School activities over summer break
My ex husband moved back in fall 2024, after living across the country for 5 years. He bought a house 1 hour away from us. After he and his wife moved back, we had to come up with a new custody agreement, which was tricky because of the distance, and because he said he can’t take the kids on any school days. We ended up with every other weekend, with him also getting any 3-day weekends due to a Federal Holiday, splitting up holidays and dividing the summer in half. He gets the first half of summer and I get the second half. This worked best in middle school because our daughter (14), had cheer practices multiple days a week the second half of summer. She is now going to be starting high school, and practices are 9-11am Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays the whole summer. Her dad says she will have to miss practices during his half because it isn’t feasible with his work schedule or his wife’s. I suggested I pick her up in the mornings and take her to practice and he can get her in the evenings. He said his whole evening would be shot then. I suggested me getting her Tuesday mornings and returning her Thursday evenings. He said that is me taking 3 days a week from him all summer. I asked if his parents or sister could help, he said maybe his dad could drive her to practice one day a week.
I don’t know what to do, so that she doesn’t miss so many practices. I suggested we get our help from our assigned mediator, and he says it wouldn’t help because it is a logistics issue.
The other problem is we found out that cheer camp is nearly the exact dates as a camp (a community college camp where she would be learning about healthcare) he signed her up for over the summer. She wants to do cheer camp instead, but didn’t let us know the dates until recently. Her dad already paid for his camp, and I have to pay for cheer camp no matter if she goes or not.
What would you all do? I need help or ideas. I asked him for some and he said he has little to none and that we should have asked him before signing her up for tryouts. Our agreement does say that we have to discuss new activities the kids would like to participate in. Our daughter has done cheer for several years now.