When parenting time choices are OUTRAGEOUS
We’re both solo parents who’ve been raising our kids without our ex in the picture. So, when it comes to co-parenting issues, we’re grateful for everything YOU have shared with us.
You’ve candidly told us that sometimes you just HATE co-parenting. When we chatted about consistency (or not) between co-parents, you certainly let us know all about the challenges you face.
As you can see, we LOVE hearing from you! Keep those emails coming!
One of the biggest concerns we hear from co-parents is how to let go when your kids are with your ex. It’s often SO difficult to relinquish control… and really trust that your ex is going to make responsible decisions.
We understand that sometimes your ex suggests an activity that you feel is not age-appropriate (or safe). Your advice for a single mom whose ex thought a death metal concert was a perfect week-end activity for a preschooler sparked a informative discussion on how to deal with those inevitable co-parenting clashes.
Lately, however, we’ve received a lot of emails that began with lines such as, “I just need to vent.” Relaxed summer co-parenting schedules and extended stays with “the other parent” often mean that kids return to you with tales of misadventure that simply leave you speechless …and, let’s face it … outraged.
Angry and upset are tough to deal with on your own. And we know that you try not to badmouth your ex in front of the kids.
Because we’re a community created to support each other, we hope you know that you can just let off some steam here. We’re inviting you to just put it out there — and tell us about your ex and his/her parenting time. So, go ahead and share:
What’s the most OUTRAGEOUS parenting time choice your ex ever made?
And we’d love to hear how you handled it.
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This post was inspired by MyLifeIncomplete. Photo courtesy of filmbuf1.
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Twitter @ http://wondermom-pickingupthepieces.blogspot.com/
Knock on wood, the aggravations we’re dealing with lately are just that…aggravation. He lets them watch TV programs that I think are totally inappropriate (it’s only PG-13….but he’s only 3!!!! And what about the R-rated movie they were watching when you thought they were taking a nap?), he feeds them junk food constantly, throws their routine to the wind, etc. but those are things I can live with even if they make me mad.
The hardest thing I’ve had to deal with is the new girlfriend (not new…according to him, she’s been around longer than I have…ouch!) My 5-year-old came home one weekend saying that he didn’t want to spend the night with Daddy any more because he had a nightmare there but he was scared to go in Daddy’s room because SHE was there so he just cried alone till it was time to wake up. That broke my heart but a few weeks later, Ex told me that my 3-year-old had woke up in the middle of the night and climbed in bed with THEM. The thought of my baby sleeping with him and his girlfriend just makes me nauseous. I’m not sure which is worse!
Lately, when the boys come home from visits, they talk more about their time with Her than with their dad. She took them to the pool, She baked cookies with them, She made Christmas ornaments with them, She printed out Mother’s Day pictures for them to color, She reads them as many stories as they want at bedtime, She put them in time out when they were fighting, She wouldn’t let them call me when they were homesick. I’m glad she’s being nice to them because it could be MUCH worse and I want to be happy that it’s one more person that loves them, but I thought they were going over there to visit their dad…
wondermom´s last blog ..Heartbreaking
Twitter @ http://gawlas.blogspot.com
My ex once told me that as a punishment for lying he smacked our three year old in the face and then washed him mouth out with soap.
He also tends to move in with women who have kids and announce “this is your new step mom and these are your brothers and/or sisters” but he is so unstable that I’m still married to him because I haven’t been able to file divorce yet because I never know where he is long enough.
I don’t know anything about these women, except that their self esteem is so low and they are so desperate that they’ll move in with him. I worry about the effect his lack of good sense and reasonable judgment has on my kids. But then I worry more about the effect it would have on them if I cut off contact with their father. But his weird behavior keeps getting weirder and I may have to do just that, or insist that the kids stay at the ex’s parents’ house for their visits.
alley´s last blog ..Truth is in the eye of the editor
Twitter @ http://cantitbeabout.me
Wow! Tough call on this one. It could be the time my then 11 year old walked in his Dads room before school one morning to see his Dad having sex with a random girl from the bar (which he frequented WITH my boys). Or, it could be the time he moved in with his girlfriends female friend, threw a party on a school night (pretty common) and the adults got so hammered that his girlfriend threw up on the floor next to where my boys were sleeping and then they were all too drunk in the morning so didn’t take the boys to school. Yeah, I think that’s the one.
And Ally, I feel your pain. That last incident drove me to a therapist to discuss whether it was best to seek emergency custody immediately or wait cause he was moving away in 2 months.
Needless to say, I am so thankful he is gone and we start therapy this month.
Can’t It Be About Me´s last blog ..General Discontent
Twitter @ martinimom
Hm. That’s a tough one. There are a few bad choices that pop to mind immediately:
1. There was the time he took our 4-year-old camping (camping being an activity my ex in incapable of being sober for) and let him wander off ahead of him on a trail. The Ex got to a fork in the trail, and had no way of knowing which way The Kid had gone. He was lost for over an hour in the woods, and the rangers had to be called in.
2. There was the time he took our son (7 or 8 years old at the time) to a kegger style party and taught him to play beer pong.
3. There was the time he was house shopping, and one of the requirements was a “separate area for The Kid.” Not so that The Kid had privacy, but so that he would be out of his step-mom’s way. Options were the house with a covered deck so that she could send him outside to play even if it was raining and the house with a basement with a separate entrance so that The Kid would never have to come upstairs. They went with the basement. For the first several months they lived in that house – until I threw a fit – my son wasn’t allowed upstairs.
4. There were those rare occasions that our son stayed with his dad overnight on a school night and I requested that he make a lunch for for the kiddo to take to school. He once sent him with nothing but an OLD hard boiled egg. He once sent him with some crackers and a piece of cake. He’s not allowed to make lunches anymore.
5. There’s the fact that when his new girlfriend moved in (now wife) all photos of the kid were removed from around the house and replaced with pictures of her cat. Similarly, any gifts the kid makes for his dad are not allowed to be displayed in the house. There’s a shelf in my son’s room at his dad’s house that holds everything he’s given his dad.
Ugh. I have to stop now. I’m putting myself in a bad mood!
Martini Mom´s last blog ..Practically a man
Twitter @ msjennixoxo
The biggest problem I’ve been having, is my ex going out and doing drugs the night before he takes the girls. Yep. He always eventually slips up a few weeks later, and I lay into him. I don’t know what ADULT thinks it’s a good idea to take his kids for a day, after partying all night. But apparently he does.
Yeah, their dad is a winner. Which is why we’re leaving for CA in two weeks, leaving his ass behind.
Jenni´s last blog ..Conversational Baggage
Twitter @ msjennixoxo
Oh, and Martini Mom? You ex’s wife sounds like a total bitch. WHO treats a child like that? And WHO marries someone that treats THEIR child like that?!
Jenni´s last blog ..Conversational Baggage
Twitter @ http://cantitbeabout.me
Martini Mom, are you sure we weren’t married to the same man?!? My kids are beer pong champs!
Can’t It Be About Me´s last blog ..General Discontent
Twitter @ msv1959
My sons, ages 12 & 10 are given a daily dowe of Red Bull, NCIS, cleaning rifles, eating junk food. He sometimes has no bedtime, he sometimes lets them watch TV for hours at a time…
What I do is still provide the same, consistent rules and plans and behaviors that i always have.
When my kids try to tell me about their *time* with Dad, and they know the rules are different, I always say “What happens at your Dad’s house is your Dad’s business”…I always ALWAYS tells them if anything bothers you, you can tell me about it.
Problem solved. It’s about letting go. It’s hard, but it’s workable.
Twitter @ msv1959
That should say daily DOSE…LOL
Twitter @ EATDRINKDIVORCE
I think letting go and allowing the other parent to handle things as they see fit is terribly hard. BUT it must be done. I think sometime we want all the control…at our house and at the other parent’s house. You can’t have it like that. I think keeping your rules tight and sharing what you do with the other parent as way to guide and influence is perhaps all that can be done.
Perhaps you can set up time with the other parent to specifically discuss parenting issues in a non judgement way. You are not acting like the adversary, just a concerned co-parent who respects the other parent. RESPECT the other parent in words and deeds and you may well get some of your parenting rules into play at their house.
Lovebabz´s last blog ..MERRY CHRISTMAS JULY 2010
Twitter @ nairb1969
I would really like to see more dads “venting” about what kind of stuff they put up with and have to surrender to in co-parenting. I can’t help to not think that the bashing in here overlooks that men are from mars and women are from venues. Because of the gender power imbalances in society. It seems that women can get away with atrocious behavior and blame it on cycles, depression, diet induced hypoglycemia, weight gain weight loss, male oppression, post pardom, and pre menstrual, full moons, astrology, and pheromones.
I have had partners punish their kids by making them give them massages for causing them strain, actively remove men from our child’s life as if men are a threat to families. Demand obedience without developing trust. Dirty clothes. , Petting rabbits when the child has been deathly allergic to rabbits for 12 years. (Oh but they where so cute). Interrogate my female friends and clear out my child’s belongings while I was in the middle of a move and insult m fiancé who had never ever done or said anything to her.
All the stories I heard above are astounding not because these men did what they did but because they where chosen as lovers and you made babies with them.
The true surrender is to see that the more your gut wrenches to the opposing type of care that you perceive in a co parent. The more you have to look at your absolute desire to keep a particular life and experience for your child. Your Co parent one day if you open your eyes might show you the holes in your protective blanket and you may see that he teaches some realism about the world that you can not shelter your child from and if you do they will possibly be slammed with the reality that not everyone in the world is going to nurture and shelter them like mommy.
Don’t get me wrong, Neglect, abuse and overt exposure to adult and sexual behavior is not acceptable, but we know the people (adults around us) who are lil spoiled mommas boys and daddy’s gurls and guess what… they are childless or they are 3-45 year old single parents because non one will ever be like their over protective or under protective parent. Model flexibility resilience, thoughtfulness, empathy and the willingness to see that your eggs and his sperm needed little help in meeting and you had something to do with it and you and your baby daddy and baby momma asked for this child to manifest between you.
I have a 26-year-old daughter, and 11-year-old daughter, and a 6-year-old son, and two foster children. My current partner has 9 tea old twins, and my x has a 7-year-old 19 years old and a 22 year old with two children.
All of us have different parenting styles and life situations and are struggling not to replicate the defense mechanisms passed on to us by a not so healthy generation before us. To do this in a multicultural and multi-orientation community like the bay area allows us to socially evolve generations faster than some mid westerners and moor homogeneous communities. But as you parents of pre adolescents know. The faster you grow the worse the growing pains are.
I suggest the pain you feel when our child comes home with a different experience than in our home you massage your pain and check your head to se if your fear is founded or does the situation just seem like the beast that used to torment your family of origin.
B*
Twitter @ tailgatingtimes
I would love to vent and my friends will say I’ve got plenty to vent about. After reading all of these comments though I am counting my blessings. Sure my ex moved away and left me with nearly all of the responsibility for raising my children, financially and otherwise, but she’s not a bad person. She just has a hard time putting our kids’ needs before her own desires. Like when she went to our daughters softball game and wouldn’t even get out of the car to watch her at bat.
I do know that my kids love their mom and no matter how hard it is for me I don’t interfere with their relationship. They can call her whenever they want to and they can talk about her whenever they want. They deserve that. I know that I do the best job I can to be there for them and I’m not at all threatened by her. I want her to want to be a better parent because they deserve that too but I don’t have much of a say in that.
I do have one complaint. I hate that she takes their phone away and gets irritated when they want to call me while they are with her. She isn’t sympathetic at all to them missing me and she makes it hard for me to call them. Maybe some day she’ll realize they can be close to both of us.
Twitter @ http://www.howdoesshedoitmom.com
Wow could I ever go on a vent here…try to keep it short but probably not so sweet!! My ex makes decisions all the time that I do not agree with…but I never say anything to him about it. Mostly because I know that the kids are SAFE with him and that is really the only thing that matters. Things such as not brushing their teeth or only having a bowl of soup for dinner can be recouped the next day when they are home.
However he did the ultimate in stupid if you ask me this weekend…he has reduced his visitation of the kids from 10 days a month down to 4…so that he can get his life back on track (YEAH I KNOW!!! its been two years now) anyhow…he has requested a reduction in child support (he is only paying 400 a month for BOTH kids now) and he has basically become obsolete! So….now he is trying it seems to make up in his lack of time by buying them STUFF!!
He bought our 7 year old son a 4 wheeler for his birthday this weekend!! My son thinks it is rad as hell (and yes I agree with him) but he is 7 and he doesn’t see the other side…like the fact that his dad can apparently buy a 4 wheeler yet not want to opay child support!! ARGH!!!
What did I do? Nothing!: What can I do except smile and hope that one day my kids will see that the morals, values and lessons that myself and their step dad have taught them serve a greater purpose than sTUFFF!!
Thanks for listening!
Carrie Campbell´s last blog ..What Can You Do With Your Life…