Lots of parents find themselves navigating shared custody after a divorce. It’s never super easy and the kids are usually the ones that suffer, but it is what it is, right?

OP and his ex share 50/50 custody (one week, one week).

My son Ashton is in the 4th grade and I share custody of him with my ex. We have a schedule where we basically get him one week each.

According to him, his ex often takes extra days and doesn’t “repay” them later one.

There were times where she took extra days without giving me the same time back.

For example, she took him to visit her family in another state and came back two days later because of “flight issues.”

Because that wasn’t her fault, she refused to comp me with extra days. Stuff like that.

When their son had an accident he needed to stay extra days at OP’s house.

Ashton’s school is connected to a park and every Friday they do PE there. Well he’s 9 and does stupid things and decided to see how far he could climb a tree. He got pretty far and then fell out.

He had to get emergency surgery on his leg and got a bad concussion.

He stayed overnight and then had another surgery on Saturday and released that day. My ex and I didn’t discuss the custody schedule. We were concerned with other matters.

On Sunday, my ex said she was going to pick Ashton up for the start of her week and I reminded her that he can’t be moved around like that.

He’s still loopy from the concussion and medicine and how are you going to get a kid with a broken leg into your two seat Porsche?

Another thing is that he’s still not able to wash himself and he will NOT let his mom do that. Just me.

I told her she can visit but needs to prepare for him to stay. She was angry but knew I had a point and there were doctor orders.

Long story short, my son stayed with me six days later because my ex couldn’t get the time off work whereas I WFH.

When his ex asked for the extra days to be repaid, he said no.

Our 19yo son agreed to help take care of Ashton when Ashton needs a guy for something. Ashton can now use crutches and recovered from his concussion and can go back to school on Monday.

My ex said she wanted to be compensated for the six days she lost by having Ashton by getting two weeks instead of one. I said nope.

She said that was unfair. I reminded her of all those times when I lost days for things that wasn’t her “fault” and you refused to comp me.

It’s not my fault Ashton fell out of a tree and you couldn’t get a week off so I’m not comping you. I told her I’m not going to be flexible with you when you aren’t flexible with me.

Should he have acted with more grace? Let’s find out what Reddit has to say!

The top comment says they need to put the kid first.

Which is something neither of them seem to be doing at the moment.

Everyone is hoping they don’t do this crap in front of the kids.

And they agree this doesn’t seem like a healthy co-parenting relationship.

There are apparently some people out there getting it right.

This is so petty, y’all.

I ended up just feeling badly for the kid.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.