Playing a game?

I'm not sure if this is what BFS's ex is doing or not, but either way she is surely getting under his skin. We haven't had a visit for BFS's DD since before christmas. Now for a man who fought tooth and nail to gain regular access to his little girl this isn't the norm. She comes to stay normally 50% of the weekends that BFS is home from work. The fact that she stays in a different county and is 7 and therefore is in school full-time restricts her time with us to those weekends.

BB and LL absolutely adore her and follow her around like puppies vying for her attention. BB especially is constantly enquiring when she is next coming to stay.

However, as I said she hasn't been for a while. She was due to come 2 weeks ago, but we got a call on the thursday evening saying she was ill and that she would get an emergency appointment at the docs for her on the friday. A phone call on sunday with BFS revealed that 'Mummy was too busy to take her to the doctor' and that she'd actually gone to the cinema with her friend that weekend. Didn't sound too sick to us! BFS offered to have her the following weekend, but she had a 'cinema birthday party' that she really wanted to go to. Turns out this birthday party was on the sunday and so she could have actually stayed over as usual and gone home a bit early on the sunday to attend!

Now here we are two weeks down the line on a pre-arranged contact weekend, and BFS has made the hour or so journey all the way to hers only to receive a phone call (from DD - not even her mum)1/2 hour before pick-up time to be told that she has a 'bit of a fever' and so won't be coming this weekend again. (Strangely DD didn't seem to think she was coming this weekend during a midweek call with Daddy.....) By the time BFS returns from work it will be 2 months since he's managed to get QT with his girl.

Understandably BFS is pretty upset, and very angry. He has called to see if he can see her for a couple of hours since he's down there anyway - but the calls and messages are being ignored. I try not to get pulled into this, and give BFS his space when I can see that he is obviously processing things over and over in his head, but this time I can't help but feel involved as it's not just BFS she's playing games with - it's my boys too.

How do you explain emotional blackmail to a 4 year old? BB is absolutely distraught that he's (once again) not getting to see his sister this weekend. He's been talking about it all week, and to get within a hare's breath of seeing her and then be told it's not going to happen is heartbreaking. He simply cannot understand it.

I haven't seen him yet. I'm at home awaiting the arrival of my despondant boys after their fruitless 3 hour round trip, but I know already I'm going to struggle to not feel just a spurt of anger for the thoughtless b**ch who's caused my boys (all 3 of them) this pain!