"My best is not good enough", (a parents lament)

The courts don't always get it right when it comes to the welfare of a child/children. They listen to and take note of a Counsellors, psychologists, report which can be misconstrude . Like everything else there is good, and far from good, depends on which barrow they are pushing.
 
Pepper said:
You're not in pain. You're obsessed. Your daughter is your obsession. You are obviously not hers.
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How do you live with yourself making such foolish comments about folks you dont really know, about my daughter you'll never know etc., etc.?

What makes you such a judge of other folks lives?
 
Bellbird said:
The courts don't always get it right when it comes to the welfare of a child/children. They listen to and take note of a Counsellors, psychologists, report which can be misconstrue . Like everything else there is good, and far from good, depends on which barrow they are pushing.
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Thank you for your kind comments, (/supportive comments to my arguments here and if you've ever read any of them, elsewhere on this forum).

My feeling, when I try to think about the work or reports produced by trained people examining my relationship with my daughter and making their decrees upon it, was that they started from the conclusion they wished to reach, (if you see what I mean), and then put together the rest of it as a way of supporting the outcome they'd decided upon already.
 
grahamg said:
How do you live with yourself making such foolish comments about folks you dont really know, about my daughter you'll never know etc., etc.?

What makes you such a judge of other folks lives?
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I'm only going by what you share; you're stating your own case, giving your own evidence; that is the conclusion I have come to based on your own words.
 
Pepper said:
I'm only going by what you share; you're stating your own case, giving your own evidence; that is the conclusion I have come to based on your own words.
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Well its not enough then, because when "using my own words", and two court welfare officers managed to decree there was "no positive relationship between my daughter", (and alI within five minutes), went onto say to my lawyer when questioned by him as t the contents of their reports, that there were positives to say about me and my relationship with my child, so chew on that for a bit, and dont jump to conclusions so quickly in future, if you feel tempted to wade in on something you can only know vey very little about, and as one prominet fathers rights said to a judge in court, "Dont try to play God in my children's lives"!
 
grahamg said:
Well its not enough then, because when "using my own words", and two court welfare officers managed to decree there was "no positive relationship between my daughter", (and alI within five minutes), went onto say to my lawyer when questioned by him as t the contents of their reports, that there were positives to say about me and my relationship with my child, so chew on that for a bit, and dont jump to conclusions so quickly in future, if you feel tempted to wade in on something you can only know vey very little about, and as one prominet fathers rights said to a judge in court, "Dont try to play God in my children's lives"!
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Obviously your daughter agrees. Tell me, when was the last time you tried to reconcile? If it were me I'd go begging to her door. But that's just me. However, do you even try?
 
Pepper said:
Obviously your daughter agrees. Tell me, when was the last time you tried to reconcile? If it were me I'd go begging to her door. But that's just me. However, do you even try?
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Haven't you asked enough questions to satisfy your extraordinary curiosity about my affairs?

Why not pick on another excluded parent or grandparent and try telling them what they did wrong, (after grilling them for every details of course! :oops::mad::confused::(:sleep: )?
 
grahamg said:
Simply that, I do not believe I could ever have loved any child as much as I loved her, (and still feel I have that love in me!).

Why is that hard for anyone to understand?
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Loving a child that you have fathered isn't always a given. The "much as I could" part of your post seems to suggest that loving your daughter is dependent on her loving you back.

I don't have problems like you have so I can't speak to what you have experienced relative to what you have been describing as an injustice by the court system.

I don't think you have ever revealed the reasons for the court reacting the way it did. It's my understanding that courts when used to decide the best interests of a child, they rely on investigation. If you don't want to post about what the investigation revealed I understand you have no obligation to. And you can tell me to butt out of your on going posts about your interaction or lack of with your daughter.
 
grahamg said:
Haven't you asked enough questions to satisfy your extraordinary curiosity about my affairs?

Why not pick on another excluded parent or grandparent and try telling them what they did wrong, (after grilling them for every details of course! :oops::mad::confused::(:sleep: )?
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That's a laugh. ALL of your threads somehow get around to your daughter, your obsession. I understand you better than you want to realize. I've had Experience. If you wish to ignore my queries, please do.
 
Knight said:
Loving a child that you have fathered isn't always a given. The "much as I could" part of your post seems to suggest that loving your daughter is dependent on her loving you back.
I don't have problems like you have so I can't speak to what you have experienced relative to what you have been describing as an injustice by the court system.
I don't think you have ever revealed the reasons for the court reacting the way it did. It's my understanding that courts when used to decide the best interests of a child, they rely on investigation. If you don't want to post about what the investigation revealed I understand you have no obligation to. And you can tell me to butt out of your on going posts about your interaction or lack of with your daughter.
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I agree with almost everything you've said here, (not your conclusions, though they're well intentioned I accept).

It wasn't a given for me that I should love my own child you are right, and I only really gained in confidence, a found the love inside me when my marriage had ended, so when my daughter was just two years old, (cant fully explain why not, because I did all the fatherly things expected nowadays, changed as many diapers as her mother, spent every hour trying to entertain and care for our child and so on, and she was an absolute pleasure to be around even then, putting aside the six/eight months colic and screaming the house down every evening when I got home from work for four hours, and my main job was holding her to try to give my wife a break so she would be able to breat feed properly).

The court process in the UK has been rightly criticised for so very many years its hard to begin to try to explain what they did wrong, as it were, (not least because not all they did was wrong by any means, and I received the most wonderful support in the courts working under earlier legislation. A court welfare officer called Mrs Hobson, about thirty five years ago lectured my ex as to the need to allow the father to be involved, as my ex was trying to assert to her that "our child hated seeing me", and saying "I have to force her out of the door to see him", but Mrs Hobson was not to be taken in with her nonsense, you could say "she'd seen her like before"!

When things did fall apart, and my daughter was twelve, (an age where under the new legal framework "her views" were to be given prominence, a judge who had previously been helpful to me, commented at the first hearing, and before referring the case to a newly reformed court welfare service, (a change bring more distance between judges and welfare officers I believe), well this very learned and strong minded judge happened to comment that he was impressed by my ex, (or something like that), as she sat in court.

He noticed my look of shock at his comments too, (perhaps he expected it, and was playing a game with me?!).

Anyway, when he'd previously found in my favour over "staying access", (basically five days when my daughter was permitted to stay at my home in Wiltshire, the only period beyond an odd weekend I'd been permitted to that date in ten years of contact), he managed to trip my ex up on a couple of things. He'd asked her whether I had ever been permitted in her house, (I hadn't, and he read something into this as you can perhaps imagine), and the judge told her that allowing "staying access" for a father in regular (weekly/fortnightly etc.,), contact with their child, was only an extension of the time and more likely for the courts to agree to.

In both of those errors my ex adjusted her position, (one followed the other in fact). I was told by my ex that if I asked for staying access again my daughter would refuse all contact with me, (so essentially she'd have found herself going against her mother's prediction f she hadn't refused). Then when my daughter did say "Dont come again", at the end of an almost normal Sunday visit, it was on a day where an aunt and uncle of mine who we'd visited many times at their farm, had wished to invite my daughter and I to join them and their family for a meal at a restaurant, (but I'd had to refuse because my ex had told me our daughter needed to be home earlier that day).

There was no reason, other than the pressure put on our daughter by my ex and her next husband, for my daughter to refuse all contact, and she did so whilst her mother was in view stood on the roadside in front of her home, (a behaviour I'd never witnessed, as my daughter would always appear from behind their front door when I arrived in he morning, and disappear behind it when I returned her to her mother). Oh, and as my daughter's twelfth birthday arrived a week or so later, I got the first and only invite into my ex's house to offer my daughter her small present, (its a bribe my daughter asserting when she turned it down, though if it were a bribe I'm some kind of cheapskate as it was only a box of candy!).

There you have it, (as best as I can tell you the story! ;))
 
Pepper said:
That's a laugh. ALL of your threads somehow get around to your daughter, your obsession. I understand you better than you want to realize. I've had Experience. If you wish to ignore my queries, please do.
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Yes I'll certainly ignore you for all money, and further questioning you wish to engage in "with all your experience",(leading you to false conclusions I'd say, and my twenty one year old medical student daughter did say to her grandparents, about fifteen years ago, but you wouldn't believe that, obviously you woildn't, "you've experience to inform you what a liar I must be" :whistle::sneaky::rolleyes:!)
 
grahamg said:
My best is not "good enough",

My best is not enough,
what should I do?
I've strived, I think,
and tried to learn,
and all of that,
and loved my child,
as much as I could,
but still its not enough!

Who says so,
I hear you ask?
Well those who know,
what is required of you,
by all or anyone's child,
and they can't be questioned,
with "How do you know",
or "Why did you say those things"?

"Could have done better",
will be their report,
and from your life is taken,
that what you had treasured most,
who could not have been here,
had you not trodden this earth,
and whether it's true or not, whats been said,
no parent at all you shall become!

grahamg (2021).
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I can sympathize with you. I am in a similar situation. My son went through a difficult divorce. He was responsible for the divorce because he cheated on his wife. They had 2 children and the 2 kids were only 8 and 6yrs old at the time. I gave my son support throughout the situation. I even accepted the woman he cheated with. I gave him financial support also. I gave him my bank card etc. He got mad at me because I still kept in touch with his ex-wife. If I didn't I would have never seen my grandsons again, plus the fact that he never did anything with his boys during and after the divorce. Both boys are young men now and are doing well. They graduated college and have wonderful jobs. My son moved to Las Vegas and never even told me. He never answered a call or email. My husband is also devastated and so is my daughter. He did the wrong and we are getting the blame. I guess you never can tell why children turn against a parent. So please just accept the situation and let it be her problem, not yours. I wish you well.
 
grahamg said:
Yes I'll certainly ignore you for all money, and further questioning you wish to engage in "with all your experience",(leading you to false conclusions I'd say, and my twenty one year old medical student daughter did say to her grandparents, about fifteen years ago, but you wouldn't believe that, obviously you woildn't, "you've experience to inform you what a liar I must be" :whistle::sneaky::rolleyes:!)
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Bloody 'ell. If @Pepper called you a liar, I missed it.
 
Murrmurr said:
Bloody 'ell. If @Pepper called you a liar, I missed it.
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"Hello again", (must be a fulltime job you've given yourself jumping to the defence of those you think I've offended by saying something fairly innocuous!).
In a sense though, (whilst someone questioning you all the way down the line isn't calling you a liar), everyone who says "There's two sides to every story", is to an extent saying just that, because of course my ex would give you a different story.

Mrs Hobson, the excellent court welfare officer who met her in 1988 and failed to accept her assertions didn't call her s liar, but wasn't taken in by my ex., (- though my ex proved just what a liar she was by telling a whopper to another court welfare officer and her mate, though as I keep saying "she was the better, more competent parent", so their covering up her lying to them served a purose they could justify "under a system governed by the child's best interests paramount principle)

Want to keep going, or you just going to wait to step in whenever someone giving me a hard time gets the answer they deserve? :unsure::(:whistle:
 
Sassycakes said:
I can sympathize with you. I am in a similar situation. My son went through a difficult divorce. He was responsible for the divorce because he cheated on his wife. They had 2 children and the 2 kids were only 8 and 6yrs old at the time. I gave my son support throughout the situation. I even accepted the woman he cheated with. I gave him financial support also. I gave him my bank card etc. He got mad at me because I still kept in touch with his ex-wife. If I didn't I would have never seen my grandsons again, plus the fact that he never did anything with his boys during and after the divorce. Both boys are young men now and are doing well. They graduated college and have wonderful jobs. My son moved to Las Vegas and never even told me. He never answered a call or email. My husband is also devastated and so is my daughter. He did the wrong and we are getting the blame. I guess you never can tell why children turn against a parent. So please just accept the situation and let it be her problem, not yours. I wish you well.
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I dont know how you ever begin to sort that one out, so I'm no help at all.

I had a friend, (who has now sadly passed away), whose eldest son beat up every one of the three wives he had (I think it was three?), and my friend tried to warn the second one what lay in store, and for this "crime" she was shunned by her son for four years, though there were no grandchildren to consider, (my friend had suffered the same thing from the boys father, when she was an army wife, and away in the far East fifty years ago, so she had few to turn to).
She divorced him on her return to England, when her two sons were small children, and never asked for a cent from him, and made as good a job as humanly possible bringing up those two boys, (the second of whom didn't abuse women/wives, though had a false accusation of some kind made against him by the second wife, prompting his first wife to come to his defence!)
 
Murrmurr said:
No. I was just hoping you'd take my comment at face-value and point out where, if you were indeed called a liar.

(no recap necessary)
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Haven't I done that to your satisfaction?

Its inferred by anyone and everyone saying "there's always two sides etc.", (what's up with you, have you checked lately whether or not you're the same man you used to be?!), and my comment was about what I thought she would be assuming too! :cautious::confused:o_O:(:cry:
 
Back to the topic;

grahamg said:
My best is not "good enough",

My best is not enough,
what should I do?
I've strived, I think,
and tried to learn,
and all of that,
and loved my child,
as much as I could,
but still its not enough!
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Sometimes it just isn't

Opportunity will come, however

Best be ready for it
 
Gary O' said:
Back to the topic;

Sometimes it just isn't. Opportunity will come, however
Best be ready for it
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Very positive post as usual, (didnt expect anything less!).

The good news of course is, "if you've bred a good un", (someone who no doubt is a pleasure for her so many friends and work colleagues to be around), it isn't hard to feel warm feelings towards her.

I'm sorry for all of you who haven't got such a child, (said "tongue in cheek" of course, as we all think like that about our own dont we! :))
 
Thanks for taking the time to explain. I think in one of your other posts you mentioned your daughter is 35 years old . That would mean the situation you described was 23 years ago.

By now your daughter should have matured enough to look back or review her life & the way things came about. Hopefully she has matured enough to use the years of different experiences to evaluate the why of the relationship she missed with you.

Still time to enjoy a close relationship if somehow there is a way to let go of the past.
 

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