Hi All,
Thank goodness I found this site.. :)
Myself & partner find ourselves in somewhat of a dilema, her son has just turned 11 yrs and is about to begin high school. My partner split with his father before her son was born, so he has never known them to be together.
His father is a drug addict and this was the main reason for their split, Over the years he has had access to his see son on weekends although he has 'never' contributed to his son's up-bringing in any way. He, from what we see behaves rationaly around him although their relationship is more like a best mate scenario, this is fine but we both feel he treats his son as an equal and talks to him as if he is an adult friend. We both feel this puts the child under quite an amount of emotional stress he should never be subjected to. It's because of this relationship we feel his father is not relly contributing to his sons emotional well-being or life structure, what I mean by that is, he has not and probably will not 'ever' discipline him in any way.
This is not the real problem, more me just getting some of this off my chest. The problems the above does bring into play is this, His father will always play the soft no problem role in light of any situation, the irony is that although he talks with him in an adult manner, he also smothers him in what I can only describe as baby love and pampering.
The child has his father on such a high pedestall because of this behaviour its unreal (Not that this is an issue, he is the childs father & thats how it should be)
His father is extremly manipulative and cunning, for many moons he has always, as drug users are, been very unreliable and the let downs come as no suprise to both me or his mother no matter how many blatant lies are told to us we manage to cover them as well as we can to ensure the childs contented mind-state (Dissapearing for months, beatings he has had, arrests he has been under all covered by us)
As a drug addict, we see the self-obsessed behavioural pattens, the lies, the manipulation, the christmas toys that vanish six months into a year and many many more problems as being nothing we can deal with directly, its his life and he will do as he wishes, nothing is 'ever' his fault and the lies and smootha approach with his son always see him winning him right back over no matter what the issue.
Our prooblems really arise whan we look at the young man developing before us, just about to start high school, becoming more aware of things by the day. Both myself and my partner feel it is inevitable that at some point soon he may very well start to ask questions.
We have been discussing things recently after an incident that has opened our eyes. After years of his father living over 20 miles away his father has moved back to a local address, we learned almost immediatley through friends of friends he had located a dealer. Up until this point and for many moons he had lead us to beleive he was only using pescribed mathadone. When confronted he claimed it was because his perscription had been messed up due to his move, 'a likley tale', a month or so later my partner went to drop her son whith his father a little earlier than arranged, she whitnessed another drug local renowned drug dealer in the flat, His explination..... 'His flat mate was selling his methedone to him'.
Since that day we have stopped the young man staying over with his father and have told him we are just not happy with some things at the moment and he must trust and beleive in the fact that whatever we do, we only ever have his best interests at heart.
So with my partners sons age, the questions that wll inevitably soon follow, and the clear fact that he must see the anger and disgust in her eyes when in the vacinity of his father, that and the fact we can not help but be slightly negative about him sometimes when in conversation,
"When do we open this almighty can of worms"?
Myself and partner are in agreement that it must be soon, we do not want a 15 year old asking us, why did we not tell him.. We do not ever want that anger and heartache that he has been lied too from the three closest to him in his world.
"How do we open this can of worms"?
"What do we expect"? when we do inform him, we are not completly clear on whether he already pitys or feels sorry his father, which would explain his quickness to defend him, even when he does let him down. One thing we are quite clear on is his complete naivety as to his fathers actual problems.
We simply can not go on covering for this man and his selfish actions, we are betraying the boy just as much as his father with his pity me, the world really owes me a favour, there are no jobs attitude. (Sorry if I seem to be overly attacking his character) As you can probably tell we are being worn down by his problems.
I ask anyone please with any similar circumstance, any paren or child thats been through something like this, could you spare me a few mins of your time to explain what and how we should perhaps go about things.. If indeed we are on the right lines.
A childs mind is so fragile, we worry he may turn against us for a while, we just have no idea how best to approach things.
Thankyou for taking the time to read this, sorry it was so long winded.
Sped
