My 12 Year Old Son and His Father

In most situations a child reaches that states designated age and they can go in front of the judge and ask for their visitation to be terminated. My niece went before the judge at age 8 and told him a whole list of reason's she wanted to live with her dad. My sister had done nothing wrong but she was religious and her daughter didn't want to go to that church. The judge sided with the dad and let her dad have full custody.

BUT they judge does NOT have to honor their request. The father has a right to see his child and that judge just can't say he is terminating the visits "just because". He has to give valid reasons that fit into a lawful reason to terminate the court order.

Just because your son doesn't want to see his dad that does not mean the dad loses his rights to see his child. Sometimes kids are kids and they just have to do stuff because it's the right thing to do.

When he's an adult he can choose whether to have his dad in his life or not. But he's a child and YOU need to reinforce he has to go spend time with his dad. YOU have to make it a good thing for him to do.

IF you're telling him you understand he doesn't want to go, you're telling him you don't want him to go. You're telling him to not see his dad.

If you're being very careful and saying things like Your dad loves you honey, you need to spend time with him. Your dad is a great dad and he wants to see you, you need to go and enjoy this time with him, etc...then you're reinforcing he has to go see dad.

Be his parent and tell him you want him to go visit his dad and that's that. Unless he can tell you specific reason's as to why he doesn't want to go then you want him to go and have a good time with his dad.

I was a child of divorce and know exactly how your son feels. I dreaded and hated going with our dad for the weekends.

You are supposed to love both parents, but that does not mean you always like them.

My dad had an attitude and a temper.

He had never been a cuddly loving fun type of dad. He was more of a angry, mood, selfish kind of guy.

He NEVER played with us. That is not what dads did. He also had never been around little girls growing up, so he did not know how we behaved or what was normal behavior or us. He had always made us behave s adults. No silliness.

At his apt. he did not have any toys, no games, no cable back in the day. No place to play outside his apt..

And so our weekends were spent with him and his latest girlfriend, as they ran errands, watched football games.. etc..

The other thing is my father constantly grumbled about being broke, because of all of the child support he paid out.

I had a hard time telling my mom why we hated going with our dad for the weekend, because if she spoke to him or tried to fix things, it would totally piss off my father.

He was not the type of guy you could give suggestions to, or could try to work with.. He would blow up.. He took it personally.

And so we tried to take board games, puzzles. We tried to think of free places he could take us to, sometimes this worked, other times, he would get bored and these events would end abruptly.

We did think up things we could cook for him, that were not expensive so we would not have to eat out all of the time. We tried to collect information on free things to do around town, but we were really just stuck with what HE wanted to do or not do..

My mom and a counselor did mention to him that since we only saw saw him for 4 days out of the month, he should not have girlfriends over all of those days.

That he should try to play board games with us. That we did not need to be taken to the movies or a carnival, but just spend time together. Meaning take us to a playground, take us to the library. But actually talk with us about what we had been up too all week. Not to try to solve our problems or preach to us, not to complain about our mother or talk about his problems, but actually care about what we girls were thinking.

The other thing is my father NEVER set foot in our schools. He NEVER met our friends. If he could have attended some of our activities and participated in more than just these weekends, he would have gotten to know us better.

Instead we dreaded his weekends. I counted the minutes until they would be over.

Are you and his dad on speaking terms? If so, I would sit down in person with his dad and find out what he thinks is going on.

You have to follow the court order and make your son follows it or else you're breaking the law. If your son's father is a good and involved father and wants to spend the time with his son then why would you agree to cut the time at all just because your son says he "doesn't like" going there and doesn't know why? You would actually take that to a judge? The judge would consider that a waste of time. You should be trying to encourage and foster a good relationship between them, not giving your son a way out of the relationship with his father. He needs his father more than any other relationship in his life.

I came from a divorced family I knew nothing except that. My parents were on good terms so I'm not sure what was in the custody order or not but we were never forced to go over there. I didn't like going there we didn't have a good relationship I just didn't like it there. If we wanted to go more we could if not we didn't have to it was our decision. If I remember correctly we did have to see him once a month.

He's probably just tired of the back-and-forth. Think about how much you would hate it if every other weekend you had to pack up and leave for a couple of days. He has no choice in the matter and the older he gets, the more he's going to hate it. It has nothing to do with how he feels about his dad, although he may resent him (or both of you) for making him do this.

I think divorced couples should be ordered to maintain a family home where the parents move in and out and the kids get to be stable.