Shaking my head.... must get this off my chest. So recently, we had some issues with SS11. He was being difficult and was not doing as he was told. Don't know what changed over the past month to trigger this but DH and I had pretty much squashed this behavior almost a year ago. In fact, any recent bad behavior has been directed at BM on the EOWE at her house so much so that she has had to call DH to ask if DH could talk to SS11 about listening and doing as he was told. As an FYI - she admits that her own skids are openly disrespectful to The Wallet (her husband - SS11's SF) and "they get away with murder" yet she expects SS11 to behave differently :? . She and The Wallet do the separate parenting thing. He "parents" his own skids (3 of them, full time) and BM "parents" SS11 EOWE.. He's a classic guilty dad hence my nickname for him but he has his kids full time. Only one of the three sees the mother and not very often. She also has said that she can see how SS11 thinks it is unfair to be held to one set of standards while the other skids are not YET nothing has changed in the 2 years that she and The Wallet have been living together.

Ok, so SS11 was really disrespectful to me recently and I put my foot down as I always do. Privileges revoked and I pretty much told him why I was so upset. We let BM know about what had happened and the punishment etc. At first, she seemed supportive as she appears to have been for the last several months but then she showed her true self. She called DH to complain about me. That I was "mean" because I wouldn't accept any more apologies from SS11. SS11 lies alot and not long before this episode, he insisted on writing me an apology when I made it clear that all I really wanted was for him to just behave, do as he is told. In my world, actions speak louder than words, especially louder than words that are frequently dishonest and not genuine. For this, I was called mean because how dare I not allow her "precious" to apologize? She totally missed the point that the behavior has been pretty bad and that I was well beyond apologies.

DH talked to her about SS11's grades and his bad attitude towards school or rather, doing anything above the minimum to improve on his weaknesses - reading, writing, math. Her response? "Well we weren't great students either" which is a total lie as both of them did well throughout their school lives including college. DH defended me and our handling of the situation with SS11 and even tried to get to the bottom of it by pointing out that SS11 was also being badly behaved at her house. She totally lied and said that, "He behaves very well and does what he is told". :jawdrop: Unbelievable....

It seems to me that she hasn't changed one bit and that all this time of "faux cooperation" has been just that, fake. At the end of the day, she has an excuse for everything, from his unacceptable behavior to failing grades, her response is similar to, "Well, he's just an 11 year old boy". I was so disappointed because I really thought that after all this time, all the ups and down, that she was finally on the same page as us.

As my father likes to say, leopards don't change their spots. How true....