Teenage self-parenting

I've been trying to put my finger on it, what is bothering me the last few weeks. I couldn't quite figure out what was irking me about the whole situation.

It's summer. I am a custodial parent. That means my kid is supposed to spend some time with her father during the summer break.

I don't really care if she spends time with him or not. He doesn't seem to care either. Towards the end of the school year he told me briefly over the phone that he would be staying in town all summer with his family, so any four weeks Grace wanted to spend with him would do. When summer started, Grace found out she had to do math enrichment summer school. In the midst of this course, she also went to camp. At my suggestion, her father agreed with me that it would be best to put off her time at his house until after summer school was over. In the following weeks, she's seen him more or less by the same schedule that she does during the school year.

That was the last I heard from him. I haven't gotten an email, a phone call, or seen him in person since then.

Grace, wanting to stay with her father in a summer-break kind of way, took matters into her own hands. She decided that the best schedule for this would be to see him one week, then stay home a week, and continue this pattern for the remainder of the summer. She told him and she told me. Something didn't seem right about her deciding the whole thing, but I just figured that it would work. She went to his house last Saturday morning.

She's not spending a whole lot of time with him. She's hanging out at his house all day while he and his wife are gone to work. Or she's coming into town with him at the start of the day and meeting her friends and hanging out downtown with them. Or she's coming over to our house to go swimming or hang out with friends here.

Grace and I were chatting online yesterday. I asked her when she was coming home at the end of this week. She said Sunday at 7 pm. Then I asked her when she was going back to her dad's. Friday night. So 'a week here and a week there' really means staying home during the work days while her father can't be there and going to his house every weekend? I suggested to her that maybe she should just stay at her dad's house another week and then come home for the rest of the summer. Pre-school year activities start on August 11th and it doesn't make sense for her to be out of town after that. It was at that point in the conversation that I realized what had been eating at me. She replied, 'Ok, that'll work. I'll just come by tomorrow and pick up a few more t-shirts.' She went on to explain that she had only packed for a week and would need more clothing.

Oh, no. I am not here to pack you up for a 'trip' with clean clothing, then pick up the dirty when it gets dropped off. This is time you spend with your dad at his home. Where he parents you. And presumably where he does laundry for those people who live there. Which includes you when you are there for summer break.

Visitation for him is not about being a parent and caring for a person who is in his custody. I'm not sure what visitation is about for him, but it's not parenting. Worse, since he's not willing to communicate with me and dropping the ball on so many things, Grace is taking on the role of her father in communicating with me. He is dropping the ball on the responsibilities that he has as a parent and making Grace figure out what to do. Need your laundry done? Just take it to your mom's house.

I get the feeling that this has nothing to do with him having custody of a child versus visitation. I'm sure if he had full custody of her, he would do just as little in the way of parenting. In fact, if his actions in the last few months are any indication of what his world as a custodial parent looks like, he would probably shunt as much of the responsibilities of caring for his younger children onto Grace as he could.

I called her on the phone this afternoon and her father wasn't there. He was at his parents' house helping with a repair. Grace was at home taking care of her infant half-siblings. I explained to her that I wanted to speak to her father and for her to stop allowing him to use her as a method of communication. I told her it was inappropriate for her to be taking responsibility for managing her father's non-custodial visitation schedule. She said she would tell him. I don't expect that even if she has the guts to tell her father this that he will take any action to communicate with me or take responsibility as a parent.

I realize that in some families it is necessary for older children to take on a great deal of the care of themselves. I realize that in some families it is necessary for older children to take on a great deal of responsibility for the household and the family unit in general. But this kind of situation is one thing when the adults in the house are completely spent due to other obligations and necessary stressors. It is quite another when an older child takes on these duties because the adults refuse to. Grace's father and his wife are in perfect health and have plenty of time for recreation. They also have the support (in time, energy and money) of his parents who live right around the corner and who are also healthy. Grace's dad and stepmother work a reasonable work week and get their weekends off. They have two children to take care of. This doesn't seem to be a world in which the adults in a family are so taxed for time and energy that a older child in the family needs to step up and do more than every day chores. Is the point of her visitation with him to build their relationship and give her and her father an opportunity to build their identity together as a family unit? If so, then why does this seem to constitute Grace sitting around online, babysitting, and not seeing her father?

And why does her father not communicate with me directly about when he wants to see her? Why does he wait for Grace to initiate the conversation and then rely upon her to communicate to me?

Like I said, I could care less whether Grace's dad sees her or not. If he doesn't care either, then why make the kid go back and forth between two households? Stop the charade, tell the kid you're not really invested in being in her life, and let her deal with that unfortunate reality. And start paying for a babysitter if you need that much time away from the babies.