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The kids are going to be spending next week with their father who's on a holiday. He'll be taking them to see his mother and brother and other relatives. This is the first time that he's taking them for a longer period of time, he's only spent a few hours alone with them untill now. He can manage one or the other alone, but he's always been unable to handle both of them at the same time. Of course he'll have relatives around him most of the time, but still I'm terrified!! What if he desides to take them swimming and forgets to keep watch for a couple of minutes? Or doesn't hold their hand while walking the side of the road? That's all that it takes you know.

I mean, this is not your regular father who would never let anything bad happen to his children.. He would never want anything to happen to them, don't get me wrong, but he's just not good with the kids. He has no intuition when it comes to them, none. This is a guy that gets angry when they spill their milk or such. He can never tell which clothes belong to our 4 -year old daughter or 2 -year old son. His way of punishing the kids are too harsh and physical.

I can't stand the thought, but I'm sure some of it is me too. I'm just so worried

Are we married to the same person?

It is hard but you can't stop him having them. You will just have to trust him. Maybe run through some things before he takes them? You know, what not to do?

The thing my kids dad does that really annoys me is he takes them out for the day/weekend and doesnt let me know whats going on.Isn't that what mobile phones were invented for?

I was just thinking about giving them a call every, shall we say, half an hour to see what they're up to and to yell at him to keep his eyes on the kids I wouldn't let him have them at all if he didn't let me know what they were up to. God I hope it'll get easier after this week...

Maybe he has never shown enough responsibility because he has never had to. Mr Ellie just took our 3 to the cinema today and they played him up something rotten because they sense that he doesn't have the same control as I do, but yet when I went away for a long weekend, he handled it well, it just took him a day or two to get into his stride and realise the responsibily and how to get things done.You might be pleasantly surprised at how he deals with things.

Hey Liisi, don't they have McDonald's in Finland? That's where all the single dads over here take their kids on Sundays. Must be pretty safe in there.

I've no advice, Liisi, but I know how you feel.

The first time Gerbilmommy went away with a friend's family (she was about 8), for a long weekend, I couldn't relax at all. They went to their house near the beach, and I was worried she'd get into difficulty 'swimming' in the sea. Or what if the house went on fire, and they had no fire alarm? Or she got run over, trying to cross the road. Or the driver of the car was speeding?

I'd no contact with Gerbilmommy for 4 days, and felt like part of me was missing.

She was fine, though.

But I've had times when I had a couple of near misses in the car - not through speeding, just bad driving or other vehicles being stupid.

When you're not there yourself, it's easy to imagine what could happen. It's difficult the first time, but easier as time goes on.

Your ex is probably unlikely to let the children be in any sort of dangerous situation.

They may end up wearing the wrong clothes, or eating food you might not approve of, but those things aren't the end of the world. Hopefully he'll learn as he goes along, and appreciate all you've done for them, and him, over the years. It's good that the other relatives will be there, to help the situation along. Hopefully your children will knock the corners off their Dad - and he'll realise that he can't have perfection, when it comes to dealing with small children.

At least you can phone - that will put your mind at ease.

You're all propably right, even T I actually hope he'll take them to McDonald's, at least they wouldn't be eating his cooking which, I might add, is a bit dodgy.

He was just over to talk about the upcoming week and it actually seemed as though he's a little excited about spending the week with the kids! I was really pleasantly surprised about that even though I know he'll be loosing his nerve by tomorrow evening. But that's ok, I loose mine all the time. Ach, I guess I'll just have to learn to live with the fact that they're not just my kids... How hard can it be?