This is about fathers’ rights law, and protecting the best interests of your children. It provides information, news and comments on laws, cases and strategies for life as a single father and winning your custody, access or child support case.
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.
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.
“I hate math,” said Lee to his dad as he brushed his teeth in the morning.
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s nothing but problems, problems and more problems.”
“Son,” said his dad. “Thank God that every day you get up and have problems to solve. Because you know when there are no more problems to solve?”
“No, when?” he said.
“When you’re dead. You were put on Earth to solve problems. Life is full of problems. They are there to challenge you and make you grow. Every day you have problems it means you are alive. So let’s go eat breakfast and start solving problems.”
by Jill H. Breslau
Typical timesharing schedules, like 50/50, or 5-2-2-5, or 4-3, or weekdays and weekends do not take into account the needs of children are different at various ages and stages of development. Frequently, the approach to visitation is to consider the schedules and convenience of the parents first, figure out a logical access schedule, and then see if the children can adjust to it.
But a baby doesn’t need the same kind of access schedule that a 12 year old does. Their basic needs and developmental tasks are different. The baby’s “task” is to learn to bond, because all future emotional relationships depend on early bonding. The baby needs continuity and frequency of contact, because for a baby, when someone goes away for weeks at a time, it is as if they died.
A 12 year old on the other hand, needs time with parents that takes into account his or her need to develop peer relationships and extracurricular activities. And any children with issues like ADHD or special needs may have unique requirements that parents should consider when setting up schedules.
It is not easy to look at life through your child’s eyes. But a good parenting plan and child access schedule does just that. You are a parent for the long haul; your children grow and change, and so should your schedule. The way to begin to establish a schedule is by understanding the needs of each child.
“I have found that the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.” – Harry S. Truman
Darryl Payne of New Jersey was married with three adult children and living with his wife when he began dating Emma Walden. Darryl and Emma had a daughter together. When they split up, Emma got custody of the daughter and Darryl got visitation on Saturdays.
During visitation, the daughter would spend some time with Darryl, his wife, her half siblings and some time with Darryl’s new girlfriend and the new girlfriend’s son. Emma was opposed to her daughter being exposed to such behavior and asked the court to require supervised visitation.
The trial judge threw the case out with a brief decision, “Your application to modify visitation and [for] supervised visitation is denied. Thank you very much. Have a pleasant holiday.”
While the Appellate Court said the trial judge should have explained his decision better, Emma had brought this objection up in previous hearings and had not shown a change in circumstances had occurred that would justify changing visitation to supervised.
Read more at New Jersey Family Law.
by the Zac Brown Band
I ride east every other Friday but if I had it my way
The day would not be wasted on this drive
And I want so bad to hold you
So much things I haven’t told you
Your mom and me couldn’t get along
So I’ll drive
And I think about my life
And wonder why, that I slowly die inside.
We tell our children to use their indoor voice. But sometimes we use our outdoor voice and yell at them when they are misbehaving or not doing what we want them to do or whining about something they want to do. This makes them yell back. They feel badly. We feel badly. It may correct their behavior for a short time out of fear or sadness, but it may also well up inside them and cause them to act out later.
Erin Kurt, teacher and nanny, says in this article at Lifehack.Org, the reason we yell is that we were yelled at as children. She says this is the wrong parenting choice.
We should all stop yelling at our children and instead, train ourselves to take a deep breath and then state the behavior they want from their child in a matter-of-fact, assertive tone of voice. She recommends the “time out” approach if they continue to misbehave. This is a more effective approach to parenting than yelling. I know this would make life quieter and more tranquil at my house.
Lisa Belkin of the New York Times Magazine writes that more fathers are getting custody in divorces.
“There are now 2.2 million divorced women in the United States who do not have primary physical custody of their children,” she says, “and an estimated 50 percent of fathers who seek such custody in a disputed divorce are granted it.”
She attributes some of this to the recession. More men are being laid off than women, and for the first time in history, women are about to outnumber men in the American workforce.
She predicts that the percentage of fathers with primary custody will likely increase, as social views about parenting continue to change.
