Another giant, productive, emotionally draining conversation with DSS

[Penny Lane]

Hi all, I've been back through this thread and read all the good advice several times. It's all very helpful because these conversations are STILL continuing, regularly.

DSS asked again for a therapist. I think we need to start working on finding someone who will meet with just him, not the parents.

It became clear to me this week that much of this stems from BM talking to the kids directly, or talking in front of them about court. They're in court over right of first refusal, and COVID has really dragged out the process. I guess the court (rightfully) doesn't consider a contempt action a high priority, and on top of that it's kind of a moot point for now since everyone is working from home anyway.

So most recently DSS asked me if his parents are in court, and I said they are but I can't talk about it. He asked if it's over ROFR and I said I really can't tell him what it's about.

He then said that he thinks what is best for him (I previously told him that his dad would never initiate court unless he felt like it was best for the kids) is that his parents never go to court. He said that enforcing the ROFR rule would mean that he never gets to see his grandparents and that he doesn't want to follow that rule.

First of all, thanks to BM for the insight into what you'll be arguing in court!

Second of all that's clearly a highly flawed argument based in part on the fact that DSS has no idea what's actually going on, he's only heard BM's version.

I think I need to clarify and I think I can do it without actually talking about court at all, just talking about the disagreement. I've been kicking around an elaborate metaphor to help him understand. But I also want him to be clear that we want him to be able to see his grandparents and even on H's parenting time, he's welcome to go on special outings with his grandparents (I don't think that would ever happen because the grandparents would never reach out to H and ask for it). In my mind, it's not even an issue that BM is violating ROFR. It's that she's violating ROFR while at the same time harassing us any time she even suspects that we are violating it (which we are not). So if we're going to go through harassment over this provision we are certainly not going to let it slide that she's in constant violation.

I don't really want to tell him about his mom's harassment, so I guess I need to figure out what to say about that portion of it - why we feel like the enforcement is currently so one-sided.

I do think it's reasonable to say that while BM is telling people around her why it's fine for her to violate this provision, she is telling DH that she never violates it, that the kids are never away from her for more than the required amount of time. And that while DSS and BM might not like this provision, that the parents have only made one agreement about this and it's the ROFR provision. If BM doesn't like the agreement she made, she would need to come back to DH and ask him to agree to a new system. Not just stop following it.

Not only has she not done that, but DH offered to roll back ROFR during their last court situation, and she rejected it - because she doesn't want the kids to be around me instead of her. I don't think he needs to know that unless BM says something untrue about that, too.

The really ridiculous thing is that ROFR is so moot right now that there's no reason to even be talking about it. Certainly if we had known the pandemic was coming, DH wouldn't have bothered to file the motion. But now that he has, he's gotta see it through, I think. But there's no reason for DSS to even worry about this because nothing will change for the foreseeable future. (Although, it's pretty telling that now that BM doesn't need a babysitter, the kids have barely seen her parents. Seems pretty clear that the time they spend with their grandparents is not quality time, it's babysitting time.)

I'm so frustrated. She is once again the bad actor here. All she would need to do is not say anything about it to the kids, and they would never need to know about this disagreement. But now we have to clarify and I potentially expose even more of her bad behavior.