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SD5's bio father wants to be more involved...BM won't let him.

SteppingUp's picture

Submitted by SteppingUp on Wed, 10/20/2010 - 3:20pm

We just found out from BM that her daughter's biological father has wanted to be more involved in her life but that BM won't let him.

This is somewhat confusing.

I can understand that BM is thinking that my fiance (DF) has raised SD5 since she was a baby and that SD calls him "Daddy" and that SD really enjoys coming to our house. But SD's real father has been in the picture this whole time (every other Saturday visitation), and only recently has started actually wanting her more (we think he's matured a lot, plus he has a serious girlfriend who may be pushing this, too).

Apparently, SD's bio dad told BM that he would be willing to take SD during the week when she originally comes to our house with her little brother (my fiance's son).

Why deny the biological father visitation when he clearly wants it? And when it will make your daughter's life much easier and less stressful?

DF talked to BM about how stressful it is for SD to be going to 7-8 different places in one week (school, daycare, our house, BM's, BM's mom, BioDads, BioDad's mom's, BioDad's girlfriend's) and dealing with all those different authority figures. BM totally blew off his comment saying that SD is very resilient and mature and that she loves going to everyone's houses because she loves everyone.

YES, she's 5...of course she loves everyone. But she just had her first parent-teacher conferences and the teacher said that she is easily one of the most well-behaved students in class but is also easily at the very bottom of the class academically. We do a lot of academic things with SD to promote her learning but we only see her either one or two times a week now. None of the other households do anything with her. BM said that she talked to SD's bio father and he wants to help out more and said he's going to buy some workbooks and aids and stuff so that he can help out his daughter on the weekends.

It looks like her BioDad is really trying to be involved these days...I feel like we're hampering that relationship? I feel bad for the guy. He obviously made a mistake not being involved in SD's life when she was younger, but he was only 19 at the time, too. Now, he's 24 and wants to be involved. And at the same time, DF doesn't want to give up his relationship/place in SD's life, either.

So hard.

Comments

antidrama's picture

Submitted by antidrama on Wed, 10/20/2010 - 3:52pm

Tough situation. Not sure if this would be an option, but for the time being, could BioDad come over to your house when you have her to visit? He would be able to spend time with her, learn how to continue helping her in schoolwork they way you have been doing it, and yet you would still have time with her.

SteppingUp's picture

Submitted by SteppingUp on Wed, 10/20/2010 - 3:54pm

Thanks for offering a solution but probably not, given the history between bioDad and my fiance. You see, BM cheated on my fiance who knows how many times WITH BioDad and they dated right after fiance and BM broke up, too. Obviously a lot of drama went down -- which is totally in the past but currently, fiance and BD don't have even a speaking relationship.

I think I'm going to tell DF that maybe he should get on the phone with BioDad and they can start talking to work things out between them, so they don't have to go through BM all the time and rely on her constant lies.

GoodbyeNormaJean's picture

Submitted by GoodbyeNormaJean on Thu, 10/21/2010 - 12:16am

Unless he's dangerous to his daughter in some way, if he really wants more visitation or custody, he will probably get it. BM can either cooperate and possibly have this visitation under her terms, or they can go to court. If they go the court route, it may start out little by little, but eventually he could get 50/50 custody unless she has some really serious dirt on him, and by serious dirt, I mean something illustrating that he is a danger to his daughter.

I can understand why she is reluctant to give him more time, but if it is important to him, he will get it eventually, so she might want to think about letting her daughter warm up to it now while she's still young, and not cause a bunch of hard feelings by dragging it into court.