I spoke with my lawyer and he thinks that what is in the spoken transcript means we agreed to pay for extracurricular things as they were at the time of the divorce settlement. Any increases, like D6's violin lesson going up $100 a month, are not part of the deal. Likewise, any new expenses or activities have to be agreed upon by both of us - I am not an open ended funder of anything the X wants for the kids. He also said that if there is an activity that I dont agree to the kids doing, I dont have to pay for it. He is going to talk with X's lawyers about ammending the divorce judgment to have the right language regarding extracurricular expenses.
So I am looking to cut some more costs and may see if my father and mother might want to take care of the kids occasionally so as to save on friday daycare. My father is taking care of them this Friday and we will see how that goes. I also will probably not continue my golf lesson to help cut costs.
Last weekend, my daughter was practicing her violin at my house and got frustrated and said she hates playing it. I tried to encourage her to stop practicing when she gets frustrated and try again later. I get the feeling that she does not have the passion towards this instrument as S8 does towards his piano. I refuse to push her on it and actually think it is good for kids to fail at something every once in a while just as it is for them to see adults fail at something. I only ask them if they want to practice when they are with me, and if they dont want to, I drop it.
My lawyer said that he had noticed when his kids were young like mine, and taking violin lessons, that there was an unusually high percentage of asian kids in the classes and he thought it was because the parents wanted that. He also noticed, as his kids got into jr high, that most of the asian kids had dropped out of playing violin. I suspect that when you push a kid to do something you want, you get the opposite effect.
