The low-way or the high-way

What do you do if your mum says to you:

You can live with me and see your father every second weekend, or you can go and live with your father full-time, no planned time with me.

Which way to go, eh? My way or the highway? The high road or the low road? The path less travelled? Or is it simply about the journey, and not the destination?

Shared parenting and Star Wars

A kid like Zach must feel like a character in Star Wars as he shuttles between the homes of his parents, like hitching on the Millenium Falcon from Corellia to Coruscant, like zipping through hyperspace between Tatooine and Hoth, like buzzing between Dagobar to Dathomir (List_of_Star_Wars_planets_and_moons).

Anyway, Zach continues to shuttle between the homes of his mother and his putative father (Zach, I am your father)!

I love it because for one week I get to be a dad where I can embarrass my child, and in the other week, I get to be a single bloke and embarrass myself.

Zach appears to be genuinely happy to have two homes, the best of two worlds with each offering different advantages and disadvantages - and those are his sentiments.

If I’m to be completely honest, I am genuinely happy he has two homes too. For one thing, if we had stuck with one household (this is a thought experiment, it wasn’t ever going to happen), it seems to me that it would have been a pretty messy, compromised situation for everyone. For another, Zach grows up in two home-cultures, and therefore, he already realises that there is not just one way of doing things, but at least two – if not more.

However, for about a year now, Zach’s mum has been bemoaning the challenge of having to raise two children, namely Zach and his half-sister Jade. About a year ago (early in 2015), she proposed that Zach come and stay with me full-time and that she just have him for every second weekend. I was willing to accept the change, but was reluctant unless Zach was involved in the discussion, and I encouraged his mum to talk with about Zach what he wanted.

She told me later that she had raised the idea with him and he apparently looked at her a little strangely, tilted his head quizzically, and then said, “No, I’d like to stay with you for one week and one week with Papa.” That kind of resolved the issue for a while, but early in 2016, it popped up again.

In fairness, it is probably a bit tough for mum. Zach and his half-sister, Jade, spend one week together at their mum’s, and one week apart at their respective fathers (and mum has a new saintly partner to put up with all this craziness). And just to add to the mended & blended family that we represent, Jade’s father has gone on to re-marry and has produced a lovely son, Thomas. So Jade has two brothers Zach and Thomas, but Zach and Thomas are each completely unrelated to each other!

So Zach’s mum does feel the pressure and complained to me that she only had five nights child-free a fortnight. She proposed that I take Zach on for two extra days a fortnight. I noted that this would give me, let me count, oh, yeah,  five nights child-free a fortnight !!! I was however happy to have the extra time with him if the idea appealed to Zach. And so I spoke with him..

My conversation with Zach was enlightening and amusing. Zach started telling me how his mum was complaining to him also saying that she had so little time in the weekly cycles of her children with their respective fathers that she was only getting 5 days a fortnight child-free. Zach then told me that he pointed out to his mother that some parents didn’t have any child-free nights!

I asked him how that went. Zach cast his face down, and said, ‘Not well.’ He volunteered that her response reminded him of the rathtar in Star Wars VII (see the clip below).

Zach now spends nine days a fortnight with me, five with his mother, and he's learned that the famous Star Wars "I've got a bad feeling about this" intuition is one that may well merit attention!

Confessions of a Putative Child Abuser

Possible Abusers - the accused on one hand, the accuser on the other

August 21 was a horrible evening. Blustery winds buffeted the windows and the door occasionally mixed with driving rain, and occasionally not. This was merely the harbinger of the horrors. An eye in the storm that heralded the arrival of the troopers. 

There was a knock at the front door that no-one was expecting rang on the door. I had three boys spreading toys around my home - my four year old son and the two boys from next door.  To help me oversee this  chaos was the father from next door as well.

I left them to answer the unexpected knock at the door. I wondered if it might be my neighbour’s wife arrived home early come over to join the party. Or perhaps my partner.

Nothing prepared me for what was there.