My four year old son has been having staying contact with his father for the past year. The father abducted our son when he was two weeks old, which is why I would not agree to unsupervised contact until our son was three. The Court Order made at that time allows for supervised contact. Initially, contact went relatively smoothly, but, now that he is in a relationship, he does not appear to be taking good care of our son. Usually, he collects him on saturday morning and returns him on sunday afternoon. (His suggestion, not mine). He never baths our son any more, even if he has him for two nights, and does not seem to feed him very much. He is also returning our son an hour early or late without calling to let me know what is happening. It is clear that he is resentful about having to pay child support through the Child Support Agency, as he makes comments in front of our son. He has never bought our son a single item of clothing. Last weekend, he lied to me that his father was dying so as not to collect our son. I subsequently found out that this was untrue, and that, when he did collect our son, he left him with a babysitter in order to attend the Live8 concert. He also forced our son to miss his nursery leaving party on the pretext of needing to rush to a family gathering to discuss his father's illness. I eventually found out that our son missed his party because it was inconvenient to an arrangement his father had with his girlfriend. I am also concerned thay my son is being accommodated on saturday nights in a single bed with his girlfriend's daughter. My son has not been able to attend nursery since last weekend's contact because he now has diarrhoea and flu. He is very often poorly when he comes back from contact. I am sorry that this is long winded, but I feel that my son's father is being extremely selfish at our son's expense. He has said and done a number of unkind things that I am not including here. Do I allow contact to continue? Part of me feels that the father is pushing me to stop contact. My son did not enjoy contact initially, but he does enjoy the company of the girlfriend's daughter. However, he is too young to understand the health and hygiene issues that are concerning me. I am also tired of being lied to by his father, particularly as I have been extremely flexible to suit him.
