My mother used to say " of course they want to go to their fathers house- no rules".

We wanted to go to our father's house to see our father. She was full of bitterness and resentment.

I'm not a mother, but I was a daughter who buried her mother and still struggles to forgive her for being so selfish she put her own needs above those of her children.

Just a cautionary tale.

I have a son that's almost 18 years old.
He lives with his father and has stopped speaking to me since
moving an hour away. My ex has always given him anything he wants
and i've been told i'm the bad parent because i expected consiquences to my son's actions. My son never has had any desipline because my ex was afraid my son wouldn't like him anymore. Well, it has backfired onto me now. I'm the bad parent. My ex has told me he has said nothing to turn our son against me but i believe differently. My son won't answer any of my texts or calls for the past 6 months now. Christmas came and went and i didn't hear anything from him. I did send a card and $$ but no "Thanks Mom" or anything. My heart is totally broken and i don't know where to turn?
Any other mom's out there going through this? Please, let me know how your dealing with this.

@lily4896: When I got divorced my sons were 11 & 19, so the Divorce primarily affected the 11 yr. old. My oldest son was always more close to me than his father, my youngest was closest to his dad. We'd been married for 25 years. So my youngest lived with me for the first year, but he missed his dad alot, so then went to live with him during the week and I got him 3 weekends a month and we split holidays and summers. My ex-husband remarried and that's when everything changed. The redneck skank my ex married began to poison and malign me to my young son, she tried it with my oldest but he told her to go Fu** off. It took them about 3 years but by the time my son was 16 he was no longer visiting, except at Christmas, he barely called, I'd speak to him once or twice a year. I kept up with all he did through his school and activities, because legally we had 50/50 Custody, but I would not force my child to do something that made him unhappy. I text my son everyday to every other day so that he knew I was there, always would be there and no matter what they said I wasn't going away. I knew as he got older and away from their little hicktown, he'd remember who raised him, remember who his mother was. I've not seen my son in 2 years, save for 15 minutes at 2 Football Games last year his Sr. year of High School. He started College this year. I support him each month, monetarily. I still text him several times a week, and since he started College he's started texting me back, having conversations. Its taking time, and I"m having to be so incredibly patient, sometimes I think it will kill me it hurts so much, because this is my child, my youngest, only 18, and I miss him so much, a pain so different than, physical pain. Many nights I cry myself to sleep holding my phone re-reading his text. But I don't rush him, he's like a deer, if I move to quick i'll scare him away. As he gets older and grows and is around other more educated more diverse groups of people, he's breaking through all the crap that the skank said about me, all the lies, he doesn't even go to their house anymore, between his fathers drinking and her nasty, hick demeanor, he won't go there. So I bide my time and I live with the conversations via texts and I hope that when People tell me that "as he gets older, he'll come back, he'll know the truth" I hope that is the truth.

As for my oldest son, he lives 5 minutes down the road and comes by the house everyday, he and his girlfriend spent Christmas with me yesterday. And he doesn't have much of a relationship with his father because of his drinking and the woman he's married to. I encourage him to. The one thing I have never done, and made sure I never did was talk badly about my father after my divorce to my sons. I don't believe in that type of crap between divorced couples. We didn't have much to do with each other except for school or medical stuff for our youngest, and most of it we did via test or email.

So give your daughter some time and hopefully as she gets older she'll remember that you, her mother is more important than all the material crap her father gives her. I sincerely hope that she does. But I can tell you from a psychological standpoint the more "drama' that you send her, writings and such, the more she'll withdraw from you, it just becomes ammunition against you. You might want to just send her a simple text every day or so, "Hi, i hope your doing well at school, I miss you and I love you.' so she knows your there and you always will be.

The money is not always the important part. I was the parent with the money, I supported my family, and my youngest still staid with his father, so that's not always the key.

I hope that your daughter remembers her mom and all the love you have for her.

Take care,

Kat

You sound a bit bitter and competitive. And self-obsessed. Sending attacks and immediately sending apologies for those attacks isn't very mature.

Don't blame your temper on being irish. Blame it on not holding your temper. Learn to wait fora few days before reacting to things. If your daughter didn't have photos of you, and as you say didn't have photos of her brother, then clearly it wasn't a personal issue. Clearly it was a collage of school friends or similar.

You need to lighten up, and step back. And watch how you behave. Don't alienate people and don't attack them. Just because you feel hurt doesn't mean anyone hurt you.

As of now my son (12) says he's going to live with his dad when we move out. My daughter is mine from a previous marriage, so she doesn't get a choice... however she's playing both sides and has no problem screwing me over in a heartbeat