@diamondmike I’m going through a similar situation with my 3yo. He wants to see his father, but not at his parents’ place because they fight a lot. I tried asking my ex if he would be willing to take LO even to the golf dome or the museum or something instead of spending 3 hours with his parents, and he refused. He said you can’t bond with a kid properly in public so it’s either his parents’ place for 3 hours or I give him more time to take him to his own place (he lives an hour away so 3 hours isn’t enough time to drive out there, do something, and then drive back, but I’m hesitant to give him more time if he can’t keep LO happy during the time he has).
Then one day LO had a bit of a bathroom accident (missed the toilet) and needed a new pair of pants, which my ex said came from the bag I packed him…but there were no pants in the bag that day (our washing machine broke and it took a week and a half to get a new one, so I had to scrounge around for not just clean clothes but also the wet bag for swimming because I wasn’t able to wash the one I keep in his swimming bag in time). These were also NOT pants I bought. I would never have bought them because they had fleece on the outside and I hate the feeling of fleece, and also LO gets too hot in fleece. I thought the origin of the pants was a really dumb thing to lie about because at the end of the day even if there were clean pants in the bag, the only thing that matters is he had a clean pair of pants to change into. So that tipped me off and I asked LO if his father ever leaves him with Grandma and Grandpa and goes out - shocker, his answer was yes. He may be 3 but he’s not a liar.
Then my mom ran into my ex’s mom at the store and was unable to back down the aisle without being noticed, so my mom got a diatribe about how unreasonable I’m being only giving him 2 hours on Sundays and thwarting all of his efforts. She said they only see LO for MAYBE an hour a week…they live 15-20 minutes away depending on traffic? So I asked LO if they ever go anywhere besides G+G’s and he said yes, they go to the store. Normally I wouldn’t care what he does with the rest of that time, but he’s sitting here telling me he can’t bond with LO in public. If that’s the case, why is he pissing away 2 of his 4 hours a week going to stores? And then LO says he fucks off and leaves him with the grandparents? What the fuck.
After I told my ex that LO says the grands fight, LO came home saying they yelled at him, told him he was lying, and said he can’t tell us anything that happens over there anymore. This was Christmas Eve, and it came out because he said he wasn’t allowed to tell us what he got from them for Christmas.
Anyway, I ended up contacting his doctor. The doctor endorsed him being removed from that environment, and made a referral to someone who’s going to make an effort to question him and see if she gets the same answers I do. He said not to take him to just any child therapist because they aren’t all willing to make statements for court if it comes to it.
All that to say…start by taking him to the doctor. Since your son is 10, try to have him tell the doctor what’s going on himself. See if he’d be willing to go in and talk to the doctor alone at first, then have the doctor bring you in and discuss what he says and how to move forward together. Mine is only 3 so I did a virtual appointment with his doctor because I didn’t want to be talking about him like that with him there, but yours is old enough that he would likely actually benefit from being included in basically a tri-conference with the doctor.
Withholding visits is going to look a lot better for you if you can get medical professionals on your side than if you just unilaterally make the decision. It still may not look great, but it’ll be better.
