At What Age Should a Child No Longer Be Forced to Visit with Their Father?

I really suggest your son and his father go to family counseling.. Or you take your son to therapy, so a professional can help your son come up with response and also collect data.

Our parents were divorced.

My father was a terrible parent. He also criticized us, our mother..

He did not even really know what was going on with us. He never attended anything we participated in.. If we talked about school, parties, lessons.. whatever.. he always had some dig to give us.

He just seemed to be projecting assumptions he and my stepmom were making.

At one point my mother suggested we go to family counseling with my dad and stepmom... And so my dad made the arrangements.. Boy did a lot of things come out in that session.. The Therapist jumped all over my father and stepmom about the way they had been speaking about our mother.

How my father was so critical of us, even though he had NEVER attended any of our schools or events. (he did not want to see our mother).. She essentially told him to grow up, act like a parent and deal with his own issues, before criticizing us.

She warned him, he was going to make us not want to be around him or feel comfortable sharing our lives with him..

He was stunned. No one had ever spoken to him so bluntly. But she was right. Once we were 18, we quit going to visits..

It is not fair to your son, to not have a voice. You take him to a therapist to help him have an advocate that his father will listen to, if he will not listen to you.

I think Laurie A had the most progressive suggestion in regard to this situation.

I have been there (as the kid) and did choose at times not to visit my dad, for various reasons. I wish that my mom had insisted that we go to counseling. This would have been better than the all-or-nothing/laissez-faire approaches that my parents allowed. Counseling could have made things a lot better.

I would encourage you to think long and hard about the potential results of NOT going to counseling. I think counseling is the first step. If I were in your situation, I would prefer to have my son and ex try to mend their relationships. If it's not tended to, and your son has an "out", but without resolution, he will learn that when relationships get hard, avoidance is the answer. In some situations, yes, it is, but wouldn't it be good for him to have a chance to get past some potential 'daddy isses' before becoming a man and father himself?

Depending, too, on what your son is doing (because you haven't really filled us in on what Dad is critical of) sometimes "unconditional love" should not mean "never calling a kid on their stuff". So, that's something to consider too.

Criticism is a very subjective thing. What you may see as harsh, someone else may see as constructive.
My husband and I are still married, and he tends to be blunt and often critical with the the kids, and I don't always agree with it. I'm a softer, more patient parent.
But isn't this the case with many moms and dads?
I think it's good that our kids get different things from the two of us. I'm sure my husband does some good by setting the bar a little higher, and being more demanding, and I'm sure my kids feel safe and secure knowing they always have a "place to fall" with me.
Unless your ex is being abusive, and you can actually document and prove it, I think you need to let him parent in his way, and you continue to parent in your way. In the long run your son will benefit from the lessons learned from BOTH of you.

I like the idea of trying counseling first. If dad doesn't go for it, at least you tried. And maybe it would be useful in the long term for relationship for both of them. If dad won't cooperate, then you should go back to court and see if it can be modified at your son's request. Criticism isn't parenting. If he's giving him appropriate guidance and rules, etc., that's one thing, but cutting someone down does not teach them to be a man, it's just cruelty.

Continuing criticism may lead to emotional scarring, insecurity and low self esteem. To cross the bridge into being men does not mean having to endure what your child is, so I'd just write your friends off as plain ignorant and "dated". There is a loving way to disagree, to discuss things, to end up with a constructive output and a positive kind of feeling between both parts. What his father is doing is damaging, if your son does not want to see him there is a reason: it's a torture to him to be depicted as someone who can't do anything right. Stick to your son's side, his father is in the wrong and should tall immediately to a professional in order to learn healthy communication and to respect his child.

What your friends are thinking here is BS. I really mean that. What this kind of approach to parenting really does is make it so that your son won't be able to connect to his future wife and children.

If you don't have a court order MAKING your son go with your ex, I wouldn't make him go. When your ex balks, tell him why. Tell him that if he will go to parenting counseling, you'll give it a shot.

No more talking to your so-called friends and family members about this. I will tell you, if one of my friends continued to say that to me, I'd probably lose my cool and let them have it (and I doubt we'd be friends anymore). YOU are this child's best hope for a normal adulthood. Make sure that you don't listen to this kind of garbage and that you demand that his father LEARN what putting his son through will cost down the line.

Dawn

My immediate thought is 18 unless there is a new legal custody agreement that says they don't have to.

At 13, your son wants to be grown up, but in many ways is still a child. If he makes the choice to stop seeing his father now, he may regret it later. That is a decision he should make as an adult.

Have you talked to your ex about it in a calm, rational, non-accusatory way? Maybe if you let him know that you think it's important for your son to have a relationship with him, but that the criticism is making your son hesitant to go there, he will tone it down a little.

Okay, I would go back to court under the guise that your teenage child no longer wishes to visit his father. Keep in mind that your child support may very well stop coming in too, but you can not stop visitation w/out facing legal rammifications.

My brother has sole legal and physical custody of his children (ages 16 1/2 and 13), and Indiana's visitation guidelines require that they endure visitation with their mother until at least 18 yrs of age. They hate visiting their mother, but unfortuantely, there is no choice.

I don't know what kind of criticism he is receiving... I do believe that to a certain level it is healthy and NEVER implies that his father doesn't love him unconditionally. That is seemingly silly to say that if the father criticizes that the father doesn't love him.

I think you need to open up communtication more with his dad so that you both can balance out your ideas and thoughts about where your son should be in his life, and what he should be doing. His father's opinion matters, as does yours. You son will just be a confused mess if he hears two opposite sides all the time. Find common ground for your son's sake.

If it is healthy criticism (I'm assuming it is, because the people around you take it as such- you have a biased thought, so you may not be the best judge), then YES, continue the visits- it IS his son, not just yours, so the father has a say even if you may have custody or however it is set up.

13 is a tough age... and will remain like that for the next few years. The ideal situation is to have a man in his life....

In general the courts allow the child to choose at 16. They will listen as early as 12 but that would require the time and expense of going to court.

This may sound crazy but have you tried talking to your ex? Once mine accepts it doesn't mean more money he is usually willing to listen to the kids.