HELP x ripped out another rug -

[bright_new_day]

My kids are so great, I don't want her to have the privledge of being with them, if that makes sense.

I totally get that, I feel the same way! The OW shoiuld not be able to have any part of the lives of our kids, but we have no control over that!

I will look at the schedule again, but not for a while. I have read some of the studies, and moving back and forth week to week is actually pretty difficult on the kids (in general). Like a businessman who lives out of his suitcase, they loose a sense of home to some extent. The kids' IC wants another session with S13, anyway, so I can email her about it. Suzy, I don't know where it came from, but it could very well have been S. He really wants to be fair.

I did a lot of reading on that type of scenario becaue my X wanted that as well, and what I read led me to the same conclusion. For the most part the kids are left feeling as if they have no real home, and kids need that. From my own experiences, at the end of the summer my kids spent the last two weeks with their dad, his new wife (she was the OW), and her kids. It was good on one handbecause I went back to work two weeks before the kids went back to school, so I didn't have to find care for them. Through various sources I have learned that "at dad's house we didn't have any rules, went to bed whenever we wanted, got up whenever we wanted, ate what we wanted, etc." After getting home and spending a couple of days running around getting ready for school my D10 (who is very mature for her age) had a melt-down. SHe was throwing a fit for me and I called her on it. We talked about it and she ended up in my lap crying that she "hated all of this", she said she "hated the divorce, hated that dad got married again right away, hated that they were just starting to get settled in the rental house then dad got married so fast and we had to move again, hated all the going back and forth, was stressed about how it effects school, etc." I think if there were consistent rules it might be easier on her, but X seems to want to be the "fun parent" so homework is not given priority, it is all about entertainment. My S9 is smart but disorganized. Numerous times last year he didn't get homework done, or did it all wrong, because X never checked. I regret that I ever agreed to any weekday overnights during the school year, but I did and I am stuck with it. Think long and hard about what you agree to. What a child may think is fair may not be what is really best for them!

So, even my children have accepted this whole mess before I have, completely. And I have to do a better job at showing them that I will be ok, that I am strong enough to go on and have, make, a wonderful life.

Children accept what they have to. They know when they can't make mommy or daddy do what they want, so they accept what the parent does because they want to keep the parent's love. But they still have feelings, and those feelings are generally let loose around us, the parent who was left behind to pick up the pieces. My D10 will probably NEVER say to her dad what she said to me. What the children see is that the WAS was able to leave the relationship with the spouse(other parent), so what will prevent that parent from leaving the relationship they have with them. So they make sure not to say or do anything that will "make that parent leave them." Sad.

I have to go beyond the No Expectations, right to the Expectations that he will be a Selfish Pri!ck.

And you'll never be disappointed!