Reply to 17 Year Old Custody Schedule

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
No, it's not all on the Dad and she is spinning the story to make her look 100% good and him 100% bad.  [b]He doesn't need to be flexible.  He has a court ordered visitation twice a month.[/b]  She needs to stick to it.  You need to pay attention.  She was fine with child not visiting.  [/quote]

Yup, it's all on the Dad.

You are right, legally he did NOT need to be flexible. And he WASN'T. And get this - as a result of his lack of meeting his kid's need (because the LAW didn't say he HAD to) he now has no relationiship with his son.

At some point, you need to stop forcing your kid to do things because it is the LAW, and start being the kind of parent a kid wants to be around.

You need to pay attention. Mom was NOT FINE that the kid didn't want to go to his dad's. But she wasn't going to force the kid to go - at age 17. The judge said she did nothing wrong, too. Keep up.  She was sad that the dad had screwed things up with his kid by refusing to be flexible and meet the kid's legitimate social needs and wants.

So sorry, but Dad screwed up. If you only have a relationship with your kid because the law requires him to be there with you... at age 17?  That's no relationship.

[/quote]

Mom screwed up by not impressing that there is value in the relationship between father and son because she ultimately didn't want the relationship.  Mom was fine or she would have been a parent and enforced the visits.  He lives with her and she is ultimately responsible for him so she needs to stop blaming and playing the victim and own up to her part in all this.

He was flexible from her other posts and gave up Friday nights, etc. and it still wasn't good enough for her.  What does flexibility mean when Dad was only getting 2 nights a month.  If kid is scheduled to have something every day and when he doesn't see friends, no matter how much Dad is flexible, it will never be good enough for them.[/quote]

You are still so fixated on the "amount of time dad gets the kid" as being the relevant factor here. That's not the flexibility I am talking about. I am talking about being flexible in every way to meet the developmentally normal needs of a teenager.  Be the kind of parent a kid *wants* to talk to.

I reread OP's posts and I saw that DS tried to talk to his dad about this but dad refused to discuss it with him.  Dad refused to let DS drive his car, or to help DS buy an old beater car; he though DS should buy his own car, yet knew he had a custody schedule that meant he couldn't really hold down a part time job working weekends.  So what was dad doing to help this situation exactly? Did he even sit down and empathize with the kid, and talk it out with him, and say "Hey, I understand having to come 1.5 hours away every weekend is a real drag since you can't do social things with your friends, how can we make this work?" No - he refused to even talk about it. Do you call that flexible?

Why would you think that kind of attitude gets you a teen who wants to have a relationship with you when it isn't court mandated?  Don't you see focusing on "MY TIME WITH YOU IN THE HOUSE" at this age is detrimental to the relationship which should be about "What do you need and how can I help you achieve it?"[/quote]

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