blamed for poor behavior at school!
I know we have all been in this situation where we are blamed by step kids for poor behavior (right?! not just me?) is it possible that my SD truly needs fewer transitions (coming to our home) to allow her to control her choices? it has me thinking that maybe we try something new.
the current custody schedule has been this way for a year now. the ex wife changed custody a year ago to where we get thursday night after school to tuesday morning,, 1st, 3rd, 5th weekends. (we used to get every thursday but that transition was "too much" at the time and she acted out on our thursdays according to her mom).
so now she is saying this is too much. at this point, we are considering letting her change the schedule, so she can stop blaming me!
has anyone been in this situation, what did you end up doing?
Millions of children do these
Millions of children do these transitions all the time. They don't get a pass for bad behavior.
My ss14 currently transitions TWICE in the same week, every week. He's autistic and those guys have a devil of a time with transition. But this is truly no skin off his nose. He's fine with it. We do it in order to benefit him and, in fact, it does benefit him.
I would be suspicious the behavior problems are coming from mom. Sounds like she's getting the kid all het up. It may be as innocent as empathetic and encouraging remarks: "Try to have fun at dad's house," "I'm sorry you didn't get what I got, an intact home for childhood," "I know you feel stressed out by the divorce, I know you have a lot of anger." Kid picks up that mommy wants her to be upset and act out so she gets upset and acts out. Or it could be way more deliberate on BM's part.
Or the skid could just be a little hellion and I think the chances that seeing dad less would mitigate this hellionism are low. More likely to make it worse as kid misses dad and feels rejected or something.
Bottom line, if my autistic skid can do this transition 2 1/2 times as much as your sked, any kid should be able to do your sked. IMHO
Sometimes the kids worry
Sometimes the kids worry about what BM is doing when they aren't there. They are afraid that they are missing out on something.
Never abdicate control to the
Never abdicate control to the toxic blended family opposition for any reason. IMHO the only answer to BM's manipulations is to roll up the CO and smack the shit out of her with it if she so much as twitches out of compliance with the order.
She should not get to call the shots. DH needs to step up, put on his big boy panties, and kick some manipulative BM ass if she does not remain strictly in line. BM will always blame you, that is her MO. So, never let her step out of line and she can't blame anything new on you.
IMHO of course.