Child’s whereabouts

Myself and my ex partner have been separated for just over a month. He has our daughter for a total of 8 hours during the week. He never ever asks about her when it’s not “his time”. Even when communicating with him (we are selling our house) about other things, he doesn’t think to ask how she’s doing. When it comes to his day on the weekend, he will start demanding to use the car (we have one together currently which I have kept. He is unable to take our daughter out, without this as he has a work van that isn’t suitable). I always let him use it, as I don’t want it to stop our daughter from going out. But this always leaves me completely housebound. On my only day that’s child free. What gets me, is that he is so secretive about where he takes our daughter and who she’s around. I can’t stand it. It’s always “we are going somewhere” and if I ask where, all I get is “just somewhere”. What worries me, is that he is already on dating apps, and it makes me feel physically sick that he could potentially be having these girls around her already. I hate having no idea where my child is, and who she is with. It goes against every instinct I have 😭💔 Is it ok for him to be like this??

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I am literally dealing with the same thing. It is absolutely not okay that he does that. My kids dad does that also. He expects me to tell him everything without asking but if I ask I get the same response. It makes me sick to my stomach. U should put a tracker in the car. Or ur child shoe. Apple has shoe trackers.

Hello, From what I gather, they’re entitled to do what they want in their visits free from the mothers control, in the same way that we are free to do what we choose. Neither parent has the right to dictate who the other parent has around the child. It’s unfair that he’s being like that about telling you. He’s just trying to get to you. Let’s face it, who on a dating app wants a guy turning up with an 8 month old baby so I very much doubt he is doing that. With the baby being so young though, it’s completely reasonable for you to want to have an idea at least of their plans to ensure he’s following her routine etc. e.g. if he’s doing a longer car journey, she may sleep in the car and you’d need to factor this in to her routine when planning her naps and bedtimes etc. You could suggest mediation but I feel like you need to keep the focus of your conversation on the best interests of the child, rather than your preferences as it sounds like he’d just exploit your feelings. Xx

I think my biggest worry is that I have so many concerns about his parenting anyway. He isn’t responsible and he has some pretty strong views. I stayed in the relationship a lot longer than I should have purely out of fear of not wanting to leave her with him and now I have no choice but to hand her over to him which kills me as it is, so to then have no idea of where she is etc makes it unbearable. I don’t trust him in the slightest and I’m having to hand over the most important person in my life 💔 I’m struggling with coparenting so much, he has left me with so much trauma that I just want to protect my daughter 😭 Although it’s recent split, I have a feeling he had someone else or was on dating apps a long time before we did finally split.

That sounds really tough! If you have genuine safeguarding concerns then you would be within your rights to prevent access or only supervised access and let it go through courts then maybe…