Extra Curricular Overload

midge519

My bonus boys live primarily with their mom. When they lived with us the oldest wrestled but that's the only sport he did. The youngest wasn't old enough and the only other thing SS1 wanted to do was at the exact time at wrestling so it wasn't possible.  Now SS1 is doing wrestling (winter sport), archery, Boy Scouts, piano and drum lessons. SS2 does piano with SS1. SS2 is not doing great in school (was failing math and science in 3rd grade) and despite that she has added more "because it's what he wants to do." Piano is every Saturday before noon and archery (the newest thing) was supposed to not be on our time being that we only have every other weekend. Well it is falling almost completely on our time for two month. DD and DS1 live with us and they are each in sports. We have arena football and basketball between the two of them and things we're already going to be crazy the next month because of those two sports. I'm frustrated that she keeps adding more and more on our weekends without asking us about it. We cannot do anything or a Saturday unless it is after noon because of piano and no we have archery before hand with an hour and a half in between but it's far enough away that coming home is absolutely pointless. We can't plan to spend time with them at all. SO rarely gets off both Saturday and Sunday so he is typically only off on Sunday and is home around dinner time saturdays. I cannot make it to take them to all the stuff she signs the up for plus the stuff we committed to with the ones that live here. 

We we don't have a formal custody arrangement with her and are hoping to get one soon, but until then any recommendations on how to gracefully tell her we cannot keep taking them to more and more stuff on our weekends? Am I being ridiculous?

pawcall

@midge519 - you're not being ridiculous at all!

I recently formalized my custody arrangement with my ex - the informal agreement just ended with my being taken advantage of all the time.  So, I definitely think you should do what you can to formalize things - if you still want to be flexible after that, fantastic, but you'll have a court order that would back you up on this stuff.

I am the custodial parent - In fact, I have full legal and physical custody.  Both of us agreed to this pretty easily.  But still, it's in our son's best interest to see his dad as often as possible - so we tried to formalize that without being negatively impactful to things like school and sleep.  What it came down to was that if I wanted him in activities, they had to be on my time.  If he wanted him in activities, we would need to discuss to see how it would work with our schedules. 

My son is 6, so there's not a lot in the way of true extracurriculars - BUT, he has medical and developmental special needs, so I need to be mindful of our visitation agreement and not schedule appointments and therapies on his time, if it can be avoided.  Stuff happens - if he's sick, he's going to the doctor regardless of whose "night" it is, but plannable things don't happen on dad's time, since dad only gets him for a short time.

Our visitation agreement, btw, is that he's at his dad's on Sundays, his dad visits him at our house on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and he has one overnight per month.  It would be incredibly unfair to their relationship to take up that time with things I've scheduled for him.

I wish I had better/more magic words, but I think all you can really do here is move to formalize the arrangement and ensure the agreement protects your time with the kids as much as possible.

midge519

@pawcall Thank you for your response! We're slowing working on a formal agreement but its a bit difficult financially. We recently found out through him (not sure how true it is) that he was kicked out of drum because it got hard and he didn't want to work harder and stopped going to boy scouts. Hopefully this means she won't be putting him in more things to make up for it.

taytay92675

Try checking with your family court, they might offer free mediation services.  I did this and it was super easy and no cost (it isn't even based on income), they even file all the paperwork.   Also, I would suggest to BM that the kids pick ONE activity at a time.  I know that sports typically do fall on the weekends, so might still have to deal with that.  Good luck! 

midge519

Thank you for that advice. I'll definitely look into that and see if that is something that is available here. We're are all for doing some things, like a sport on the weekends or something. But just not every single time we have them for months on end. It doesn't allow us time to spend with them. On a good note we have finally set our wedding photographer and we got a great deal (only $250!!) and it includes an engagement shoot so we're including all the kids in it this weekend and we will finally have family of 7 pictures!