Sounds like my ex-, who may deem it to his benefit to return emails from his daughter once every three months, rarely calls and only sees the kids once a year if that.
The kids will ask him for money because 1) they're older than yours and 2) they learned a long time ago that if I ask for help he'll NEVER give it.
And he tells them that all this is because I hate him.
Whatever. I can only trust that they know the truth and behave accordingly.
We have somewhat of the opposite problem. Argh. I've typed and erased my response several times, but suffice to say D is actively involved in his children's lives in many, many ways (from financial, to emotional, to coaching their sports on the weekends) and his ex acts as though he is a terrible influence on them and encourages them to disrespect him. It makes my hand itch to smack some people.
It could be worse, you know. Instead of being a non-entity, your ex *could* want to control their every thought and blame *you* for every perceived shortcoming on their part. :-(
It could be worse, you know. Instead of being a non-entity, your ex *could* want to control their every thought and blame *you* for every perceived shortcoming on their part. :-(
It's thoughts like that that got me through 10 years of single parenthood and beyond without actually wanting to kill the man for making his daughter wonder why she wasn't interesting or good enough that he'd want to see her more often.
Then I watched some of my friends go through custody battles.
And I looked at my daughter.
And realized how damn lucky I am and how very, very much he'll never know he missed.
Ah, don't get me started on She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. She has the girls 5.5 days a week. He has them 2.5. And yet he is responsible for their poor grades, their bad choices in friends, their poor eating habits, in short *everything* that reflects poorly on her as a mother.
Again, I have drafted and erased my response here several times. I simply can't understand a woman who tries to exert a scary kind of control over her children in the name of religion and then blames everyone else for their rebellion. :-(
Lordy pete. I realized a year or two into my second child's life that my actual ability to control my children in the long run is negligible. I can influence them. I can set up a structure in their life. But there's only so much any parent can do. I have one kid who is a genius, and one who can barely talk. You learn to let go of the idea of "children as clay" pretty damn quickly.
And my dd1's dad had a wife for a couple of years who was a freakin' nutbar, (even he admits it now), who both did everything she could to undermine his relationship with his daughter AND everything she could to undermine me as a parent. It was insane.
I let go of the whole mess when he called me up one day and apologized for every bad thing he'd ever said to me (because his ex wife demonstrated just how reasonable I really was.) Rarely have I been so grateful for a lunatic. His apology changed nothing about his parenting (other than he started paying child support more regularly), but it did stop me feeling crabby every time we heard from him.
Yikes. I have to say, I'm with you. I've watched some nasty custody battles in my day--as a counselor, as a lawyer, with members of my family, with the middle school kids I volunteered with--and it's just bizarre how some folks behave. It's not in the kids' best interests, and that's really what it should all be about. The fact that your ex won't help really and won't spend more time with them than he "has" to is just sucky.
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Which is to say, I don't comprehend deadbeat asshat absentee fathers either.
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The kids will ask him for money because 1) they're older than yours and 2) they learned a long time ago that if I ask for help he'll NEVER give it.
And he tells them that all this is because I hate him.
Whatever. I can only trust that they know the truth and behave accordingly.
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It could be worse, you know. Instead of being a non-entity, your ex *could* want to control their every thought and blame *you* for every perceived shortcoming on their part. :-(
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It's thoughts like that that got me through 10 years of single parenthood and beyond without actually wanting to kill the man for making his daughter wonder why she wasn't interesting or good enough that he'd want to see her more often.
Then I watched some of my friends go through custody battles.
And I looked at my daughter.
And realized how damn lucky I am and how very, very much he'll never know he missed.
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Ah, don't get me started on She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. She has the girls 5.5 days a week. He has them 2.5. And yet he is responsible for their poor grades, their bad choices in friends, their poor eating habits, in short *everything* that reflects poorly on her as a mother.
Again, I have drafted and erased my response here several times. I simply can't understand a woman who tries to exert a scary kind of control over her children in the name of religion and then blames everyone else for their rebellion. :-(
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And my dd1's dad had a wife for a couple of years who was a freakin' nutbar, (even he admits it now), who both did everything she could to undermine his relationship with his daughter AND everything she could to undermine me as a parent. It was insane.
I let go of the whole mess when he called me up one day and apologized for every bad thing he'd ever said to me (because his ex wife demonstrated just how reasonable I really was.) Rarely have I been so grateful for a lunatic. His apology changed nothing about his parenting (other than he started paying child support more regularly), but it did stop me feeling crabby every time we heard from him.
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*hugs*
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