What is the name of your state? IN
This is just recent, over the past few weeks worth but part of my notes. If it sounds ex-bashing then it is, I did note some good things but even a few days after this writing I have a hard time adding to the positive column.
I got a call Tuesday, December 9th night from the father. He told me that he would be working Friday night until 8:00PM. He asked if he could pick our up late for weekend visitation. He then told me he would be bringing him back the next morning because he had to be back to work at 9:30AM the next morning on Saturday.
I said no. It makes no sense to take him on a 20 minute late night car trip across the city to go to his house to sleep, wake up and come back home the very next morning, then go back after his father gets off work at 2:30PM that same day. I am the custodial parent, not a babysitter during his fathers visitation time.
After being unemployed for the majority of 2003 he has a great chance at regaining stability in his finances and finding a new home for himself and for our son during his time with him. Stability is what is my concern and quality of time, not quantity. At the beginning of 2004 he doesn't have any place to stay for sure at the time of this writing.
The father argued that he didn't see what the difference was and he didn't understand why there was a problem. I told him it was perposterous to take our son to his apartment to just sleep, wake up and come back across town and then go back a few hours later after he finishes work at 2:30PM.
The father asked me to put our son on the phone and let him decide. I did not let our son make this descision. I believe that a nine year old child is able to make a common sense descision such as this. Sure he can, "yes, I would like to go off to magic daddy land for a few hours". He told me that this was our son's descision. I said "no, it's my descision".
The trip is after his normal bedtime which would be no problem if he were to be able to stay with his father, get an appropriate time to sleep and be in one place for the entire weekend. Our is allowed to stay up as late as 11:00PM as I have heard from his father on more than one occasion on the weekends, get a few hours sleep and come home the very next morning makes no sense and the best thing for our son would be to get a good night sleep, then spend time with his father after work Saturday until Sunday evening. The promotion of stability here is in the best interest. After we both repeated ourselves a couple of times my ex said "I'm not going to argue about this" I said "good, goodbye" and hung up the phone.
The weekend of December 5th through 7th the father informed me that if he couldn't borrow some money for food he may need to surrender visitation that weekend. He was able to aquire some money but brought our son home early on Sunday after a meal for breakfast and a snack so he can have a full dinner at home. For the past 3 weekends our son has wanted to come home a few hours early on Sundays. I have been told it was because he wants to play his computer game. After December 7th I now wonder if it was to come home and eat. Sounds harsh but he is barely making it and his adult son from a previous marriage has been paying his bills for the last 4 months.
We have always worked out visitation between ourselves giving the father very liberal time with his son which includes every weekend and what used to be all weekend until Monday morning and a mid week overnight he would drive him to school changed to Sunday evening after last school year our son would be tardy almost half the time coming back to school from his father's house. I had to cut any overnight visitation on school nights when he started oversleeping and the school would call my house wondering where our son was. Most times I would not get a call from his father before the school calls. Sometimes his car wouldn't start or break down on the way or they just didn't wake up in time and decide to take the day off. Now that the father no longer has his job at the bowling alley which his schedule changed three to four times a year making visitation times difficult for us to stick to a consistant schedule I will need to force the court ordered reasonable and customary guidlines. I am afraid that with an overnight visitation on Wednesday night he will start being tardy and missing school again. Even though his father has demanded that he provide transportation to and fro I will be sticking to the guidelines and taking our son to school in the morings from his house even though it means a 60 minute drive for me since the school is 2 blocks from our house.
The only thing that is in our court order that still happens is visitation as the father pays no medical, does not provide medical insurance (which is fine as his employment has always been sketchy, he does not keep a residence for much more than a year and then looses that due to non-payment and he has informed me that he is only interested in self-employment once he gets settled again) and he is now over $800 behind on child support. Pocket change to some but this is the third time in three years he has fallen several hundred dollars behind. It's time we go by the books here at I stop doing him favors above and beyond the call of duty as I feel in the past I have been too patient, too forgiving and passive with what is not our son's fault nor problems and should be taken care of by a grown man alone. His father has been outspoken with his unhappiness with my descisions made concerning our son's schooling is not only argued by his father but from father to son. Our son has expressed to me more than once "dad says what you're doing is wrong". Once last summer on the way to baseball practice and again during ISTEP study group. Our son was required to attend summer school the past summer in order to pass onto the Third Grade. He did very poorly and when they offered an ISTEP preperation course for the children at the school I enrolled him in that as well. He, later during the school year was invited along with other selected children, to an ISTEP study group. I enrolled him in that of course as well. His father didn't like all this extra work our son was doing even though his grades were poor and he didn't seem to care much for his school work. My ex asked me "why do you keep doing this to him?" I believed I was helping our son be better prepared.
The more he attended the worse his performance got. Over the past couple of weeks our son's behaviour and grades have taken a serious turn for the worse even though he knows that he may not pass the Third Grade and he is starting to get detentions. Nine years old, third grade, detentions? I didn't think he was capable of this. He's a real good child, sweet and his teacher really likes him and he has a family of loving people that no holds bar show it. He's acting out for some reason but won't tell me right now. He claims he keeps thinking about his game (which he has lost due to the horrible grades that came home on Monday) Knowing his father's attitude agianst the descisions I have made and the school requirements and recommendations that I follow he seems lacking interest much more than "you need to try harder" in helping our son get serious and better himself. His favorite saying is "all he has to know how to do is use a computer and make change for a $20". He agreed to help him with homework over the weekends so it's not crammed into the last two hours between returning home and bedtime but not in the way the homework or studies need to be done to be sucessful. I have had to undo and help redo assignments and studies for tests when he gets home on Sundays. Our son has told me that he has told his father how things should be done but his father does things his own way ignoring our son's knowledge, educational needs and requests.
This is just recent, over the past few weeks worth but part of my notes. If it sounds ex-bashing then it is, I did note some good things but even a few days after this writing I have a hard time adding to the positive column.
I got a call Tuesday, December 9th night from the father. He told me that he would be working Friday night until 8:00PM. He asked if he could pick our up late for weekend visitation. He then told me he would be bringing him back the next morning because he had to be back to work at 9:30AM the next morning on Saturday.
I said no. It makes no sense to take him on a 20 minute late night car trip across the city to go to his house to sleep, wake up and come back home the very next morning, then go back after his father gets off work at 2:30PM that same day. I am the custodial parent, not a babysitter during his fathers visitation time.
After being unemployed for the majority of 2003 he has a great chance at regaining stability in his finances and finding a new home for himself and for our son during his time with him. Stability is what is my concern and quality of time, not quantity. At the beginning of 2004 he doesn't have any place to stay for sure at the time of this writing.
The father argued that he didn't see what the difference was and he didn't understand why there was a problem. I told him it was perposterous to take our son to his apartment to just sleep, wake up and come back across town and then go back a few hours later after he finishes work at 2:30PM.
The father asked me to put our son on the phone and let him decide. I did not let our son make this descision. I believe that a nine year old child is able to make a common sense descision such as this. Sure he can, "yes, I would like to go off to magic daddy land for a few hours". He told me that this was our son's descision. I said "no, it's my descision".
The trip is after his normal bedtime which would be no problem if he were to be able to stay with his father, get an appropriate time to sleep and be in one place for the entire weekend. Our is allowed to stay up as late as 11:00PM as I have heard from his father on more than one occasion on the weekends, get a few hours sleep and come home the very next morning makes no sense and the best thing for our son would be to get a good night sleep, then spend time with his father after work Saturday until Sunday evening. The promotion of stability here is in the best interest. After we both repeated ourselves a couple of times my ex said "I'm not going to argue about this" I said "good, goodbye" and hung up the phone.
The weekend of December 5th through 7th the father informed me that if he couldn't borrow some money for food he may need to surrender visitation that weekend. He was able to aquire some money but brought our son home early on Sunday after a meal for breakfast and a snack so he can have a full dinner at home. For the past 3 weekends our son has wanted to come home a few hours early on Sundays. I have been told it was because he wants to play his computer game. After December 7th I now wonder if it was to come home and eat. Sounds harsh but he is barely making it and his adult son from a previous marriage has been paying his bills for the last 4 months.
We have always worked out visitation between ourselves giving the father very liberal time with his son which includes every weekend and what used to be all weekend until Monday morning and a mid week overnight he would drive him to school changed to Sunday evening after last school year our son would be tardy almost half the time coming back to school from his father's house. I had to cut any overnight visitation on school nights when he started oversleeping and the school would call my house wondering where our son was. Most times I would not get a call from his father before the school calls. Sometimes his car wouldn't start or break down on the way or they just didn't wake up in time and decide to take the day off. Now that the father no longer has his job at the bowling alley which his schedule changed three to four times a year making visitation times difficult for us to stick to a consistant schedule I will need to force the court ordered reasonable and customary guidlines. I am afraid that with an overnight visitation on Wednesday night he will start being tardy and missing school again. Even though his father has demanded that he provide transportation to and fro I will be sticking to the guidelines and taking our son to school in the morings from his house even though it means a 60 minute drive for me since the school is 2 blocks from our house.
The only thing that is in our court order that still happens is visitation as the father pays no medical, does not provide medical insurance (which is fine as his employment has always been sketchy, he does not keep a residence for much more than a year and then looses that due to non-payment and he has informed me that he is only interested in self-employment once he gets settled again) and he is now over $800 behind on child support. Pocket change to some but this is the third time in three years he has fallen several hundred dollars behind. It's time we go by the books here at I stop doing him favors above and beyond the call of duty as I feel in the past I have been too patient, too forgiving and passive with what is not our son's fault nor problems and should be taken care of by a grown man alone. His father has been outspoken with his unhappiness with my descisions made concerning our son's schooling is not only argued by his father but from father to son. Our son has expressed to me more than once "dad says what you're doing is wrong". Once last summer on the way to baseball practice and again during ISTEP study group. Our son was required to attend summer school the past summer in order to pass onto the Third Grade. He did very poorly and when they offered an ISTEP preperation course for the children at the school I enrolled him in that as well. He, later during the school year was invited along with other selected children, to an ISTEP study group. I enrolled him in that of course as well. His father didn't like all this extra work our son was doing even though his grades were poor and he didn't seem to care much for his school work. My ex asked me "why do you keep doing this to him?" I believed I was helping our son be better prepared.
The more he attended the worse his performance got. Over the past couple of weeks our son's behaviour and grades have taken a serious turn for the worse even though he knows that he may not pass the Third Grade and he is starting to get detentions. Nine years old, third grade, detentions? I didn't think he was capable of this. He's a real good child, sweet and his teacher really likes him and he has a family of loving people that no holds bar show it. He's acting out for some reason but won't tell me right now. He claims he keeps thinking about his game (which he has lost due to the horrible grades that came home on Monday) Knowing his father's attitude agianst the descisions I have made and the school requirements and recommendations that I follow he seems lacking interest much more than "you need to try harder" in helping our son get serious and better himself. His favorite saying is "all he has to know how to do is use a computer and make change for a $20". He agreed to help him with homework over the weekends so it's not crammed into the last two hours between returning home and bedtime but not in the way the homework or studies need to be done to be sucessful. I have had to undo and help redo assignments and studies for tests when he gets home on Sundays. Our son has told me that he has told his father how things should be done but his father does things his own way ignoring our son's knowledge, educational needs and requests.
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