Any competitive sports/divorce parents on here right now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You don’t need to remind him about the competition or tell him the details to attend.

But you also absolutely should not take on the role of telling him not to attend.

Nor should you be attributing, implicitly or explicitly, concerns with your child's athletic performance to your ex and their presence or lack thereof. This feels manipulative, even if not intended as such.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’re off to a very bad start by participating in efforts to turn your girls against their father. That is not cool. At all.

Yes. Judges do not look kindly on alienation. You are the parent. Tell the kids they need to welcome their father.

It sounds like their father is alienating the children all on his own. You can't dump their mom and break up their family and expect their love and respect to be unchanged.

OP, protect yourself legally by doing what you think is best, but honestly he's going to make it difficult regardless.

We don't know the situation. Some one cheating, abuse, bad arguement, she threw him out?

OP and please see my post above. Lots of stuff happened that he instigated and then he bailed out. Mental break, prescription drug abuse, just crazy midlife anger? I can’t explain what triggered him but something snapped the past few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t need to remind him about the competition or tell him the details to attend.

But you also absolutely should not take on the role of telling him not to attend.

Nor should you be attributing, implicitly or explicitly, concerns with your child's athletic performance to your ex and their presence or lack thereof. This feels manipulative, even if not intended as such.

Gymnastics mom/coach here but mental blocks and loss of acquired skills are common in times of duress. We see it a lot when kids lose a parent or there is a divorce. It’s one of the reasons we stay in close touch with our team parents. I need to know if there is stuff going on at home to keep my athletes safe in the gym. I can’t have girls attempting a new vault or dismount when their brain feels a subconscious threat from other parts of their life.

In sports with high-risk skills and a big mental component I think it is pretty common so it shouldn’t be surprising that there would be a link between these girls having setbacks on the ice and their father’s treatment of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If he's going to be difficult, he's going to be difficult. If it's not this, it'll be something else, because attacking you is how he alleviates his guilt. You can keep your communications with him very flat and boring. If he asks when it is, respond with a link to the club website. If he asks if the kids want him to come, say "Well, you could ask them" or "I'm not sure" or something.

You need to accept that your kids will be upset, they will be angry, and they will be very much off their game in every aspect of life. You can't fix it. They're maybe going to lose their jumps for a while. Be at peace with it and stop trying to fix it. Your kids will be better off with you accepting that things are what they are, rather than trying to optimize it by overthinking every little thing. I said on another thread, dumped wives tend to do this "salvaging" behavior where they're trying their very hardest to minimize the impact on the kids, and it just doesn't work very well. Do everyone a favor and accept that they'll be impacted and may have a bad year skating. Divorce is damaging and the best thing we can do is see it clearly.

As a person in a very similar situation to OP who is running myself ragged to salvage, I needed to read this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’re off to a very bad start by participating in efforts to turn your girls against their father. That is not cool. At all.

Yes. Judges do not look kindly on alienation. You are the parent. Tell the kids they need to welcome their father.

It sounds like their father is alienating the children all on his own. You can't dump their mom and break up their family and expect their love and respect to be unchanged.

OP, protect yourself legally by doing what you think is best, but honestly he's going to make it difficult regardless.

We don't know the situation. Some one cheating, abuse, bad arguement, she threw him out?

OP and please see my post above. Lots of stuff happened that he instigated and then he bailed out. Mental break, prescription drug abuse, just crazy midlife anger? I can’t explain what triggered him but something snapped the past few years.

(Hugs) OP.

There's a couple books out there on what you do and don't have to do when trying to be the reasonable parent with a high conflict ex. Interested in any pointers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Regardless of your feelings and what happened, he will always be their dad and the worst thing you can do is alienate them. Encourage the relationship.

It is almost like dad is not doing a great job alienating the kids all by himself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’re off to a very bad start by participating in efforts to turn your girls against their father. That is not cool. At all.

Yes. Judges do not look kindly on alienation. You are the parent. Tell the kids they need to welcome their father.

Most judges don't care at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’re off to a very bad start by participating in efforts to turn your girls against their father. That is not cool. At all.

Yes. Judges do not look kindly on alienation. You are the parent. Tell the kids they need to welcome their father.

OP and yes, that is why I am being so cautious. On the other hand, this is a man who has broken into our house since he left and filed multiple motions but struck hearings at the last minute after I’ve arranged for days off work and drivers for the kids.

Prior to the divorce he (apparently) stole enormous sums of money from our joint accounts, verbally abused me, and screamed obscenities at the kids for “making him” do things…like break their toys or miss their practices.

It is for the best that he left us, but it is also a really fragile situation legally and I’m all too aware that someone with this amount of screws loose is looking for things to flip on to me.

Take the money out yourself. He isn't breaking into the house if its where you both own/rent it and the stuff is shared.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’re off to a very bad start by participating in efforts to turn your girls against their father. That is not cool. At all.

Yes. Judges do not look kindly on alienation. You are the parent. Tell the kids they need to welcome their father.

Why the need to make kids eat their feelings? Why does dad gets to hurt them and be shielded from the effect of his actions on them? Why does dad gets kids need to be performing monkeys for him?

[Anonymous]

Regardless of your feelings and what happened, he will always be their dad and the worst thing you can do is alienate them. Encourage the relationship.

She is absolutely NOT alienating him by refusing to be his admin and not managing his relationship with his children. He is an adult and he needs to do that himself. It is NOT her job to make sure he parents, she just needs to stay out of the way when/if he tries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Regardless of your feelings and what happened, he will always be their dad and the worst thing you can do is alienate them. Encourage the relationship.

She is absolutely NOT alienating him by refusing to be his admin and not managing his relationship with his children. He is an adult and he needs to do that himself. It is NOT her job to make sure he parents, she just needs to stay out of the way when/if he tries.

She has 100% custody so yes, its her job to tell him whats going on and arrange for visits. He isn't able to parent if he has no time with the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like he's unlikely to show. I would just not tell him. If he wants to look it up, he can. He no longer has a wife to tell him obvious things and he might as well get used to it.

That’s my first instinct, but I’m wondering if this will come back to haunt me during future legal proceedings and make me look uncooperative.

The figure skating club has parent emails that contain all of this information. In late October he told me he was going to contact the club secretary to be added to the email list, but I’m guessing he hasn’t and doesn’t want to admit that to me.

Well, I think you could say "He told me he would get himself added to the list, so I believed that he would." And even without the list, he can check the website, no? So I think it's him, not you, who would look bad for making a fuss over this.

He could check the website, either for the club or for the competition. It’s listed both places, although I don’t think he knows what level the girls are so he wouldn’t know what their session time is.

Here's what's normal: For an adult man to be able to ask his own daughters what level they are in. Or he could ask the club. That is a normal level of functioning for GROWN MAN.

There is no way he can make an issue out of this without looking like a dumb-*ss. "Judge, my mean mean mean wife didn't remind me! I'm too lazy to look it up! Waaah!" Come on.

Most of the fathers I know have at least a general idea of when the kids important stuff is happening, even if it is just "girlie" stuff like figure skating and dance competitions. I would honor the girls requests, if you think they are sincere vs secretly hoping dad shows up to prove that he actually cares about them.

[Anonymous]

Speaking from figure skating experience here, if your skaters really do get more distracted when he is around, it is possible even the coach may suggest that parents not be around to watch the competition. If there is a livestream, he will be able to watch it that way anyway. And just to comment on the statement that there is an "up and out" point, I think that is generalizing. Getting to the top levels of competition and making the national development team etc. depends on consistency and hard work. Everyone has a natural plateau, but you can always improve and can just adjust skating goals. For example, score a personal best at the next competition or finally land a double axel instead of "go to junior worlds." You can still compete no matter what, it just may not be all that appealing since it is a difficult sport and requires priority over most other things in order to be "successful" in the competitive skating world sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like if you say nothing about it he won't show and it'll be fine. Why would it haunt you? You didn't tell him about ONE thing? That he didn't ask about, that he could have found out about on his own or by speaking directly to his kids? No, this is on him.

I’m worried that he will use this against me in what could be a very contentious custody battle.

Judges will not care about that. Mine didn't care that my ex had a DWI and went to jail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Speaking from figure skating experience here, if your skaters really do get more distracted when he is around, it is possible even the coach may suggest that parents not be around to watch the competition. If there is a livestream, he will be able to watch it that way anyway. And just to comment on the statement that there is an "up and out" point, I think that is generalizing. Getting to the top levels of competition and making the national development team etc. depends on consistency and hard work. Everyone has a natural plateau, but you can always improve and can just adjust skating goals. For example, score a personal best at the next competition or finally land a double axel instead of "go to junior worlds." You can still compete no matter what, it just may not be all that appealing since it is a difficult sport and requires priority over most other things in order to be "successful" in the competitive skating world sense.

OP here, happy/unhappy to share an update since my thread popped up again after a few weeks.

The coaches are actually really frustrated and have asked if there is a protective order or anything they can reference because they want him away from their skating and our home rink. It’s gotten worse, not better. On the bright side, our skating “family” has really closed ranks around the kids and is watching out for them subtly and consistently. No one will talk to him when he shows up. They don’t make a big fuss about it but they always just happen to be walking in another direction or something. At awards last week, one dad intercepted older DD without her realizing it and took her the long way around so she wouldn’t have to deal with him. They are hosting a lot of team dinners and events so the girls aren’t home dwelling.

It’s sad to watch my girls struggle but I’m grateful to the community that is surrounding them. It’s not always been the kindest sport so I’m surprised to be so grateful to it right now.