Gloom topic but need advice

[velspine]

I am 1 of seven Aunts/Uncles of 4 great children of my oldest Sister.


Her ex-husband and her have an agreement to switch custody every year. She has them right now till summer.


My concern is, my second oldest sister and I moved in when the children were with the ex husband to help with rent since he had a pricey home. What we saw was horrifying.

He NEVER watched his kids.. The two "older" ones ran out side with him not knowing at all and they are 10 and 8. The other two which at the time were 3 and 4 were suppose to be getting some much needed knowledge and parenting from him but here is where things are even bigger concern.


He cheated on her with an "online gf" who HE JUST MET 2 years after talking to her and asked her to move into the house this past week after not talking to her for 6 month in fear of her cheating on him. My sister plans on getting full custody and ONLY letting him see the children every other summer and christmas... The biggest concern is she has a dog and he does too.. I know his dog doesn't poop in the house and I already see a trend of her blaming his dog on pooping and peeing everywhere when I SEE her dog do it. What does that say of him trusting her on that over his kids doing things wrong when she or their little misbehaved dogs do?

My only nephew was going through counseling at school here which if you don't know, is a special counceling to see if the father/mother are abusing him. Their father yells, spanks, and doesn't buy school supplies for them when they are here and ignores them and locks them in their rooms.

My question is

What can I do this summer since I am moving out because of other issues with this place but also obtain evidence of how he treats the kids?

I am scared for the children and really fear their safety. This is all new to me because my 7 siblings had parents who got along and raised us together and don't understand broken homes. I know I have no right to jump in kick his or her ass for laying a hand on them without also causing problems with me but what can I do as the only person left in this town when they come back?

Please I ask for no trolls or /10 chara for this. I really need advice for this.

[Curoch]

Alert child services of your suspicions, but the children would have to be in his care, and there must be proof that he is neglectful.
Also, to be quite honest, your English isn't very good or you just don't know how to compose yourself, I'm not sure which. Quite a lot of what you wrote was really hard to decipher, and some of it is unknown to me.

[velspine]

Thanks for that the only thing I see wrong is my comma usage, but that is because this is a rant which I need advice on before I burn myself and get myself in trouble.

Thanks for the advice though. I guess the only thing I can do is see what happens with the children this summer and step in if things get too bad.

Thank you.

[Damajin]

Keep a detailed journal/log of every major incident, or major recurring problem that happens. Even if you can't remember every detail of a situation try to remember the approximate time, what happened, who it involved and what if anything was done. Doing this over a period of time will establish patterns of neglect, abuse or anything else that the appropriate authorities would look for to determine woeful parenting.

More or less treat it as a combination of a diary and a police report, with as much detail as possible. Between that and any verbal testimony you'd give to authorities you should be able to convince them of the necessity to at the very least investigate.

[Pann]

Would any of these things bother you if your sister and him were still married and he didn't cheat on her? Honest question. This stuff doesn't really sound that out of the ordinary, and certainly not bad enough that he deserves to never have the right to see his kids anymore, and it seems like you and her are really trying to reach... I guess if you are, claiming he abuses and neglects his kids is a pretty classic approach. I'm not trying to troll you, i just think you should stop to consider if you are letting your personal feelings cloud your judgement, and if you were in his situation, if you think that behavior would warrant you not being allowed to see your kids.

I don't often agree with Boomzy but he has made some good points.

First impressions seems that this is less about the kids and more about punishing him for his infidelity. It is important to remember that no matter how much of a shithead he might have been to your sister none of this is the kids' fault and for their sake she should not stop them from seeing him. Both parents need to set aside their anger and sit down and talk through their issues putting their kids' needs first and not use them to score points against each other.

[ellieg]

Would any of these things bother you if your sister and him were still married and he didn't cheat on her? Honest question. This stuff doesn't really sound that out of the ordinary, and certainly not bad enough that he deserves to never have the right to see his kids anymore, and it seems like you and her are really trying to reach... I guess if you are, claiming he abuses and neglects his kids is a pretty classic approach. I'm not trying to troll you, i just think you should stop to consider if you are letting your personal feelings cloud your judgement, and if you were in his situation, if you think that behavior would warrant you not being allowed to see your kids.

I agree with this. Also don't call CPS. That's the last resort. Calling CPS is a surefire way to never have a relationship with the kids father. You may not want one now, but its important to at least keep things neutral between you two.

[Mihalik]

I spent my early childhood (until about 14, when we moved to London, so that changed a lot of things, tho even there, I had substantial amounts of freedom) in a middle class residential area. Essentially between the ages of 7 to about 14 I spent most of my waking days completely and utterly unsupervised, biking around the neighborhood often past 11 (especially in the summer months), playing with other kids, or sitting in my room playing video games. And this was the norm for pretty much everyone else. Hell I was usually biked the school and back from age 8, weather permitting.

15 years down the road I absolutely don't understand this new obsessive fad with CONSTANT supervision. If I ask others in my similar age range 28-35 or early 40's who are now obsessing over their kids about their own childhoods I get essentially the same response. Everyone was raised like I was, but if I ask why they are raising their kids so walled up, supervised and isolated generally I get the vague response of -Yeah, but nowadays it's different. They can never really explain, how it is different. Not to mention the Western World is generally safer today than back in my kid days.

Small children need constant supervision. Yes. But a 7 or 8 year old doesn't really anymore.

I simply refuse to accept the idea of not keeping 24/7 tabs on your children is bad parenting.

Now, having children doesn't mean that you gave up your entire life, and that you can't have other relationships and whatnot. As long as he isn't bringing a meth addict or some other lunatic home...does it really matter? Or do you expect him never to have another relationship until his kids reach some arbitrarily established random age of maturity?

He might be a shitty husband, but that doesn't make him a bad parent.