She wants to trade time.
We have 7 kids. 6 live here full time, and SD6 lives here week on week off from Friday to Friday. She is an only child at BM3's house (BM3 has another child, a 13 or 14 year old son, but has lost custody of him and rarely sees him. His family lives out of state).
We are due to get SD6 back this Friday. She wants to live here with the rest of her siblings and asks all week long when she is coming back to stay (she comes here on the bus after school with her sibs, and gets picked up by BM3 when BM3 gets off work around 5:15).
BM3 took time off work starting mid week next week (Wednesday, two days before she was supposed to have SD6 for her week) and isn't coming back for about a week, which means we keep SD6 through the weekend and until Wednesday morning on BM's week. BM is going to miss her weekend. Then BM would have her back for a few days, then it's our weekend again.
BM3 wants to keep her through this weekend to "swap time" since we're going to have her on BM's weekend.
DH doesn't really want to "swap time". For one, he thinks it's crappy parenting that BM has the kid 1/2 the time, and doesn't take her vacay time to spend time with SD6...she takes it to go out of state with her boyfriend on a trip that evidently SD can't go on, and she didn't bother scheduling the trip when it wasn't her parenting time.
DH feels like if she makes other plans during her parenting time, she just forfeits her time, and it shouldn't affect our time at all. I tend to agree. We're usually super flexible with BM3, because she never knows when or if she will have her son, and when she has him, we feel that SD6 should be able to see him as much as possible. But DH feels like being really flexible often bites us in the rear because it's an expectation of BM3's that she can schedule whatever suits her and we will all just rearrange our schedule to suit her.
We don't have any plans, per se, for SD6 this weekend. It's just more irritating because it feels like rewarding her for being a shitty parent. She really tends to put SD6 at the bottom of the list when it comes to priorities, unless it's a facebook photo opp. She's not a bad mom, just kinda self absorbed. That's why they divorced, actually.
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BM wants to trade time with
BM wants to trade time with my fiancee all of the time. She sees the kids 6 days out of the month. Every other weekend Sat-Sun & every Sunday. My fiancee works on the Sat & Sun she has the kids and when she just gets them on Sun he is off. More often than not, "something" happens where she can't take the kids, or we end up keeping them until well after her scheduled pick up time. We don't mind at all. In fact, we'd rather the children (SD8 & twin SS3) be with us. She usually sticks them with a babysitter. When theyre with us we are always doing family activities. But, her reasonings behind being "late" or not being able to take the kids for her scheduled weekends are usually for something selfish. She then thinks that if she can't take the kids for a weekend, my fiancee needs to give her two full weekends in a row. He tends to oblige her, simply because there's a lot of Sundays coming up where we're going to have to ask her to give up one of her days due to various family parties, obligations (All things involving the kids). I, personally, don't think its fair. You see your kids 6 days a month, if you can't manage that there's something wrong with you. And there's no reason why my fiancee needs to give up his time with the children simply because she can't handle a schedule. He works a really tough work schedule and spends every minute he is off with his children. So, I agree with you....in some cases swapping time really isn't best. I feel like he rewards her for shitty parenting as well. Except in my case, BM really IS a bad mom and SUPER self absorbed.
He told her no. SD6 came home
He told her no. SD6 came home from school and asked if today was the day she stays here for a long time. He said no, and asked her if she was okay with staying with her mom this weekend instead and then coming back here after the weekend. She was very upset by that idea, and asked why she has to go there at all except to visit.
BM and DH talked outside for a while, and evidently he let her know what SD6 has been saying about missing her siblings, and being bored and lonely at home. Her mom doesn't do too much with her when she's got her. SD is kind of just along for the ride in whatever BM is doing.
She has an excuse for everything, I swear, but the end result was that DH said "I have to disappoint someone, it isn't going to be my daughter. You chose to go on vacay over having parenting time with her. Not her problem."