Not even sure where to start on this one… I guess a brief background is a good place. So I have a 6yr old boy, his mum & I are divorced, splitting up when he was 3. I’ve been with my current partner 2 and a bit years and we have a 5 month old boy together. My 6yr olds mum has a new fella and he’s moved into their flat (our old marital home). The arrangement we had for the past 3 years has been me having my 6yr old every other weekend, from Friday after school until he’s dropped home Sunday night. That was all working fine up until last xmas. My ex and my partner hate each other (my ex tried to split us up buy claiming i'd slept with her whilst with my current gf, and I hadn't), so as a result, since then, we have no real direct communication – everything goes via her sister or my mum and we haven’t been face to face for years.
My current partner’s nephew is also 6 and him and my boy get on great. So one night, I was at home with the 2 boys and the other boys dad. They were watching a dvd upstairs in one of the bedrooms. We were checking up on them every half hour, then about 9.30pm, we split them up and put them to bed (yes it was quite late this night). A month or so later, I was told by my ex wife, that my boy had gone into Sky TV (specifically sky) whilst in this bedroom, and was able to find an adult channel and was watching porn. So much so that he was acting out some sexual positions in front of her and knew the Sky channel number off by heart, This surprises me as I can’t see how it happened. First of all, he would have no idea how to change the source of the TV input from DVD to sky. And then to somehow stumble to a porn channel, and then remember the actual channel number? And (I’m no expert here), but I’m pretty sure adult channels don’t start until 10pm? I looked at this channel number on my friends Sky, it was a channel where callers dial in and speak to a woman who then act all seductive etc… And as it happens, I don’t even have Sky TV, I have Virgin…. But he has Sky TV at his mums house….
My ex wife then told me that unless I get to the bottom of it and sort it out, I’m not allowed to have him. [censored]? What was I supposed to do? Even if I saw he had somehow seen this, what am I supposed to do after the event? She even got social services involved.
Around about the same time as this happening, he was acting up at school. Touching other boys and girls intimate parts and even urinating on another boy in the toilet. Obviously I was concerned and had to go to his school for regular meetings with the headmaster. I didn’t know what to do, and it was compounded by the fact that I wasn’t even allowed to see him to do anything about it. His mum refused to look elsewhere, fully focusing all the blame on me.
It was only 5 months later, in May, that she gradually started to let me have him again during the day only, and then from June, started letting me have him for full weekends. I was over the moon to have him back, get that routine back going again. However, last weekend she refused to let me have him again, saying she’s taking him out the country for a weekend but also that he wasn’t happy with coming to mine, so I can’t have him. How much damage is this causing him? I've since made a court application to get my time with him legal and to take that element of control away from her.
To top it all off, one of the reasons, I firmly believe, that he’s not happy about coming to mine, is my partner. She’s extremely strict. Kinda feel like she doesn't really care about my boy at all and actually prefers when we don't have him. She wants him to be self-sufficient and just play with his toys pretty much the whole time we have him. She will say out loud that there's no point in him having any toys at all if he wont play with him. A few times when I had to pop to the shops, I asked if he wanted to come with, and she’s shot me down, saying (in front of him), that he’s fine playing with his toys and just to go shop quickly. Puts me in a position where I don’t want to argue in front of him, yet don’t want to be undermined in front of him either. But with her, everything turns into an argument.
Also, because we have a baby, my partner is watching me like an eagle when we have my eldest. She’s constantly looking to see if I give equal amounts of attention to both boys. If I offer to take my eldest out somewhere, then she will kick off, asking why I don’t offer to take the baby. It’s a constant battle. If I say to my eldest that he can play on xbox, or he can have ice cream, my partner will then tell him that he can’t and go on at me as to why. I feel like a fool in front of him. Who only knows what he must be thinking. One time, they were all on the sofa, my boy, my gf and she was holding the baby. I walked past and tickled by boys foot... she saw and asked why I didn't tickle the baby's foot. Yep... this is what it's like constantly. I just need her to take a step back. I want to be able to spend quality time with him, but she won't stand for it and simply can't accept it, stating that this is how it is, and he has to get used to not being the sole centre of attention when he's at ours. And I believe he's struggling with this.
My boy, at his mums, is the sole centre of attention. Home is his “safe place”. But when he comes to me, that’s not the case. He’s completely different when he’s at mine and my partner isn’t there, he completely comes out of his shell. Which suggests to me that my partner is the problem. So I’m kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place 🙁
He is seeing a counsellor at his school, and they have no immediate concerns. He does however, lie. A lot. Stupid things though, like he’ll tell his mum that when he stayed at mine, when he woke up, he got into bed with my partner and I one morning and relaxed. He didn’t. but I don’t understand why he’d lie? Unfortunately, his mum blames me for absolutely everything and believes everything my boy says. But I maintain that by her not letting me have him, she’s causing more psychological damage than anything else. And to rub salt in the wounds, and this is what really kills me. He calls his mums boyfriend, “daddy”. That’s broken my heart :boohoo: