Thanks, Nik, that's a great idea, arranging for a C and letting W have the option of accompanying me.
Tonight, I got another taste of how difficult my W is getting to be. When one parent has the kids, the other parent calls them in the morning and again in the evening -- to say Good Morning and to say Good Night. That's been our unwritten practice since the sep began in July.
Background: S7 has ADHD like issues due to his sensory-integration problems (SID), such that he easily gets distracted. The problem arises in this case when one of us calls while S7 (and to lesser extent S3) is preoccupied by something, most often the television. It becomes next to impossible to get their attention, let alone have a conversation with them at such times. This tends to be one of W's pet peeves -- when she calls to talk to the boys, she insists that the television or other entertainment be paused or muted. I have been very careful to either silence or freeze the TV or music when anyone calls, for several months now. I've taken great care to consider her wishes.
Well, tonight W put S7 and S3 each on speakerphone to talk to me when I called tonight. They were both engrossed in some show and neither of them were very responsive in my communications to them. I kept asking, "Hello? Is anyone there? Speak to me." And all I would get were dazed one-word replies. It was useless -- I know that W was there with them, but she just would not halt the distraction so they could talk to me intelligibly. Instead, I could hear her in the background telling them to tell me good night.
If I were to do anything like that, she would never let me live it down. She would scream at me that I am harming her relationship with our sons. But she has no problem when it is me trying unsuccessfully to talk to my sons; this is now the second time in the same number of weeks, to my recollection, that this has happened. It's just so wrong.
