Any tips for encouraging child to WANT to see dad?

Burying a problem has never, in my experience, solved that problem. In fact, quite the contrary.

Although your poor son does not realise it (but you do as an adult), the only escape for him is to confront his fear and get over it. This may sound a little harsh, but its true.

The good news is that there is still a chance to right the ship because your son is 7 and your ex is willing to try.

The bad news is that the solution lies with you and you alone: you need to treat your son like the 7 year old he is. He is not your friend, your mentor, your companion or anything else. He is a 7 year old boy who is all over the place having seen his family ripped apart. He therefore most definitely needs adult guidance.

To that end, you asking your son whether he wants to see his father is very cruel of you: it acts to absolve you of responsibility and transfers an adult decision to a child who cannot possibly understand the consequences of his decisions. It is truly appalling behaviour on your part.

If you are genuinely concerned about his safety when he is with his father, then the best solution is to have supervised contact which I''m sure your ex will go along with after a bit of kicking and screaming.

Just so you are clear, a few more years of the current status quo and the option of supervised contact won''t be open to you. If that happens, your son will spend the rest of his life dealing with this mess one way or the other.

Best of luck.

Aww, thankyou Juliette0307, your post didn''t upset me, it just brought to home some things and was exactly what I would have written myself, if it were not me caught up in this. Thankyou for your message.

I have spoken to a mediator this morning and sought advice, so feel like there is hope here.

Hi,

I have had first hand experience of telephone contact and my heart goes out to you.

My children were 2yrs & 5yrs when my ex left. He moved abroad and we arranged telephone contact twice weekly at set times. It was a disaster. As you rightly say, children speaking on the telephone is not something they do everyday so it is somewhat alien to them. In my situation, my youngest was only 2 years old and unable to even hold a conversation. However, my 5 year old was able to hold a conversation yet the whole telephone contact was a disaster. He would do the exact same thing as your Son. He even went as far as making sure he ''was busy'' when the call was due. I supported the telephone contact, but as you have found out, holding the phone to their ear and making them physically talk is impossible. He would say " I am reading the Argos book, i''ll speak to him next time", or he would pretend he was asleep, or would simply sit on the sofa and say "No". It was heartbreaking.

I received numerous solicitors letters stating that I had to make him speak to his Father. In the end, I took my Son to the doctors and the doctor talked to him. He was only 5 years old and taking him to speak to the GP in my eyes just wasn''t fair because he told me time and time again he didn''t want to speak to his father. However, the solicitors letters were rather stern and I didn''t know where to turn. The GP, after speaking to my Son, wrote a letter outlining that telephone contact clearly wasn''t working and recommended that my ex wrote twice weekly to my Son instead of calling. My ex didn''t help himself as he didn''t always phone when he should have, often he wouldn''t phone for more than 2 weeks.

I sent the letter from the GP to my ex''s solicitor and I have never heard from him since. He has never written to my Son, not even sent a Birthday or Christmas card.

I feel for you, and it''s a horrible situation to be in. Quire often children respond better to visual contact. Have you thought about Skype calls? It may work.

Contrary to Rugby''s suggestion, I think the responsibility to make all this work lies as much if not more with his father as with you.

Even at 7 my children could not handle a proper conversation on the phone with people they liked, let alone someone for whom there was some kind of barrier. What they could do was to respond to questions that related directly to themselves - What did you have for dinner today? What did you do at school today? Who did you play with?

Can you give his father a list of similar questions and suggest that he use them as opening gambits?

I agree with Pixy. One issue also is that with a 2 year break in contact, your ex isn''t going to know what your Son likes anymore. He isn''t going to know who his friends are, what reading band he is on at school, what TV programmes he is interested in ect. 2 years in a child''s life is massive and his interests will have changed dramatically. Would your ex be open to you giving him some coaching tips?

Just a quick input on my side of the fence. My son who has special needs (I know yours doesn''t and I am not saying he does) cannot communicate at all on the phone, the pyschologist explained that this is because children take their cue''s from your facial expressions, and body languague so if you are smiling etc when you are talking to them. It is not until they are much older (sometimes even adults have problems)that they learn the technique of reading into what is said on the phone. How many times have you had a text message from someone and "read" it the wrong way???? its the same for children.

So yes I would suggest facetime or skype may be a way forward my little one used to use skype to talk to his sister when she was at uni he thought it was great because he could show her his pictures he had done etc

Hi peacelovejoy,

My heart goes out to you, for we are not stood in your shoes and it is all too easy for people to point fingers, or lay blame. None of us know the whole story or the big picture, but reading between the lines you are definitely stuck between a rock and a hard place. You have my support and sympathy, for I can read that you are trying your very best based on a situation you never in a million miles thought would have ever landed at your front door.

The day I called the police on my own husband for having attacked his own son, in broad daylight, in front of his friends, will haunt me forever, it was the worst day of my life, for my children are my world and the man who helped create them had overnight turned into a monster. Up until that point I encouraged both my children to make contact with their Dad, for after all was said and done, he was just that, their Dad. No more, when the incident took place I was the Mother of all Mother Bears and nothing or nobody would ever do that to my children, regardless of who they are. Domestic violence there is no place on this planet for it! We do what we have to do to protect the ones we love and no two stories are the same.

You are trying, we hear that, but it ain''t working so you need help, possibly your GP could refer you both to a child Psychologist for help, this is obviously very traumatic for your little one to be forced into something he is clearly frightened or traumatised about. Take a stand and reach out for help, as it is out there. Yes, his father has work to do, great bridges to build, but he is the adult here and will have to do things at your child''s pace, he is where he is today for whatever reasons and patience, hard work and empathy are what is called for here as our children are the greatest gifts we will ever have, they are not pawns in a game, they are little people built as we are with feelings and emotions.

Keep trying and use every available option out there to help you, your son needs his Mama to show him the way. Best of luck.

Take care for now FoS x