how often do bm/dh talk to kids when not with them
our schedule is this
our week: monday, tuesday, friday, sat, sun with us and wed, and thurs with bm
the next week it switches, so basically the longest they go is 3 days with out seeing ss. we tried doing a week with each and he turned for the worse, too long from each parent.
anyways, who ever he is not with talks to him in the morning and at night. to me this seems to be too much. bm also calls whenever she feels like it to discuss ss, rather than waiting until the night or morning when they talk to ss.
what are some of you arrangements? is this too much? should i suggest less for the sake of our home? what do you think?
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We used to have that same
We used to have that same schedule. And actually one parent goes 5 days without seeing him (if you have him Fri-Tues). I think once a day for a call is enough. When we had that schedule, I would call the kids each day around 6 or 7 pm...late enough to not interrupt dinner but early enough not to interfere with bedtime. I would ask them about their day, and tell them goodnight at the same time.
When the schedule would flip, BD hardly ever called at all.
Once the kids started school, we agreed that it was better for the kids to have one "home" where they slept each school night. So now the kids are home with me every night. They see dad every Sun, and then Mon-Tues after school until 7 pm.
I think is too much but...
I wouldn't directly try to interfere with the amount of time husband talks with the kids. I WOULD have a problem if all that contact involved BM...
But if the kids have their own phones, or if he doesn't necessarily needs to communicate with BM, I wouldn't really care...
Answering your question: YES I think is too much... but I wouldn't do anything...
In my case, I had the problem of "BM CALLING WHENEVER" even at his job, (i don't even do that)... I thought that BM was calling DH tooooo much... and after a lot of training... DH finally got it, He doesn't answer the call, he lets it go to voicemail, and he also told her to communicate via email, she didn't really get it at firs, but I guess that at the end she "went with the flow"... and when SD is over there, sometimes he doesn't even call at all...
~You can see clearly only with your heart. What is truly important is invisible to the eyes~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's
By the way...
We have SD5 every other day, and every other weekend (picking and dropping at her school so nobody has to see each other) For instance, I take her to school, Bm picks her up etc...
~You can see clearly only with your heart. What is truly important is invisible to the eyes~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's
us too!
we only do transfers through day care, one parent drops him off, the other picks him up.
she is obsessive
about these calls. she calls in the morning and at night, during dinner time, and if fh does not answer, she calls back every 5-10 minutes. i think part of this has to do with her wanting him back but, still its unacceptable to me. he has told her call once, if i dont answer, we are busy and i will call back as soon as i can...she did it once or twice more and he answered her second call for the evening with "are you dense?" i said call once, otherwise i wont call back at all, you are harassing me. which she responded with, you cant keep my son from me!
most of the time, she calls, he hands the phone to ss, they talk and ss hangs up the phone. unfortunately, he is only 4, so hes not old enough to have a phone and deal with her on his own. We dont have a house phone because i thought it would be a way for her to create drama with me directly, and i didnt want her calling all hours of the day and night.
oh, how i can not wait for him to be old enough for a cell phone!
WOW
Such obsessive behavior wouldn't be tolerated by ME in MY house... sorry...
DH had to learn that he is NOT single anymore, and it does affect our life if she is constantly calling...
He told her "I have a wife, you are interfering with my marriage, and unless emergencies or things that need immediate answers I won't be answering your calls" pretty much...
She tries to play him a "guilt trip" OF COURSE!! she is the SACRED MOTHER!!!! saying that she never calls for things unrelated to their daughter... I agree, she never called to talk about her life or anything, it was always SD related... but GEEZ... if you are gonna come and pick her up, why would you need to call before picking her up to ask something that could have being asked here? or call to tell that she just saw SD5's school friend at the park and she doesn't speak english... WTF????
HELL NOOOOOOOOOOO... that caused HUGE drama in my marriage... I hated it... we would be having a family moment, and a nice time, and she would call.. UGHHHHHHH her ringtone boils my blood!!! (a dog barking) that's what we have for her...
FINALLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY DHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH is attuned with me
~You can see clearly only with your heart. What is truly important is invisible to the eyes~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's
RE:
BM used to be this exact same way. If she has something on her mind that she needs to tell BF or is particularly pissed for whatever her current reason is, she will still pull the call-back-every-minute-until-someone-answers crap. It really gets bad sometimes. It's a lot better now than it used to be (I should have a blog entry about our Christmas Day fiasco a couple years back that sums it up pretty well).
It stayed the same for a long time, back then, with her calling at least hourly to talk to SS when he was here. If she couldn't get a hold of SS, she would continue to call back minute-by-minute and leave screaming messages on the answering machine. She has clled the cops on us several times for "well care visits" because she was "worried" from not being able to get a hold of him for a whole five minutes...
Over time, it eventually calmed down. Now she only calls once every few hours. We consider this a vast improvement over how often she used to call. Now, if she doesn't get a hold of him, she leaves a sighing, passive-aggressive "you can have SS call me" voicemail and doesn't call back for a while. Unless of course, she's come unglued for whatever reason.
It took a LONG time to get to where we are. Years of BF telling her that we don't sit by the phone all day long waiting for her to call. Hundreds of nasty voicemails from BM, hundreds of wasted hours on the phone and too much calming SS down after she's taken her misplaced anger out on him yet again...
*~So sayeth Nymh~*
BM never calls to talk to
BM never calls to talk to them. She did for awhile, but tried to use it as a conn to talk to FH. Didn't work out so well for her. When she was done talking to them for like 30 seconds each and would ask SS8 to put FH on the phone he would just hang up. She finally stopped and they never ask to call her. They aren't her biggest fans.
Sometimes it sucks because
Sometimes it sucks because in order to keep her from bothering us by getting a bug up her ass we don't call the kids when they are with her EOW.
BM calls
BF him on his cell while he is at work. That's my major issue. BF says that it's always about the children, but I feel since they see eachother for drop offs and pickups about 3 times a week that it can be discussed at that time.
ugh
bm not only calls fh while he as at work, she just shows up and bombards him! at least today she was kind enough to ask if she could stop by to "talk" hel to the mother fing NO! thank god that was his response!
smnikki, I to have a SS who
smnikki, I to have a SS who just turned 5, but we have been dealing with this for 3 year, so since he was 2. BM did call a lot and finally DH told her that this was harrassment and he was going to call the police if she did not stop calling all the time, if she called about son it was ok but if she had him, then she knew he was ok, for 3 years they each had their son call the person he was not with and they had a 3 day 3 day arrangement. I thought calling every night to say good night was crazy but I have no children of my own so I am not sure how much I would want to talk with them. I have a SS and a foster daughter. However, I do think that once a day is fine, but more than that unless it is about the child a very important is tooo much, however if you DH has told her to stop and she has not then you can not fault him. I would be scared to tell him and not answer the phone when she has the child because what if something is really wrong, now when you have the child I would ignore the calls until bed time and then I would have him call before bed. How long have they been apart? It has taken our BM over 3 years and getting arrested 2 times and losing in court of her to back off, now because she was crazy she sees her son wednesdays for 3 hours and every other weekend and he comes home on sunday, in the courts eyes we are his home and he visits her house, which she must hate this but it is her own doing. Just document everything she says and even tape it, we were legally allowed as long as one party knows the taping is happening, which that one party would be your DH, so good luck and remember if he is doing all he can besides changing you number which he should not do then you just love him and support him because I bet he hates it toooo!!!!
My DH
called his kids every day at the same set-by-court time daily when we had EOW visitation. Now BM never calls, not even to talk to the kids.
My SD calls her mom when she is here about
2-3 times per day. She calls me and DH about 5-6 times per day when she isn't with us. She a phone whore.
My BS calls his dad once a day. If he wanted to more I wouldn't care.
I think it depends on the kid and the situation. When my son isn't with me I do want to hear from him every day, if he wants to call me more than once I'm that much happier.
I honestly don't think calling once in the morning and once at night is to much, but that's JMO.
~Happiness is defined by the smile on your face, not the frown on others.~
usually
i dont feel that it is too much either. i just wanted to see what others thought. I do agree with one that posted earlier though, its hard to have a good bonding experience when he is with us when everytime she calls he starts to misbehave. I cant wait for the days when he can decide when he wants to talk, rather than her making the schedule, and fh is not in the loop
RE:
When SS is with us, he talks to BM about 4 or 5 times a day. This is much lower than how often he used to talk to her - she would call every hour or so and keep him on the phone for 20 or 30 minutes.
When SS is with BM, BF hardly ever talks to him unless BM has him call to ask BF for something (usually money or to see if he can stay home from visitation for whatever inane reason). It averages about once a week.
*~So sayeth Nymh~*
Nymh, WOW. Very WOW.
~Happiness is defined by the smile on your face, not the frown on others.~
Yeah, that's the hard part you are facing.
And BTW, I ment no offense. Now if BM called once in the morning and once at night.........yeppers, that would be to much! LOL
~Happiness is defined by the smile on your face, not the frown on others.~
In our situation, BM has an
In our situation, BM has an open invitation to call or see the kids anytime she wants. My husband and I will not interfere with that unless we have a good solid reason. With that being said...she rarely calls the kids but the kids call her a whole lot more. We have had points when they got fed up with always calling her and her rarely ever calling them. We told them we will not force them to call her if they don't want too. But we aren't gonna call her ourselves and say "hey, can't you call them for once?" But when they are with her we let them have her time cuz it's usually just fri-sun unless she feels it's convenient for her to take them longer but not on school nights! She isn't to reliable with bringing them home at decent time on school nights so we forbid school nights with her.
We do a week on and a week
We do a week on and a week off and they talk to the parent that they are not with every Tuesday and Thursday. Other than that - there are no other phone calls.
after thinking about it...
last night, and reading the responses. I really see that i dont think its unreasonable that they talk twice a day. If it were my child im sure i would want to say good morning and good night. Since hes only 4, if he were older i think it would need to be less, but thats just me because i was fine with that when my parents were divorced. For the most part, there is no interaction between fh and bm, its maybe once a week she opens her mouth to say something stupid.
I really think my issue is that she feels so entitled to intrude in our life with these phone calls. Its like we have to cater our schedule to her calling at these times. My fh actually use to get out of bed to give ss the phone to talk to bm, and if we were out he would leave the group with ss to allow ss to talk to her with out being distracted (which she never does for us). I put an end to that! he calls her back when its convenient for us now, if we are busy when she calls. Also, fh phone is always on vibrate so if we have him and she calls she does not bother us!
Her new latest annoying habit though is that she sends him to play at the neighbors when fh calls to talk to ss (he leaves a message, please have ss call me back), and then she calls fh back and says hes playing at the neighbors ill have him call you, and then goes on with filling him in on her pathetic life. fh only answers because he thinks its ss, and has now told her, unless hes there to talk dont call, ill assume hes busy if you dont call back right away.
ugh, why is common sense so hard for some people
BM calls who knows how many
BM calls who knows how many times when we have them. She calls SD's cell, so I don't give a shit, as long as I don't have to hear her.
DH doesn't call them when they are with BM, unless we need info from them. The way we see it, that is their time with their mother, we shouldn't interfere (BM obviously doesn't feel this way).
They will call DH sometimes when they are with BM. SD12 used to call him a lot before she lost her cell. She would always tell him she was bored. (no cable, no computer, no furniture, no books at BM's)
BM Calls to talk to SS every single day at least 2 times a day
}:) BM frequently says he's in the shower/sleeping or she'll have SS call DH back- I personally think ONCE day is sufficient if it has to be that often, BM never ever calls SS when he's with us- she could care less.. I think DH would be pissed about me suggesting that he calls only once a day so I don't say a word, also when DH calls she puts DH on speaker phone..
Last time SS asked to speak to me, my daughter and son several times and we all took time talking to him, BM Hates this, I made sure to sound sugary sweet when it was my turn
lol
my ss does this too from time to time! he is always on speaker when talking to bm and fh. when fh calls to talk to him sometimes he says hi dad, love you too, im ready to talk to sm now. usually we have quite a nice talk and then he tells me he loves me and misses me, all while bm is standing right there to hear it all! he hasnt done it for a while though because he told me his mom said she doesnt like when he talks to me when shes there. so now sometimes he will leave the room when she calls and when fh tells him to come back he gets angry and says no because bm doesnt like sm.... how messed up is that? hes only 4? i feel so bad that she does this to him.