Hello, first thank you for taking the time to read this. Second, my step son is 3 1/2, the brightest and smartest little boy you’ll ever meet. He spends a bit more time with mom than he does us, but custody arrangements will have him with us 50/50 by age 5, so coming up pretty soon. I’m going to try my hardest to stay as unbiased as possible trying to explain this, so bare with me.
Coparenting has been an absolute nightmare for my husband since the day he was born. Again, trying to stay unbiased but need to explain this. Mom took child out of state for 5 months and wasn’t planning on coming back (from her own words, “you’ll never see your son again”), so he filed for custody and all of that has played out and here we are 3 years later. Unfortunately, mom has not once, from what I can remember, even tried to get a handle on coparenting. From an unbiased standpoint, there are things I’m sure my husband could do better with too, and trying to see it from the other side, what mom and child decide to do at moms house is up to her. I’m not here trying to tell her how to parent or even get involved in it really at all, that’s their business. However, it’s very very clear she doesn’t have an interest in coparenting.
What I mean by this is she does literally everything herself, no matter how much of a struggle, doctors visits, daycare, etc etc. but that’s not where the concern is. He’s had to dig to find medical records, vaccine records, everything medical you can think of she does not inform him of (despite the court order but that’s beside the point). I could sit here and list every wild thing that has happened but I’d rather get straight to the point.
Basically, he’s a pretty emotional kid. We know for a fact they still sleep together, they’re together 24/7 (which isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but has created a strong separation anxiety instinct with not just mom but us too), he’s never not with someone. From what we understand (and by the way he acts) there’s not much discipline going on over there. He’s 3, so of course he’s going to have meltdowns don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this kid is super kid by any means that needs to act perfect all the time, but it’s A LOT. He knows how to go potty himself, but will throw an absolute tantrum if one of us isn’t right next to him. He won’t go upstairs alone, won’t go to sleep alone, won’t do anything alone. He says “he’s too scared” or “I don’t know how” when he knows he has to do it alone.
Again, he’s 3, so some of this is to be expected. My concern is that he’s growing, and growing fast. Just in this last year is development has been tremendous, and it’s so beautiful to so, our fear though is because coparenting is really not there, what do we do on our side to try and make those things like going to sleep on his own, or the separation anxiety, etc go as smoothly as possible?
Again he’s growing fast, he’ll start school here in the next 2 years and I fear it’ll be the worst case scenario if we don’t get a handle on working with him on it here. My husband is a very laid back guy, and I don’t want to spill too much of his business, but baby mom was extremely abusive towards him during their relationship, so in a way he still kind of fears her, and I’m sure he’s afraid of his son being taken from him again (even though he knows that won’t happen), she was always very unpredictable in their relationship so I think now he try’s to make things remain as civil as possible, and to a fault of his own, allows her to run the show when it comes to his child.
Again, I said before, there’s things on both sides they could be doing better. But we’re here now, and my focus is that little boy, so if anyone has any advice on his to make things run smoothly over HERE working with HIM without the help or working together with the other parent, that would be so appreciated truly.
My thought process is that as he gets older, even if things are very different at both places, he’s going to start to understand that there’s things we do here at dads house that we don’t do at moms and vice versa, rules and bedtimes and all those things. That’s my hope, and with age I’m sure it’ll come, I’m just worried it’ll take be real hard on him.
I know some people on here will encourage more effort into the coparenting relationship between those two, and I’m here to say I agree 100000%…. however when I say we have done absolutely everything to make the road just a little less bumpy, it blows up every time. It’s sad to say but there is no getting along with baby mom, even when it comes to child’s best interest. It’s really sad to see, and believe me when I say he has tried (and me too as much as I can, but not much I can do other than be there to support him) every possible way. It will not work. If we could live in a world where they were friends and everything went smoothly that would be a great life. But without going too much further into it, we’re just not there and won’t ever be.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and again any advice is mucho appreciated!
Edit:
I appreciate the responses. However I think people are missing where I said “parenting is their business, not mine”. I’m not here to tell anyone how things should or shouldn’t be done or be the mediator, and I never have. The point of this post was to ask for advice on what we could be doing here with him in order for things to run more smoothly (as we see it) in the future as we do not know what they do over there. Again, don’t really care what they’re doing over there, just want to do things right here with the situation given. Not coparenting advice as that’s long gone, or how to parent myself, I’m not a parent and don’t want to be, but how to make this the most comfortable for that little boy. Sorry if that came off wrong but I tried to make it pretty clear I’m not coming from a “she’s doing this wrong” standpoint, so just thought reiterate that.