It is annoying, isn't it. Just yesterday Bm wanted to know when she should drop off half of the candy stepson got from his school Halloween party. We told her, keep the candy, it's not that important. She also insists on calling either the evening before or the morning of, the day that stepson goes to her house, to tell him if he should ride the bus home or not. Stepson never knows until the last min. and it is hard on him. Every Thur. morning he takes forever to get ready for school because he wants to stay here every last second. It's even worse when he leaves here to spend the weekend at her house. This morning he told me that his mom's house stinks. He just doesn't like to go there.

Dawn

i wouldn't answer the phone and let it go through voicemail. if not i would tell her straight not to call too many times and only if it's an emergency. just be straight w/her, that's your house and it's your right not to be bothered. or you can put the ringer on silent and have your cell phone on in case of emergency when the kids are over.

-happy mom

Its not just me. If I'm home alone, or they are outside out of earshot, and its the ex, I don't answer the phone. I let it go to voicemail and then tell my SD her mom called. Or my DH if it is for him.

When my SD is with us, whether it be for 2 nights and 2 months, her mom calls every single night. That seems a bit overkill to me. When my son is gone for the weekend at his dad's, I don't call him. That is his dad's time. Now, if he is with him for an extended period, like a week, or for longer around a holiday, I will call once or twice and check in on him and see how he is doing.

Anyone think that everynight is excessive?

BM calls our house several times a day when SD is with us and interrogates her on the minutiae of her day, which totally stresses SD out. We've started turning the ringer off. Yes, it means we miss calls we WANT to get too, but we can always call them back. It's worth it to not have BM infect our family time together.

It comes down to the fact that she can't LET GO OF HER KID. She doesn't trust us to take care of her (because she makes up in her head that we're bad people) so she interferes and tries to control our every moment with her daughter. BM has no life outside her child, so when she's not with her, she doesn't know what to do with herself but call and drill her for information and manipulate her. My poor SD has now started begging us at the end of our weekends to call her mom and ask if she can stay longer than the scheduled time we're to bring her back. She doesn't want to go home and face the third-degree questioning. I don't blame her. By the way, BM always says no.

Oh and StressedSM, kudos to you for recognizing that your son's time with his dad is just that: their time together. I wish more BMs could be like you! I don't understand why when a child doesn't see the parent for ONE day, that several phone calls need to be made to check in. Yes, for an extended period I understand. But one day?!

It's unbelievable that they just can't get a grip, that they can't let go for one second. The sad thing is that I feel its really less about the kids and more about annoying us! We will get phone calls, then text messages all night long and BF barely gets to see his kids as it is and then only has them for less than 24 hours and she freakin' calls and texts continuously! Then this woman is never on time for anything, especially dropping them off but believe me when she has to come and get them she calls a half hour to an hour before and then shows up early! It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
One of the last times the kids got to stay over for their brief visit she picked them up bright and early in the morning and she didn't even leave the driveway (and its only about 10ft long) and she had already questioned them about what they did, etc, etc and she was on the phone bitching and yelling at me and then BF about what happened when they were there..which was nothing bad.. it was insane!! Those poor kids, can you imagine having to be interrogated at age 5 and 6!
If there's a way you can stop it, then do so and let us know how you do it! I want to nip this in the bud right away Good luck.

I discovered that our answering machine could be turned on so that when you didn't answer the phone, the machine would say HELLO. NO ONE IS AVAILABLE TO TAKE YOUR CALL. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER. It would then disconnect. So the machine would pick up, but no one could leave a message. We have caller ID, so I know who is calling if I want to pick up or call them back. It was hilarious, because the ex would call all hot and bothered about something trivial and stupid, then she wouldn't get the satisfaction of either talking to one of us OR leaving a scathing message. I loved imagining her all worked up and with no way to blast us!

~ Anne ~

We had our house phone disconnected, so BM can only call on the cell. This actually cut her calling back considerably.

My BF and I have been dealing with BM calling his cell (we opted to have only cell phones - no land line) all the time for stupid reasons. Since my BF and I bought a house together three months ago, BM has either emailed or left a phone message to have my BF's son call her each and every time we have him (50/50 physical custody). He stays with us one week then stays with his mother for one week and it keeps alternating. The funny thing is, prior to my BF and I buying a house, BM never asked for her son to call her. We found out from my BF's son that BM was telling him that he HAS to call her everytime he is with us and since he wasn't calling her, BM was leaving my BF messages to have BF's son call her. The funniest thing happened the other week. BM emailed my BF saying, "I have asked you to have _____ call me. I know you said before that you won't force him to call but, I find it hard to believe that he doesn't want to". Finally, BF's son calls his mother and she asks him so why didn't you call me this weekend, and he replies "because I didn't want to". She believes that she should be the center of his world when he is with us. He loves being at our house and usually asks if he can stay longer than the one week time allowed. The ironic thing is that BF's son has repeatedly told us that the majority of the time he is with her, he gets ignored because she's usually drunk out of her mind and/or pays all her attention to her boyfriend(now husband).

***Kim***

You guys think you have it bad...we only have SS for 8 hours every 2 weeks, and BM manages to call at least 3 times every time we have him. Looking at the ratio of calls to visitation time, that's a little ridiculous!

I don't know what to do to prevent her from calling so much. When she does call sometimes she stays on the phone with SS for 30 minutes or more. I think it's unfair for her to call and tie up all of his time with US by talking to him for so long. It wouldn't be so bad if he actually wanted to talk to her...but you can tell by the way he acts that he's not even paying attention and just wants her to let him off the phone.

*~So sayeth Nymh~*

I am sorry you have had to go through this for 6 years i have the same issues and i will probably be going through it for a long time to.My husbands ex phones our house and is very rude to me and my bio son she is so immature that she talks to my son like she is a child.I just hang up on her if i pick up the phone even if my stepchildren are here.She bought them a cell phone each so if she needs to speak to them she can phone their cellphones.I had to make a stand because i was certainly not listening to her mouth everytime she calls and neither does my son.I told my husband that this was our house and our phone and i WILL NOT put up with that and my husband agreed with me.

When my 2 boys are at their dads, I try not to call only if they have called me and have left a message. Dad gets furious if I speak to the boys..the court ordered 2 social workers to come in and see his house and how he interacts with the boys, versus mine home for them...not to be used in court but to help both of us out because we were fighting over custody. He wanted the week about, and both boys didnt, and I didnt agree either but he kept fighting...both social workers were concerned that dad had a hidden agenda and that was to remove the biomom, (that is me) from the boys lives for the week he had them...this was a huge issue...They agreed it would be best if I just had sole custody of the boys...but their theory really scared me..I am a (normal) biomom, who loves her kids dearly, I work hard, I am not a partier, I have always and will always put my kids first...my kids and me a very close...so if you know your step kids are very close to their mother please dont not let them talk to her when they are with you...I see the pain in my sons eyes when he tells me dad won't let him phone....he has actually had to hide in his room to call me just to say hi.....this breaks my heart.

The problem is BM not being reasonable and calling solely for the reason of annoying me or my DH. We've had calls at 6.30 in the morning to tell us SS has no shoes for school (1 - he starts school at 9.00 and 2 - we pay huge child support payments so go buy him some shoes) and then she'll call to talk to SD at 7.00am but SS and either my DH or I may still be sleeping. I have a problem with anyone calling our house before 8.30am, unless it's an emergency I just don't see a need. When I told BM that if she didn't stop calling at those times I'd have her number barred from our phone she hit the roof and started hurling all kinds of abuse. I kept my nerve and told her I had no problem with her calling between 9.00am and 9.00pm but beyond that no. She bitched and bitched to my DH about it but he agreed with me and thankfully the problem went away. She still calls but only to talk to SD14 never SS9 which I think is very sad. I can tell by what SD replies she's interrogating her and I know SD feels under pressure to make out she's not having that good a time even if she is.

...why we started screening calls in the first place. She called on our wedding night. While we were in bed. After nine pm. (Second wedding, not a big splashy affair, we had four kids, so we didn't really go on a honeymoon that night, just went back to the house afterwards.) She called Christmas morning before the kids had even opened the first present. This was before seven am. This was our one and only Christmas with them, she never let us have them for Christmas again. When my grandfather died, and she knew he had died, she called to bitch about something and she started in on me when I answered the phone, even though they are not even my freakin' kids. I told her that my grandfather had passed and that I was trying to make arrangements to get us all to the funeral in another state, that I would have hubby call her later, but that now wasn't a good time. She kept calling back over and over again. He wasn't even home! Also, I was three weeks post-partum at that time. She ruined my pregnancy by suing my husband and taking him to court... she filed the suit three days after she discovered I was pregnant. She called constantly during that time to pick fights. She has ruined every vacation, every weekend visitation, every single time we have the kids with several phone calls per day. And here's the kicker... from the time he picks them up on Friday evening to the time he brings them home on Sunday evening, since there was five hours travel time one way, they really only spent one full day at our house! Yet that necessitated several phone calls. Now that the kids are older and we've moved out of state, we never hear from her. Oh, what a relief it is!

~ Anne ~

Wow - I thought my DH's ex was bad but there's no way on earth I'd tolerate that. It probably should be on hubby to take her to task on it though. My DH refused to get in an argument with his ex over it so I felt I had no choice but to confront her but frankly I felt it was his responsibility. Did you say you tried to file a harassment suit? I think I certainly would have sought some kind of recourse for menacing behaviour. A woman with no class for sure.