Where did the summer go?  School is starting in a couple of weeks.

Art Therapist Elissa Bowes has some great tips at HigherArtNJ.com about how to help your child get ready for the big first day.

For example, if your summer schedule is more relaxed than the school year schedule, start early adjusting to the bed times and wake up times for school.  Since I take the kids to the bus stop, I guess I better start getting up earlier too.

HE DIDN’T HAVE TO BE
by
Brad Paisley

And then all of a sudden
Oh, it seemed so strange to me
How we went from something’s missing
To a family
Lookin’ back all I can say
About all the things he did for me
Is I hope I’m at least half the dad
That he didn’t have to be.

A comment on yesterday’s post sent me to a nicely designed blog called Women for Fathers Rights.  It is for a “wife, sister, mother, friend or any other woman looking to help a man in your life with his child custody and fathers’ rights issues.”

The blog plans to cover custody arrangements, tips and techniques to assist your man with his battle in the courtroom, and even common questions and answers that arise from being the woman in their lives battling for their rights to be a dad.

Here’s a quote from the blog: “A child with their father in their lives is the best possible outcome of any divorce.”

If you can’t obtain contact with your kids, I have suggested setting up a Facebook page and posting to it in hopes they will someday find it.

A father who goes by the name of Daddy Nmn sent me an email calling my attention to a website called “3 Sides to Every Story” where anyone, dads, moms, grandparents and others, can post letters to their missed loved ones.

The site is nicely done and categorized by state and type of letter writer.  The letters are heart-felt, honest and poignant.

One of the reviews on a Battlestar Galactica CD at Amazon.com is from a woman who says it ruined her marriage.

Her husband became obsessed with the television show, then went onto websites, Twitter, Skype, listening to podcasts, texting and chatting about the show.  Finally he went to a Battlestar Galactica convention in Texas and now lives with a woman he met on the website.  She says he forgot all about his wife, children, family, home and job.

They are now involved in a bitter divorce.  This can’t be good for his custody and visitation case.

LeBron James said last night that he asked his mother, Gloria James, for advice while he was making up his mind to play basketball for the Miami Heat.

In the meantime, Leicester Bryce Stovell, 55, was filing suit in the U.S. District Court in D.C., claiming that he is LeBron’s father.  Stovell is a lawyer in private practice, formerly with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The 22 page, 95 paragraph complaint alleges Stovell met Gloria in a Washington bar in 1984 and goes through the history of their relationship.  Stovel is suing both LeBron and Gloria for $4 million for fraud, defamation, misrepresentation, breach of oral contract and tortious interference with contract.

My most important client is not the diplomat who called from overseas for wire instructions so he could send me his retainer for a post divorce dispute.

My most important client is not the stock broker who made a million dollars last year and is looking at life time alimony and his soon to be ex-wife’s mounting legal fees that he may have to pay.

My most important client is not the wealthy businesswoman who brings her daughter to my office for a parenting plan and separation agreement.

Last night, my seven year old son looked up at me and said, “Dad, can you come to my school play tomorrow?”  I set all those urgent cases aside this morning and spent three otherwise billable hours waiting for my son to say his three lines.  Because he is my most important client.

My son finished the last two problems on his math homework a bit two quickly I thought as he stuffed it into his backpack.  I asked him to let me see it.  It was multiple choice.  His answers were wrong.

“I just guessed,” he said.  He was in a hurry to get to his DSI, which if you have kids you know is a handheld electronic game.  I wish he applied just ten percent of the energy and time he spends on that game to his school work.

This morning, I had an idea.  I told both my children on the way to the bus stop, “Boys, life is like a giant DSI game.”

“It is?” they chimed.

“Yes, each grade in school is a different level.  Every grade you get in a class is like a Pokemon (pocket monster) that gives you additional powers.  There is a Pokemon for math, one for reading, one for spelling, one for science and so on.  Show up.  Be aggressive.  Attack your work.  Get as many Pokemons as you can.”

“Gee, Dad, you must be on level 100 by now.”  I smiled.

In a recent New York case, a judge decided that the father should have unsupervised visitation with his child after a transition period to be supervised by a transition therapist.  Then, when the therapist decided the time was right, visitation would be unsupervised.

However, the appeals court found that “The court improperly delegated to a mental health professional its authority to determine issues involving the best interests of the child, i.e., when unsupervised visitation should commence.”

The court told the parties that they would have to make another application to the court regarding unsupervised visitation, at which time the court may render a decision on that issue, with the assistance, if necessary, of further reports from the intervention therapist.  Linda R. v Ari Z., 71 AD3d 465 (2010)

The court has ruled that Joseph Reyes will be allowed to take his 3-year-old daughter, Ela, to church according to the Chicago Sun-Times.  Rebecca Reyes, who has full custody of the child in their divorce proceedings, said the father was breaching an agreement they made that Ela would be raised in the Jewish faith.

The court also ruled that the father would have Christmas and Easter holidays with the child and the mother would have the Jewish holidays.

But Reyes still faces contempt sanctions for taking his daughter to church in violation of a previous court order.