I’m really not trying to “dig” at her. That’s not my style, and in fact it is more of her style to dig at me every chance she gets. I simply am acknowledging the fact that his (2 year younger) cousin received a pistol for an early Christmas present and that’s all my son talks about. Since I KNOW he will be around that gun, and all the other guns his cousin has, I would like him to learn about gun safety. The only way he’ll learn about gun safety where it will “stick” is if he has a gun of his own to learn with and practice with. I fully understand that his mother may not like it, and as I’ve stated, I was completely ready to accept “don’t buy him a gun” as advice from those on this thread. What I wasn’t prepared for was to have a blowhard question my fathering skills simply because I’m trying to do something nice for my son that will benefit him for the rest of his life.
For the record - I’ve never missed or even been late on a child support payment, I was an active Cub Scout leader and Cubmaster, I’m teaching him to drive, I taught him to swim, and I’m constantly teaching him about how to be respectful of other people, IN PARTICULAR his mother, who gets much more consideration from me than I’ve ever gotten from her. For instance, I take him out to buy birthday and Christmas presents for her, and every time that she’s ever come over to pick him up from me, I’ve made sure he was cleaned up and ready to go when she arrived. She’s never done any of that for me. He’s always in the middle of something when I get there (at my regularly scheduled time) and has to go around collecting his things before he even comes to the door to greet me. But somehow that makes me a “father” instead of a father. Up yours, yldstrk.
Since I forgot to ping her in my previous comment, I’m pinging the nagging harpie now.
Trust me, whatever you get him he’ll be happy!
The only time better to buy your son a firearm is his Birthday. Kinda like “coming of age”...
In that by a rough count, you said that you are nice to her, but she is mean to you, about four times in two paragraphs in your response, I think you are evading the issue.
I did not question your fatherhood, but your motivation to give your son a gift knowing that it would at least passively annoy and upset your ex-wife.
This goes to my original point, that Christmas gifts are about emotional content. Any other time of the year you could have given your son a gun, no problem, even if it did irritate your ex-wife.
But doing it on Christmas will imply to your son, actively or passively, that your negative feelings towards your ex-wife are more important than your positive feelings to him. He is likely very aware that his mother abhors guns, so what would you expect him to think?