Good morning,
I think my son is pulling away from his dad and I dont know how to handle it. His dad and I recently split. (almost 4 months ago) At first our son would would drop what he was doing if he saw his dad calling or he would drop what he was doing to call him...Now not so much. Sometimes when his dad calls (more on this in a min) our son will ignore the call because he is on the phone with his friends before he would of told his friends Ill call you back my dad is calling. I think he ignored his calls twice now, and one time he texted him saying im not picking up we will talk tomorrow. Sometimes he "forgets" to call his dad (again ill get into this in a min).Other times he has mentioned Ill call dad now and "get it over with"
Same thing with pick ups. Our son used to get pick up on fridays straight from school. Lately he has been requesting later and later times. At first it was only an hour later but now its about 2-3 hours later. This has been going on for a month now. This morning he requested going over at 6 pm and his dad just didnt want it. He said 4:30? Our son said 5:30. His dad then said how about 5 because we still need to go to the store to pick up stuff for dinner. our son agreed but didnt sound happy and his dad then said "is that ok, is that what you want?" I wanted to say "No thats not what he wants he told you what he wants 3 times now but you arent listening to him" But I wanted to give my son his privacy and didnt step in.
Phone times-they have an agreement that our son will call in the morning and his dad will call him at night. Our son is 10...I personally dont think any responsibility should be put on him If he wants to call then fine but it shouldnt be you call in the morning...Well he "forgot" or "was running" late so didnt call a few times in the morning. And his dad points it out to our son ALL the time. "I missed you yesterday or this morning, you didnt call" LIKE WHYYYY? if you noticed he didnt call pick up the phone and call him yourself....Now the part that gets me MAD. his dad RARELY calls him at night. He tells him he overslept. (i suggested setting alarms and more alarms and he replied "i know i am a shitty person") Why are you pointing it out to our 10 year old that he sometimes (not very often) doesnt call him in the morning but not bring up the fact that he didnt call the night before. Like he just ignores it he doesnt apologize for it and our son is mature and doesnt point it out to him. even though he notices it. There were so many nights that our son was up crying at night because dad didnt call once again...Its now the 14th of the month. His dad only called him 3 times so far this month....He only called him on Sunday this week. Such a hyporcrite! Oh and when they do talk, it is a lot of silence or our son trying to engage in conversation. his dad barely asks him questions he just says okay to everything
Our son has recently made comments about his dad not loving him. We were watching a show and the one line was " if my dad told me he loved me things would be different" and my son turned to me and said "point of view my life" I saif "your dad loves you" and our son said no he doesnt. I said "he tells you he loves you" and our son says "he doesnt mean it" Now what am I suppose to say to that? I dont want to bash his dad but i also dont want to invalidate his feelings which are totally normal to have considering his dads actions...
The time he does have at his dads (friday nights to early saturday morning) is not engaging. He comes home miserable. He often says all they did was watch movies and his dad fell asleep on the chair during it. He spends more time with his grandmom than his dad (his dad lives with) he requested going on walks with his dad and his dad turned him down saying he had a headache. He told my sister that he stopped trying to spend time with his dad because its pointless. Our son even says just watching movies isnt quality time. He wants to do things- like play catch or go to an arcade. He said "a normal dad would want to do those things, but my dad doesnt"
One time his dad left him with his grandmom to go on a date. He told me about it trust me I yelled and called him selfish why go on a date the one night you have your son??? And he said he wasnt being selfish he couldnt cancel because he already spend money on the date...he told me that he wouldnt leave for the date until our son was in bed or close to bed...which was a lie. He left at 7 our son doesnt go to bed until 9...he comes home from his date and is on his phone texting her. Our son had his phone and saw some texts from her and his dad told him to ignore them. Our son comes home saying all he wanted to do was build a snowman and his dad was on his phone the entire time. I again called him up and told him our son is laying on the floor crying. And he said "I was barely on my phone I guess I cant be on it at all" I told him I was going to stop telling him how our son felt because it always just ends with us yelling and nothing changes...
I tell my son he doesnt have to go over if he doesnt want to. I hear him tell his friends he cant do anything on friday because he "has to" go to his dads. I keep reminding him thats not true he doesnt have to. Oh he has an xbox at his dads and one time he told me he wasnt going to add his friends and play while hes with his dad but now 4 months in he added his friends and calls me to say goodnight and when i ask what they did he often tells me that he was playing with his friends. Funny too I see my son literally EVERYDAY and when hes at his dads our son still calls me and is able to talk to me for 20-30 mins easily!
He also got a scooter for the holidays and I couldnt figure how to build it and had my friends husband do it and our son told his dad "moms friend will do it because you dont want to right?" his dad was like "of course i do buddy" but our son was like no its fine... and im not going to lie i smile when our son makes this little remarks to him.
But i know long post lol...Anyway how do I handle it? I dont want to force him to do things he wants and i know he wont just stop going over on his own because hes worried about upsetting his dad (literally told me this and i was trying to convince him that he doesnt need to worry about his dads feelings just his own and he started crying saying how he thinks its his job to maintain that relationship with him and if he doesnt reach out that he wont have a relationship with his dad at all and thats like the world on his shoulders so I pretended to take the world off his shoulders and threw it across the room and my son was like well i have the moon too lol so he was trying to lift it off his shoulders and but it was too heavy so mom and him both needed to lift and throw it lol) but I cant tell him why dont you stay home this weekend because then it looks like I am the one sabotaging the relationship...
And yes I am looking into therapy for him-sadly the place that needs to an assessment cannot see him until April. In the meantime, suggestions????
I just dont know if I am doing the right thing by him, or if I am doing enough. I am trying to get him our when we can and when we cant we do "taste" challenges or play games together, or bake so he knows hes loved and his mom got his back. I just would hate to see this destroy our son. and I fear that it is already taking a toll on him.
Help - Son
Adult alcoholic son
Parenting: part 3 
Im feeling very low and depressed
Far away Lover
