage her to come, it's very distressing because we had a great relationship

It

It could be something to do with her age. Her social life will be becoming bigger part of her life.

I thought that too, because she is in first term of secondary now too but how do I console the others
?

lex were going through the same thing here and dsd has 2 younger siblings here too and they miss her too. Our dsd is15 so I'm putting most of it down to being a teenager and we also get the attitude of if we don't pander to what she wants she doesn't come round.
It is frustrating but I keep reminding myself that our two youngest have each other even if they do miss their sister.
It's not easy op!

It's probably because she is a teenager and wants to spend time with her friends rather than her parents.

I think you should talk to her and encourage her to take more responsibility over when she sees her friends versus when she sees you. Perhaps suggest a more flexible arrangement that allows her to see her friends but explain that it's important to see you all too so maybe if she has things with friends planned foe the weekend she might like to see you during an evening in the week. I don't think that it should be acceptable to reduce contact and if her mother isn't encouraging her then it could be a downward spiral. We had this with dsd1 who stopped sewing us entirely when she turned 14. We haven't seen her now for over 2 years. A combination of teenage angst and lack of parental influence. It's a dangerous thing and you need to act on it without being confrontational.

Looking at it from the teenager's point if view- is it comfortable for her when she visits? Does she have her own space, wifi, opportunities for adult conversations and debates? Or is she sharing with a small half sister, wifi shut off at 10pm and subjected to non stop kids TV and the noise of small children (like one of DD's friends who, understandably, doesn't want to visit her father).

Is turning off the wifi at 10pm and having limited TV so bad for a 13 year old?

I'm surprised I see my DD at all - she's 13, and wifi is limited to family rooms and we've not got a TV - but she's not defected to her Dads house yet!
Different homes, different rules - of course, a teen needs the co-operation of the RP in order to refuse contact -and that's where the responsibility lies.