Ex wanting too much flexibility with contact arrangements

My ex and I have been apart since April. We have two boys coming up for 3 and 1 and my ex has a 7 year old son with his ex-wife. My ex lives 1 mile away and his 7 year old lives an hours drive away. I don't know if my ex will stay here much longer as he may have to get a new job plus he isn't local anyway.

Basically, my ex has been seeing someone since July and since then, the issue around contact has become more and more strained. Basically, he doesn't seem very interested in our boys. I think he sees them as an inconvenience - he certainly acts like this. We agreed he would come over 2 evenings a week for 2.5 hours to put them to bed. This has pretty much gone to plan, with us swapping evenings with mornings when he does a 1 in 6 week late shift. However, this week he went down South (his gf lives 260 miles away) and told me he couldn't come on Tuesday morning as he had a course so we swapped to Wednesday morning. No biggie except I know there was no course and that he was down south.

Weekends are where it really gets tricky. Basically, arrangements with our boys are coming second to his long distance relationship plans and the plans he has with his 7 year old. I don't mind our boys seeing their half-brother although he does get the monopoly on his dad from what I have witnessed, but their half-brothers mum and stepdad only arrange things with my ex last minute. Like literally, within a few days of the weekend. So then I get offered the scraps and I am sick of agreeing and not being able to make other plans at the weekends. He moaned last weekend when I said could he drop them at 2pm (he picked them up at 10am) - he said "2????????" really snottily, in front of the kids, as if I had asked him to pull his own toenails off or something. I could have cried.

Example, for once this week I actually asked him first whether he could take the kids Saturday morning. I didn't need him to, it was just a starting point as often he will suggest sometime on a Saturday. He said he could have them Saturday morning but they would have to go with him to watch his 7 year old playing football. I said no as all that would amount to for our boys is 2 hours of car trip, an hour or so of standing at the side of a football pitch (baby in pram, gets bored if stationary) - my 2 year old doesn't do standing, he will be running off or onto the pitch and ex will be stressed and where's the joy in any of that? So I said no. So now he is proposing he has them Sunday morning but again, that will involve a 2 hour drive to drop the 7 year old back off.

I have said to him today that all his children deserve quality time and as usual, he ummed and moaned about how hard it all is. Well its going to be when he sees his 7 year old for 24 hours and sometimes more every weekend, of which the hours change week by week.

There are other issues concerning me about his treatment of our boys, especially when he has all 3 together. Examples include not being fed desserts when I have told him to, wet bums and always being couped up in his flat when he does loads of active things with his 7 year old and has done since he was 20 months old.

So many people suggest I need regular contact times laid out, and I have put this to him but he insists he needs flexibility despite hating his ex wife when she used to demand that, so where do we go from here? I feel sad for our boys coming last in all his plans.

Thanks
Abi

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( categories: Dear Kate & Emily )
Dear Abi You must start
Submitted by kate on Wed, 2008-09-24 09:30.

Dear Abi

You must start looking at things from another perspective , looking at the positives and stop worrying about the niggles , which will always be there.

The most important point is that your ex is in your childrens lives and he has regular contact. What he does when he is with them is secondary and to be blunt you have as much influence over that as he does with regard to the time they are with you . If you really feel that he is struggling to cope with the children then use your knowledge of them to make suggestions and so on , but also take it as a given that he loves them and is looking after them .If they don’t have a pudding it is neither here or there at the end of the day , if they are cooped up in his flat that is not great but it is fantastic that they are just WITH him and that is really the most important thing.

From your exes perspective he has three children , whilst I only have two I do know from my three children friends that often the third child spends their life in a car seat going around activities with the oldest .My boy plays football on a Saturday morning and there are always prams on the sidelines , it is just one of the deals of being a younger sibling.

Don’t assume that your boys are coming last but they are younger and need different things and your ex is juggling a 7 year old and two little ones. I do urge you not to make your boys feel that the 7 year old is the favorite , to be quite frank 7 year olds are easier , more responsive and dare I say more interesting than babies and when your boys are 7 or so they will be doing all these things while their older half brother will be a stroppy teenager and then the balance will change.

You do need a schedule of when they visit Dad and you both need to be flexible , have a look at the co parenting form and ask your ex if you can put some dates in in stone for both of you .It does sound like you need a new way of communicating visitng times, shift work makes things tricky , why not go to smiths and buy a diary , show it to him and use it to make sure you are incorportating his need for flexibility , your need to have some things certain and the childrens need to see him regularly.Also whilst it may be hard do remember that the 7 year old is your boys half brother and it is great that they have a good relationship with him . I am sure all this is as irritating as hell , but I do think that it would really be to your advantage to let the irritations wash over you a little bit more once you get into picking at eachother it makes life very difficult and is very easy to spiral into a bad situation . The week time visits are fantastic at your boys age little and often is really great and also helps you too.

sure Emily will pipe up if she has another take

All the best

Kate

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Hi Emily Yes of course I can
Submitted by agme28 on Sun, 2008-09-21 11:31.

Hi Emily

Yes of course I can wait! Ex has just dropped the kids off after a measly 2.5 hours and is reminding me he won't be seeing them next weekend (yes I remember things unlike you). Oh and the weekend after, he has been reminded that he has to work the Saturday. We agreed that when he works a Saturday (1 in 6), he won't see the kids at all that weekend (not sure why) but what he has been doing is swapping the Saturday, in effect giving himself a whole weekend free, and then forgetting when he has swapped it to which throws the weekend after next out as my kids have a party on the Sunday so he won't be able to see them. He won't be bothered as he said 'I will probably still have them' as if there should be any doubt over that?????

He then started saying he was buying bunk beds so our eldest can stay over but I think there's a long way to go before that, plus why isn't he as keen to have the baby - he is 1 nearly. Its all because his 7 year old wants a sleepover buddy, my ex isn't bothered about our two the rest of the time!!!!!

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Hi Abi, I'm seeing Kate
Submitted by emily on Sat, 2008-09-20 20:58.

Hi Abi, I'm seeing Kate tomorrow and would really like to talk abotu this with her to see what we can come up with between us - can you wait til then for ideas?? Love emily

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