BPDFamily.com

She only lets him speak to their kids once a week because that's the minimum she can get away with in the Parenting Plan and not be in contempt. Seriously, can you imagine only being allowed to speak to your children once a week? Absolutely no other calls. And then today the noise in the background was making it very difficult for S9 and my DF to talk. So DF asked S9 what the noise was and he said it was the heater. DF then asked S9 to move away from the heater so that he could hear him better and S9 said that his mother told him to stand there. He had the same problem when talking to D10. She was also told to stand by the heater to make the call as difficult as possible.

Seriously, this is ridiculous. I'm supposed to feel bad for her because she's ill and has irrational fears, etc, etc, etc. It just drives me nuts and I feel so helpless. At least we have this recorded so the GAL will be able to hear it. (Assuming you can hear it in the recording with all the noise. I haven't checked yet.)

No, I can't imagine.

My husband used to actually call the daycare to talk to his girls - because phone calls through her were very stressful for everyone involved.  

Do they ever go somewhere else?

Can I just give you a little bit of hope in this, since they are 9 and 10? It's get a lot easier when they are older. Cell phones were such a gift to my husband when it comes to talking to them. It's worth every single penny we pay for those phones.  

First off, thank you for reminding me that these phone calls must be stressfull for her. I know that when the kids are with us and she is on the phone with them it does cause us stress. We just never show that to the kids. Sometimes (often) I forget that hurting others is more an acceptable by-product than a goal for her.

They used to go to their great grandmother's house but when she got wind of the fact that DF called there looking for the kids she had her grandmother change her number. She currently has her unemployed mother living with her and she watches the kids after school. She has been told that DF is the devil so she is no help.

We tried the cell phone thing but the kids are too afraid of making their mom angry to use it. It's honestly just a horrible situation and all we can do is hope the court will do something about it... . in June. *sigh*

My SO goes through the same thing. Every day he asks for a phone call. He's received 3 in two years. It's frustrating, and all we can do about it is document, document, document... .

Correct me if I'm wrong but is it not a generic stipulation in any child custody order that the parent that has the kids can NOT deny communications with the other parent. I even was handed a generic custody guidelines for state of PA and it states that the kids are to be able to talk on the phone with the other parent and that they are allowed to go to another room so as to not be eves dropped on by the parent they are with.  It even mentions that the kids are to be allowed to talk on the phone in a quiet room away from TV noises and other distractions. If I did what was going on in this thread I could be taken to court!

At first my x2bh was/is obsessed (and controlling) with talking on the phone to kids while they were with me.  First L got it narrowed to four times a day which turned into two hours per day at anytime of day.  My second L got it down to three times a day 10 min each at certain times.  x2bh abuses it, ongoing issue.

So if my npdh can talk that much to kids when they are with me, DF should be allowed to talk to his kids more than once a week!

Thanks guys. It's sad but validating to know that we aren't alone in our wars over telephone contact. We have a day and a half of court in June. The full day is for Custody and the half day is for a second round of Contempt for phone issues. Between now and court her idea of "being good" is to make sure his once a week mandated call comes in on time so that she can bring in phone records showing how "good" she's being. Last time we went to court she told the court that if he wanted to talk to his kids he could call her phone or that he or the kids could use the provided cell phone to have contact. Well the cell phone was always off every time DF ever tried to call and we got wind of the fact that minutes were getting used by someone else in the house for sending pictures, texting and phone calls with other people (just not DF) so we stopped paying for it. And of course, any time he has called her cell to ask to speak to the kids he's been told that he was bothering her and that they weren't with her. She actually sent him a text one day when she was angry saying, ":)on't call my phone looking to talk to the kids."

So, it's just one of those things. She gets caught acting badly, we get a contempt finding, she ignores it and doesn't pay it, she changes her M.O. just enough to not get caught doing what she was doing before while still getting the same unfair result. And between the time it takes to get things documented enough and to actually  haul her back into court the bad behavior continues and DF loses more and more time with the kids. And worse, the kids have more and more time where it is reinforced that they shouldn't call their dad or tell him anything about their lives when they do talk to him once a week.

I did the math yesterday and he gets about eight weeks of in-person parenting time in a 52 week year. We also have her recorded when he asked her for extra time so he could have them for Father's Day saying, "No. When do you ever help me get extra time? When do you work with me to make sure I get extra time? So I'm just good enough to be the parent when they are in school but I shouldn't get any long weekends with them?" This might very well be her reality, but it's pretty screwed up.

Isn't Father's Day part of the standard holiday schedule?  If not then it shouldn't be hard to get the judge to add that to the parenting order.

BTW, my ex complained in court that she never got to talk to Her son for 5 days one weekend.  Well the fact was that she never called from Wed pm to Fri pm.  That afternoon my cell died and so I posted a greeting to say my cell was having problems and to call the house line.  She never called.  Sunday night I checked VM to make sure no pending messages and of course she was demanding me to let her talk to Her child.  So Monday morning I had son talk to her.  Just 2.5 days max.  Court outcome: The magistrate listened to just ex and ordered daily contact on her bogus complaint.  I should have appealed but my lawyer said it wasn't worth the legal costs to undo it.  That was summer 2009.  It was only in Dec 2013 I managed to get the order changed and "reasonable" was added back into the telephone contact so she can't threaten so much.

Unfortunately since we live so far away we can't do a standard holiday schedule so we actually have a modified schedule. He gets six weeks during the summer. He would need three extra days beyond that to have the kids for Father's Day and S9's birthday. So right now she makes him choose between the two. The judge did fix it for this year saying she had to give him Father's day because our two days of court are around that weekend. But she is already trying to demand that be part of his summer parenting time and he should have to bring the kids back before S9's birthday. She is also trying to demand that DF bring the kids back three days early from the Spring Break parenting time because D10 will miss soccer games. We are waiting on a final decision from the GAL about if we have to do that.

*yawn* So exhausted. Nothing like spending two days writing a "Summary" of issues for the GAL. Just finished up page 18... .