Comments please!

[wysiwyg]

I am having a hard time with ideas for this issue and would like some comments, perhaps there are ideas we have not thought of yet.

BM signs child up for anything and everything on our weekends.  She refuses to allow us to see the child anytime inbetween despite a court order that allows for that, but quite frankly our work schedules do not allow for that and we asked to have the time on our weekends and take the child to his school or day care provider on Monday morning.  She says that week days are weekdays only and weekends not allowed even tho the court order says that the parents should make accomodations for work schedules and follow the minimum time concept set forth in the court order.  Since we do not get that minimum time and have not been able to work it out, there is little we can do, (No attorney and the court said no more in the court go to mediation which is another entirely new story).

But on our weekends she is scheduling him in other activities and expects us to just let him go to parties and sleepover and campouts instead of seeing his dad, and we have tired to switch weekends so that the child can see dad and go to his activities but BM states that that is her exclusive time with the child and she does not have to give that up.

WE are at our wits end on how to deal with it, most times we get a call from the child saying we can not see him on X weekend and that he will just see us the next time around, if we go to get him anyway he is not there or an altercation happens at the door and she will not let us have him.  She has already been found in contempt for this, but like I said we can not go to court Judge already gave us the low down on that - and mediation is a no go.  There are so many violations here it is amazing that she can get away with it all!  

If we take the child to his activities - Mom shows up and stays the weekend with him, and we try and allow him his independance to grow and have his friends, and one time we took him to his sport event and she would not give us the uniform for him to play and instead called 911 and told the police we were holding the child hostage and that turned into a real huge scary ordeal for all 4 of our children when we were surrounded by police with guns drawn.  So we feel like we are screwed either way.

Any other thoughts on how to handle these things?

[mc24]

Yikes!  She's a winner, huh?  Well, I don't know how old this child is, but we are suffering a somewhat similar situation, and I'll tell you how we're handling it.  SD is 12, and b/c she lives an hour away, we only have her on weekends now.  Of course her school friends are in the other town.  Now and then she wants to skip a weekend b/c of something going on with her friends that she doesn't want to miss.  We realize this is going to happen more & more as she gets older, so we have told her once a month will be all we can do.  She can pick the event she most wants to attend and that will be the one weekend she skips.  

Maybe you could do something like this?  Let your son know that you want him to be able to do the things he likes, but you have such limited time with him and that time should be spent as a family.  Give him his one weekend, and just don't take him to the other things BM sets up.  The main thing is to explain it to him to let him know why.  Let him know how much you look forward to the time with him, how little time you get to see him, and explain you don't want it used up with so many extracurricular activities.  If you are on EOW schedule, and he wants to go to a sleepover, just let him know it will have to wait til the next weekend.  ;)  Parties, campouts and other things that can't be rescheduled, he will just have to pick and choose the one most important to him for that month.  I think this will save you from being the "bad guy" and it will force BM to let him schedule some of these things on her weekends.

I hope this helps.