Visitation Issues

Dear MrsM-I am a single mom to a beautiful 2yr old boy. His father has been
absent for my entire pregnancy and for the first 23mnths of our sons life!
He recently just got a girlfriend, and now he wants to be all DADDY
and is making demands on me to let him take our child for several days
at a time. I think its wrong for him to think its ok to just show up
whenever he wants just because him and his girlfriend want to play mommy and
daddy.
I obtained sole parental custody when our son was just 7mnths old, and
he has never asked me for visitation until the past two months. Is it
wrong for me to make him prove himself to me before I allow him to have
unsupervised vistation not in my presence?

*Sidenote: If there is a court order in place dictating visitation rights/schedules, that should be followed to the letter rather than following my advice. If you want to change your court order, you should speak with your attorney.*

It is absolutely NOT wrong to make sure that your ex has a healthy, safe, and loving environment for your little boy before you allow him to take unsupervised visitations. I would visit your ex’s home (while bringing your son to visit, of course) and look for signs that his house, his girlfriend, and his interactions with your son are safe. Having several supervised visits will also be helpful for your son, to help him adjust, since at this point his dad is basically a stranger to him and most toddlers have anxiety about people and places they don’t know.

That being said, once you have had time to determine that your son will be safe while with your ex, it is time to let your son go to visit his dad. To think about how long would be a reasonable amount of time before starting visitation, think about how many times you go to visit a daycare before allowing your son to be watched there. Only a handful of times, right?

I understand that it may be your instinct to scrutinize every minute detail of your ex’s life because of your personal issues with him (and possibly his girlfriend) but, for your son, you need to set your personal adult issues with dad aside and-provided that everything and everyone is safe-allow your son to build his own relationship with his father. You might not want anything to do with your ex anymore, but he is still your son’s dad and deserves a second chance to do the right thing and have a happy, healthy relationship with his child. After all, everyone (even a parent) makes mistakes but the important part is that you learn from them and that you minimize the effect of those mistakes on your children.

Good luck to you.