A little back ground - during the divorce my husband lived with his mother and saw the children at his mom's house of which is very small and had 4 adults living in it with no beds for the children. My husband and the kids shared a bedroom and bed.
When the children were there on weekends the cousin would come over to keep his daughter company. This was a pattern for his daughter since early childhood. She always had a friend over to keep her busy. Even now she lives with her mom and her grandparents and cousins that are there all the time.
My husband and I have recently moved from Upstate New York to New Jersey for employment reasons. Since our move the Ex-wife would not allow us visitation with his children in NJ. After a court hearing we were granted visitation for several weeks when the children are on breaks from school. The first break was the week after X-Mas. We drove to NY and picked up the kids and brought them down for a week. They seemed to enjoy themselves alot. I was sick and tried to stay away from them so they didn't get sick. I did however, spend time with them and played games and watched TV. They seemed to be enjoying themself alot and my husband was home with them every day while I worked.
Now our second week is approaching and his 8 year old daughter is refusing to return to NJ. She said she was bored and didn't like the ride. She wants to see us but not in NJ. She wants us to take her to my husbands moms which is two more hours from her house and if we do that we will only have 8 hours of time with them due to our work schedules. Vacation time at this point is not an option for both of us.
What do we do? We are trying to talk with her and explain that we are all new at this and we need to keep trying and she also needs to give it a second chance. We have scheduled plenty of activities for them and even arrange for a playmate a couple evenings while they are here.
We want our visitation here where we live not at his mother's where we cannot have time with the kids by ourselves.
