Nobody's Fool..

Happy Father's Day! It was almost a bust, Save for the fact that the step kids acknowledged my efforts, it was just yet another day.

I had some decisions to make as the school year was about to transition into summer break, I most certainly was NOT going thru another stress inducing summer with the youngest daughter again this year like last.

Last summer was all about supposedly prepping to take on a busy summer filled with job opportunities as a lifeguard. That sounded good and I encouraged that, I was encouraging that she do anything to keep from being idle.

But it seems I was played for the fool. As time passes, things get clearer.
The Mom had been suggesting that Driver Training was in her future, and even the schedule had been floated.
It would most certainly interfere with ANY type of summer job. To bad Mom missed the signup deadline by about 40 minutes.

Anyway, things have been on a steady decline, the kid still could not get into the routine of not presenting last minute schedule changes, and she consistently had activities going on that would hamper chores, and allow her plenty of idle time between after school let out and the scheduled activities, all of which had to be spent not here, but at some boy or another's house.

I could not seem to motivate her, she still had the air of supremacy, like she was calling the shots. During an email exchange, I was told that I needed to grow up, because teenaged kids have schedule changes. Too bad they don't have that commitment to following rules or in a showing of work ethic.

Anyways, I just figure that I don't have to put up with the disrespect, the emotional stresses of wondering what is going on at the house that I would not approve of now throughout my work day. Not happening. Not to mention the lack of assistance with the everyday jobs if the household.

So when Dad is suggesting a course of action, like getting out and making some money, learning responsibility, stepping a wee bit into the real world for a taste of what is to come, it's not wise to counter with statements suggesting that some things are just so below you you won't consider them, or that his home is like a refuge for you from the other parent's home.

I'm not a gullible stooge, and people should know better. We all have choices.

Why can't kids catch on to the good work ethic idea?

Once again it's time for a kid to enter the realm of driver training, to look forward to driving, and again because I'm the outcast non custodial, I'm left out of the overall process. I'm forced to be the reactionary one.
That means having to discuss again the facts of the whole situation.

I firmly believe that this stage of life for a youngster is a transitional one. This is a big step. Lots of teachable moments. But my opinion doesn't count here.

So, I will have to explain the "excluded driver" clause where my insurance is concerned. Just having a licensed teen part time in my household jumps my rates big time. Naming that driver as excluded saves me a ton of money, but also prevents me from participating in the driver training process, because my kid cannot legally drive my vehicle, they won't be covered.

I think things might be different if this was a mutual decision between parents, but that cannot happen. I've been suggesting that the soon to be new student driver seek gainful employment, you know, a summer job.
But the excuses of why the child cannot even attempt to seek out a job just keep flying, because there is no concerted effort by both parents, in fact, the kid knows that she will get what she wants from mom anyway, the push fails.

So it will be a tough go, and the youngest will follow at this time next year.

Being back to back like this will at least get it over with fast.

"Don't discuss finances with the children..."

"Don't discuss finances with the children."
This was a statement handed down to me several years ago by the all and knowing Macomb County Friend of the Court, the judicial entity that is supposed to look out for the best interests of children due to divorce, separation our other legal disputes between parents here in Macomb County Michigan.

Of course, I DO DISCUSS FINANCIAL ISSUES with my children, because if I don't, then I open myself up too that giant glow off poor light that I am immediately placed into when I won't (or can't) provide requested additional funding for those stages in a child's life such as prom, driver's education classes,  summer camp, all those additional perks and wants that kids start expecting in the middle and late teen years, you know.

Remember, my opinions carry no weight, and I have no influence over how my children perform in school, our how they are raised in general. But inevitably, the hand comes out for me to partially contribute financially for these additional expenses, like clockwork, from day the age of 16 onwards.

Now, I'm never afforded the financial perks of having kids, no tax deductions for me, never offered and the few times I asked, of course, denied. That equates to thousands of dollars in tax breaks for the person able to claim it. The Mom has to look out for her financial interest, that is expected. At the least be up front about it.

I've been able to claim one child out of my 5 on my federal taxes once while divorced. Once.
While it pains me to have to say "no" when asked for these additional gifts, I really cannot feel guilty about it.

I encouraged my kids, and a step son to start earning money if thier own starting in their early teens, because if you want things, you need to go get them on your own to some extent. Our kids need to learn financial responsibility before they learn to drive. To bad society's influence differs from that reality so much.

So Custodial Moms, tell your kids the reality, that in paying child support, every time money is spent on a child's behalf, some of that came from their dad, mortgage, car payment, your food, clothes, utilities, gasoline, vacations, everything.

And maybe instead of degrading him, you should compliment Dad to them, because when they are with him, (WAY MORE THAN THE USUAL EVERY OTHER WEEKEND LIKE MOST) staying in their own rooms in his house, he provides EVERYTHING, and he NEVER asks Mom for money when he takes them on his vacations, trips, buys them clothes, treats, dinners out and the like.

Dad's Rules SUCK!

So I find myself with choices to make, as I look about, I see that my purpose for buying this home where I did is not at all coming to the benefit I had hoped for.

The wedges in the relationship with my youngest daughter are yet again driven deeper, she cannot seem to be where she is supposed to be with any regularity, well, when it comes to Dad's rules anyway.

Since the start of the school year it seems that there is more emphasis on her going where and when she desires than anything. I'm just supposed to get out of the way, give in, loosen up.

I played along faithfully with the swim team thing, until dropping grades came and our agreement was not heeded and tossed aside completely.
That just further demonstrated to me, and the kids, that man, you have no input, period. It's a recurring thing, pointing out that I have truly, no input.

There comes that point when you have to live up to standards, perform to expectations or suffer consequences. Not my kids, not a one. And its not me who gives the passes.

I have a saying, you get back what you put in, and that is forever.

There are always excuses, cut between, let it slides, and outright unpunished misbehavior. And it all seems to be okay. Dad is expected to just let by bygones be bygones. Wrong Answer.

I'm told that I don't give enough praise, don't show any pride in what she does.
Maybe I don't, I'll admit that, but I can't recall the last time anyone thanked me or took pride in my busting my ass to support two households either, some things are just, you know, expected...
I'm expected to work and pay bills and provide a nice 3 bedroom brick furnished heated home with food and clothing, and dish out several hundred dollars in support to the mother to help pay for hers..

The kids are expected to do well in school, pull weight doing some chores, and follow simple, uncomplicated rules to better them, to hopefully become trustworthy productive self supporting human beings...

Several days ago I had hit my tipping point, I was tired of being told what was going to happen instead of being asked by a teenager.

Swim season is over, that excuse no longer works, staying after school for special projects and assignments was totally debunked last year when I went to fact check what I was being sold and it bombed, this year the excuses are more creative but I meet them with a twinge of distrust. I feel it is well earned.

Now, it appears that after my expressing how I feel through rebuttal on my child's blog, that another avenue of instilling responsibility had been sidetracked, instead of walking to Dad's right after school dismissal without detours, procrastination and blatant violations of the set rules, wonderful daughter, and whoever else made the other party or parties in the "We decided that you should just pick me up at Mom's in the evening" reply to my inquiry, have trampled yet again on my purpose of making my home here. Someone told me that the ex insisted she was going to make my existence here hellish, and so far, they are right.

There is no communication with the ex, and since I can't trust anything she says to me to be factual anyway, no great loss, little of anything she has ever agreed to has ever come to pass anyway, so no great loss, I tend to avoid her completely.
Kids pick up on this kind of thing though, and will utilize it to their advantage.

In fairness I did propose that option in the forum, that if she could not follow my protocol, and elected to violate her instruction, that she should just go to her mother's as opposed to me stressing over that missed check in call, that perhaps I should pick her up on my way home.

I heard often from my daughter of the comfort, the escape that she was afforded in coming here right after school for various reasons, that had it not been for her pets at her mother's that she would seriously consider a more permanent change. Yeah, those pets have been used before as a decision making weapon for her..

Perhaps that was all feel good talk, giving the old man something he appreciated in hearing, this business about wanting to spend more time here.

It's too bad that I cannot be grounded in the situation enough to even make plans, you know, meals out, activities, birthday parties, not for anything, but for all the last minute changes and demands on this rigid old parenting schedule, and my unwillingness to budge off my principles.
I know it really sucks, for everyone.
I'm damned if I do or don't. But that's okay, I'm used to it.

To you dear daughter, all I can say is that  you'll get used to whatever is coming your way too I'm sure.

I believe she may just be expected to keep track of her out of control brother while taking advantage of this after school freedom from my lousy house rules, and expected to do a bit of youngster sitting to boot.

All I know is that for myself, I'm beginning to move more and more toward that point where I just pay, and don't worry about anything, I have no say in anything as it is, so why bother?

After a while it all becomes so......pointless, because when the other parent is constantly displaying total disregard of the other's wishes and boundaries, discounting their efforts that they may come out financially or emotionally superior to the other, and is always negating the other's authority, the children cannot take that downtrodden parent in a serious fashion, ever.

Work ethic as a youth...

This has been a particularly brutal winter, and having been thru several of them in my youth, I realized that even then I saw them as a financial opportunity.

It was easy to make $100 in a couple days as teen with a snow shovel, just the same as in summer with a mower in summer.

It would come a snowstorm and off I would go shovel in hand prospecting in my neighborhood.

My kids, although presented with the same opportunity, simply don't care to make their own money.

I guess the ex, never having to make her own money as a growing kid, does not seem to believe that instilling a good work ethic into our kids is important, and Lord knows my input is never welcomed.

The kids never think twice about asking for material things, and become genuinely upset when denied.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I believe that when you earn things you want you tend to appreciate them more, take care of them better, and make wiser decisions on how to spend your money.

Sometimes, I could just smack my buddies at work..

Some discussion from a buddy at work sparked my inspiration for this entry.

I'm certain that some people who read my entries chalk these instances up to isolated incidents, individual pockets of bad luck. Listening him this morning only validates my beliefs in the fact that some people are just out to make others miserable. He caused me pause and made me reflect on things that I had already undergone.

He's divorced, he was complaining how his ex was banging around in the wee hours of the morning assembling a bed for the kids. Yes, you read that right. You see, after divorcing he had a little string of poor luck, a soured live in relationship where the girlfriend's daughter caused some rub and friction (a topic I'm not unfamiliar with in my own personal life by the way), I think he got his own place a while, but eventually moved back into the house with the ex-wife. They are not "together" though.

Anyway he was discussing how her making racket at like 1:30am was putting him off, she suffers from headaches and blows off work, assembles furniture at night.  He talks like she is really portraying herself as the big victim.

I don't know really why he moved back, to ease the financial strain, (that child support is going to get paid to her even if you live there pal), maybe to have better involvement with his daughter (living there just let's the Mom make you out to be the ass all that much easier).
But if she ain't working or pulling her part of the load, guess who is? HIM of course! She seems to be following the playbook to the T! And she maintains total control, he talks about it, agitated, unhappy, so she obviously has control right?  She can't be happy, then HE can't be happy. And she will make certain of it, don't doubt me...
Why don't people see this? It makes me crazy!

Another buddy of mine from work went thru the wringer not that long ago, he is a dedicated, hard working, committed guy, buys a home, a house, with his girlfriend, made payments on two nice vehicles, whatever she wanted he found a way to get it for her. She works too, but he made the real money in that relationship.

This guy, he busts his rump in a most thankless, stressful, physically demanding line of work, 50+ hours a week, she call the shots, and his horror stories of her kids..Indifferent, unmanageable, disrespectful. And she backs her kids leaving him to just eat one excrement sandwich after another.
He went home to what is supposed to be his refuge, and felt completely out of place and out numbered.

Eventually she decided to split up with him, and I thought the guy would jump off a bridge, he was in it for the long haul, accommodating, loyal, way beyond what any man should have been. She did what was best for her, and even these couple years later, I get the idea he still carries a torch for her. He has not seemed to have moved on, not by a long shot.

So, when you make the life and wallet changing decision to divorce, then DIVORCE!  Why put yourself in the direct line of more misery by going back?

And when people put you out of their life, GO! LEAVE! Don't wallow around to be further taken advantage of! In fact, make them pay their fair share!

Be smart enough to go out and do what makes you happy, leave the negativity begging for somewhere to run.

Repel it, don't let it catch up with you.

They say BEEN THERE DONE THAT for a reason..

Like clockwork... almost like seeing the future!

Flash back to late spring 2013, my youngest estranged son and his mother entered into his "buyout" agreement with her purchasing him a dirt bike motorcycle, a move I believe to be the final phase of a long campaign to alienate my son from me.

On the hinting from his Mom of the impending purchase of this bribe, he became more distracted, disruptive and less enthused about that upcoming family vacation thru Canada to New  York State to The Herkimer Diamond mines, by way of Niagara Falls the week of Father's Day 2013. For the 4 or 5 months prior, he was just looking so forward to it, he spoke about it constantly.

He was failing in his school studies for that whole year. We all know that my hands were tied in the realm of academics, I had no real input, no "power" over anything to do with school as determined by the courts earlier that year. As far as his conduct in our home, up until the middle of May 2013, he was following house rules, pitching in on chores and duties, and generally well behaved.

Anyway, after this motorbike purchase, I discussed my feeling with my son about it, hitting a myriad of relevant topics, such his not being able to complete his homework or studies, but he was able to study for the test to operate that motorcycle, I outright told him that my impression was that it was a bribe, plain and simple. What else was he promised, why suddenly the emphasis on not going on vacation with us, were there not other dates available to get his riding certificate? Why is the only date his mother was selling him for that class during our family planned vacation?

He became furious, as he does when he is called out on things, it is a pattern of behavior I've seen time and again. He knew that it was BS, but he wanted that motorcycle, and the certificate to ride it so bad that he chose to sell out on his Dad.
He stormed from my home that warm summer day, and until this past Sunday, February 9th 2014, I have not heard a word from him. He had not returned to my home, called, emailed, nothing. He never even acknowledged our Christmas gift to him as a reward for his good behavior the first half of the year, nothing.

Fast forward to Sunday, February 9, 2014.

My phone rings displaying a number I am not familiar with, so as always, I allow it to go to voicemail. Playback reveals my estranged son, the message said "Dad, I need to talk to you, call me back when you get this."

I decide to send a text message, asking why, message back asks me to come to an area elementary school to talk. I ring the number and he answers barking orders to me, no hello Dad, no how are you, only a statement and demand.

"You need to come to the school right now, I have to talk to you!".

"About what?"

"Mom kicked me out of the house..."

"What am I supposed to do about it?"

"I have no where to go..."

"I guess you should have thought about that before you go around totally pissing people off eh?"

*click!* He hangs up on me.

That was very reminiscent of his mother's way of acting. Demanding demeanor, like someone owes them something, I thought initially maybe, just maybe I acted improperly, should have handled this different, but I soon came to clarity of the situation.

I had made it known over the summer that I'm done with the family and my ex's drama, had I given in to my son, I'm certain I'd be getting one side of the story and probably none if the truth, and she (the ex) must know better than to call me because she knows I don't trust a thing she says either.

It (clarity) manifested itself when I saw my ex cruise by my house, not stopping, not calling me about the situation, just driving by. 
Shortly thereafter the ex sends me text asking for my daughter to call her, it is my parenting weekend, the daughter is here. Before I turn the phone over my daughter, I sent her mom a note,

"Son called me wanting to say how bad things are for him, and that you kicked him out off your house, he wanted to meet at so and so school and was texting and calling from phone number 313-555-5555"

I hand daughter the phone,  daughter calls mom, they converse, no one asks to speak to me, she is just probing my daughter to see what I know...end of call.

I did send my son another message...

"If things are that bad, notify the proper authorities, if they care to talk to me about anything pertaining to the situation you know how to contact me."

Have not heard a thing about it.
Not a peep from anyone.
Just as I figured.

You see people, it's all about others' attempts at  mucking up one's life with drama, and the less you fall victim to the attempts, the better you feel about the situation.

I've been restricted at all turns of this kid's upbringing, so these are not my problems!

The kid will be 15 in March, and he KNOWS mommy ain't kicking him out no time soon.... not as long as that Child Support is coming in!

Now here we are at January 2015, this year is the mandatory 3 year review by the Friend of the Court, you know, so they might figure out a way to further pit the screwed to me.

I'm figuring that the Mom will bring up the issue of the fact that my son had decided to not spend any time with me over the past year and a quarter, so that the Court might change the calculation of support to better favor her.

I guess my argument will be that the Court had allotted the current time in the order to me, and instead of encouraging my son to get right, she decided long ago to allow HIM to decide if he wishes to participate in my scheduled parenting time or not. His decision..which is the only way that the alienation scheme would work, along with the other factors, you know, no rules, no real parenting from mom, just being a pal, and consistently throwing the poor light on Dad.

So I'm anxious to see how this all goes when the time comes, how "fair" the system is going to view this whole thing.

March 2017 can't get here fast enough..

Can't wait to see what happens when he's 18 and it, the support, stops.

You are going to earn EVERY PENNY!

If changes need to be made because you can't control things in your house, have the court contact me about a hearing.

Otherwise, NOT MY PROBLEM.