children suddenly refusing to communicate

Hello All,

I've not posted on here for years and thought that my days of dealing with the divorce process were behind me but things have suddenly gone very wrong with my husband's children and I would appreciate some advice.
My husband's 1st marriage ended 10 years ago and has 3 children aged 19, 16 and 12. After going to court for a contact order, things settled down and for many years we saw the children Friday to Monday every 2 weeks. 2 years ago this changed to every 3 weeks and the eldest stopped coming over but remained very much in contact. Over the past year there have been lots of swaps and changes - sometimes because the younger children have something else on and sometimes because we have.
We last had the children to stay at the end of January.A month ago my husband received a text from the 16 year old saying that he didn't want to come over anymore but he was happy for his dad to come over and take him out for dinner (he lives about 20 miles away). My husband was very upset as his son had always said how happy he was coming over. He felt that the focus was on material things (his son also mentioned money) and that by not coming over to our home he is ignoring the family that his dad has with me (we have a daughter together and I have an older daughter who lives with us).
My husband contacted his ex-wife to ask to meet up to discuss the children but she refused unless her boyfriend and/or the children were present - my husband thought this wasn't appropriate. The boyfriend also sent my husband several texts essentially criticising his parenting.
Since then we have had no contact. The children have repeatedly failed to reply to texts and emails from their dad asking how they are. The longest period they had ever not had contact with him before was around 2 days, now it is a month. My husband is scared to go around to the house in case he is accused of harassment and his ex has not replied to emails or texts sent. He is losing sleep over this and neither of us know how to move things forward. He has contacted their school for a progress meeting; this will happen later this week but it seems that his details have been removed from the school system.
Any advice on how to move this forward would be gratefully received.

Hi.

The children will (in my experience) chop and change in this way and that is quite normal under the circumstances. My advice would be for your husband to
- keep trying to maintain contact, even if he feels rebuffed
- think about the criticisms of child, ex and boyfriend and consider coolly whether in some cases they may have a point
- contact the school and reinstate his details. I presume he retains parental responsibility and the school is therefore bound to respect that.

It can be very trying, but I would suggest the last thing he should do is retreat and leave it to them. Best of luck.

At the ages of 16 and 12 the children are considered old enough to express their wishes and to have them taken into account. As you say, they are likely to have things on with friends/sporting events which may take priority.

However, there seems to be some other agenda playing out here. Who removed his details from the school contacts? This is not acceptable and should be put right formally and frankly the school should have checked before making such a change. He should make sure that from now on he gets a copy of all relevant correspondence.

The boyfriend criticising your husband's parenting skills indicates to me that the children are being influenced by their mother and her boyfriend. It's very sad that they're not even answering his texts.

As his son has said he would be amenable to going out for a meal with his father, would that not be a good starting point to try to get to the root causes of this sudden change in behaviour? Your husband may have a clearer view of a way forward when he has more of the facts.

It's always sad when relationships with children breakdown, but he must not give up. Taking his son and daughter out just the three of them for a while may help to repair whatever has gone wrong. Perhaps they just want some time with their Dad on their own.