Shared parenting sucks

Princess has this afternoon come home from a weekend with R1 and R2.  I am frustrated as hell.

The first issue is R1’s work.  He’s just taken a new job which requires him to work both Saturday and Sunday every week.  The fact that this would seriously impede his ability to see his child appears to have had little impact on his decision to change jobs.   So we’re attempting to renegotiate the time she spends with him.  We’ve come to a tentative agreement that he will still have her alternate weekends from Friday at about 6 until Sunday at 10am.  Princess will just spend Saturdays with R2.  R1 will also pick up Princess from school (something he’s never done) once a week, take her to one of her many after school activities and feed and bathe her before bringing her home to bed.  All of this seems fine in theory, though Lazyboo and I are seriously bummed that we will no longer have the last couple of months of full weekends to ourselves before we have to actually be full time parents (shock horror!).  It’s a bit much that it was just dumped on us too without any consultation – our lives are just supposed to fit around theirs.

So the reality of the situation.  Princess came home this afternoon and told us all about her weekend.  She stayed the full weekend this time, even though R1 had already started his job, because I have so much work to do and had really counted on this weekend to get some of it done, and three days just wasn’t enough notice.  So I dropped Princess off at about 6:30 Friday night with R2 because R1 wasn’t home yet.  Apparently R1 came home soon after and they all went to a friend’s house for dinner.  These friends also have an 8 year old daughter.  Princess told us in great detail about how all the grown ups stayed downstairs and played pool while the kids hung out upstairs watching TV and playing.  Until after 11pm.  Princess informs me that her friend fell asleep during a movie they started to watch after 10 so she just finished watching it by herself until it was time to go home.

On Saturday, R1 worked so Princess spent the day with R2 and a friend.  Some time during that day, she was allowed to watch an M rated (15+) movie unsupervised.  In the afternoon, Princess and R2 and her friend all went to the museum.  Afterwards, R1 picked them up from there and they went to a pub to meet up with some other friends, who also have kids.  Apparently Princess didn’t get to bed again until about 10.

This morning, Princess and R1 watched some more of the M rated move, this time together before he went to work.  Then Princess and R2 went to play mini-golf together.  This afternoon, R2’s friend came back and they all went out to a beach side suburb here to wander around a bit.  Apparently by all accounts Princess lost it and threw a tantrum because R2 wouldn’t buy her food.  R2 stood her ground and didn’t give in to the tantrum, which was good to hear!  R2 then brought Princess back to us.  She mentioned that Princess had been asking for food but didn’t say anything about tantrums.  She also told us that Princess had had two late nights.  That’s progress because we don’t usually get told!

R1 called us a couple of hours later when he got home from work to finalise the new arrangements.  He was unimpressed to hear that he would have to take Princess to an after school activity and also that he would have to bathe her before bringing her home.  He was quite annoyed that Princess had told us she didn’t want to stay over there during the week because she didn’t want to be late for school (R1 is not known for his punctuality).  He also told us that R2 was annoyed at Princess’ behaviour this afternoon and that R2 doesn’t like to feed Princess junk food – as if we do!  He also said that R2  had said that Princess had eaten enough for 2 people today and that she doesn’t like to feed Princess snacks.  We then had a discussion about how Princess has always required regular small meals in order to function properly – it is essential that she has both morning and afternoon tea and that fruit is not enough for those snacks.  He agreed and said that that is what they do.

So later on, I was chatting to Princess about her weekend and she was telling me all about the details of what she’d been doing – I an conscious not to grill her on what is going on over there, but like to show interest in what she has been doing.  She likes to talk so we usually hear a lot!  I was interested about the whole snack thing so asked her what she’d eaten today, and she told me that she’d only had an apple for afternoon tea before she went out just before the tantrum thing.  So it seems that a tired and hungry Princess had lost it a bit.  Still completely unacceptable to throw a tantrum, which we talked about with her, and backed R2 up on, but the story is a bit different when placed in context.

So the issues as I see them right now:

• Food routines
• Sleep habits – would it  be unreasonable to ask that she only have one late night on weekends?  Especially given the ongoing battles we’re having here over sleep times and getting enough sleep and Princess being exhausted?
• Movie choices
• The fact that R1 is barely spending any time with Princess at all – his work and social life clearly take precedence!  It’s nice that Princess is doing lots of fun things with R2 and that she’s spending time socialising with other kids but that really doesn’t seem the point.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that it is fair for us to get involved in that last point.  What he chooses to do with the time he spends with her isn’t our concern or our business.  Ultimately it is him that is missing out on spending time with his daughter.  It just bothers me that she is missing out too.  I worry that one day she will start wondering why her daddy doesn’t have any time for her, why she isn’t a priority.

As for the rest, I think it’s time that we all had a family meeting again.  IE when all four of those of us doing the parenting sit down and make sure that we show this child some consistency.  That Princess is being cared for adequately in all places.  But should we just butt out and let them parent the way they see fit?  Are we trying to interfere too much?  We don’t want to micromanage the way they do things, but we do want to make sure that Princess is ok…