Whatever you "think" you know is actually worthless in the grand scheme of things. Two boys are still being actively withheld from their mother.
How do you know this? I don’t mean that to come across antagonistically, honest
Is this because of a few screenshots on Sam’s social media? If it is then I think we should acknowledge that her perspective is only one side of the story, and a biased side, naturally.
My step-kids resided with myself and their Dad. Their Mum left when they were 3&6 and he spent 2 yrs as a single Dad. She disappeared completely for 3 mths, and then for the next 18 mths drifted in and out i.e wouldn’t get in touch for weeks on end, then would text him saying she was going to pick up the kids to have them for a night, with like 1 day notice. He
always obliged, because they were desperate to see her and idolised her.
As they got older, they became less interested in her sporadic involvement, for a range of reasons that I won’t bore you with. At the age of 10 & 13, it was the kids themselves that generally managed contact with their Mum (via their mobiles) and frequently declined her offer of a visit because, frankly, they had hobbies, friends parties to go to, or something we had already planned/booked etc. They weren’t interested, as they had come to realise the visit was never on their terms, always hers.
If you took a look at her social media at that point you’d have thought that we were refusing her access, or that we were deliberately alienating her...she’d put up these ‘woe is me’ posts like
“Missing my babies this weekend. Told my visit ‘isn’t convenient’.......again ” and people would pile on telling her to get a solicitor or take us to court etc. In reality she never would, because she knew that the reason she didn’t have them that weekend was all her own fault. Example- She would text them on Wednesday saying she would collect them on Friday after school. One of them said ooh I have football 4-5pm can you pick me up after? The other had been invited to a sleepover at a friends on the Friday night so said please can you pick me up on Saturday morning instead? She would go mad saying that we were keeping her from her kids whereas in reality it was her that refused to have any kind of notice period or schedule for having them; they just got sick of it and had their own plans. In reality, her life was all about her, and she refused to have any kind of consistency in visits in case it messed up her own social life or plans.
I suppose what I’m saying is, it is entirely possible that either or both of the boys simply don’t want to engage with their Mother, for loads of reasons (my situation is only one example).
Not for one moment do I condone how Rach plasters them over social media, refers to them as ‘mine’, etc, but the idea that her and Josh are deliberately alienating the boys from their Mum is a really serious allegation, and as someone who has been on the wrong end of allegations like that, can be horribly frustrating and upsetting. In our case, we would have loved a few days ‘off’ from the older two as we had 2 of our own and it would have been quite nice to have a lesser headcount sometimes!
End of rant. And yep....you did touch a nerve!! Ha!