To have had enough of ex-wife's quack b**s***

[stoat]

So partners little boy comes to stay with us every other weekend and it is great. No probs with that. But control freak ex-wife (actually still wife, they are not divorced yet.... long story) is an "allergy therapist" and every time he comes there is some new friggin food he can't have. It changes every few weeks coz she "tests" him by bending his arm. Load of rubbish in my opinion but I tolerate it but now I am sick of it all interfering in our lives. Latest thing tonight is that he can't "run around" tomorrow as he has "had a treatment" that needs to "settle". So no tennis for us as planned.

My partner has children....clarify "step-parent" to me...

Thats a tricky one, legally I beleive its when you marry their dad.

Although for me it can happen a long time before that or a long time after. Its the moment you realise that the love you have for your partner extends to their child as well. And when she cries it hurts you like when your own child cries.
When she has a tamtrum and says 'I hate you!' your heart breaks in to 1000 pieces.
You start worrying about saving for their university as well as your own child's.
You feel proud when they get a good school report. You cancel your night out because she has a tummyache... umm thats the gist of it anyway!

Jesus, I thought I'd heard it all then my mind gets blown by arm bending to test for allergies.

What does your DH think of this? Has he suggested that she take the kid to a Dr for tests to be run?

I actually think that using quack bullshit on kids is more abusive than the crying baby scenario posted in _chat.

But the OP hasn't said she does any of that and it doesn't sound like the OP's son's mum doesn't care...at all.

As a woman with two children who sends them to her ex and his involved partner, I would say that rules like this should probably be nodded and smiled at and never ever let it show that they bother you remotely.

As a woman whose boyfriend has two children, who we see every other weekend, I wouold say that while the rules should be stuck to by YOU as a concession to their parental status, the father is under no obligation whatsoever to abide by 'food rules' unless not doing so results in actual measurable illness or reported pain or discomfort from the child.

As a person who detests this kind of "Look at me look at me, I'm SUCH a good parent I've found all MANNER of things wrong with my children that you haven't bothered to find out about yours!" attention seeking behavior, I would advise that while you cannot change the way the mother treats the child, you can arm the child with the biologically proven facts about the way the immune and histological system works to make a CHOICE of whether to stop listening to his attention seeking mother.

coldtits - IMO encouraging an 8 year old to question his mother and stop listening to her is a fairly dangerous route to take...for all involved.

My first thought was: oh fgs, what a crank.
But, if you turn this one around and write from the ex-wife's point of view: "I'm trying to isolate foodstuffs that my child may be intolerant to but when he goes to his dad's house, they ignore it" then we'd all be shouting "YANBU. How dare they?"

Dont know if she does or not, I was just responding to the people who said that step mothers have no rights and the birth mother is always right even if she's nuts.
I thought those posts moved away from the OP a bit and so my opinions were more to do with those statements than in direct relation to the OP.

Having a child 4 days a week and having a child every other weekend are two very different scenarios, and no I don't believe step-parents have any "rights" over their partners children, unless the partner is the resident parent and the biological parent is clearly and certifiably unfit/incapable of caring for their own child.

In this case its a matter of opinion not a diagnosed mental health issue.

Who here has a partner with an ex who hasn't at some point described her as a "nutter" or a "pyscho". Much easier to dismiss someones opinion and insult them than think it through and put yourself in that persons shoes.

Whoever here has an ex they have children with and thinks they haven't been described as a nutter? I am not naive enough to think thats not the case. I remember once dating a guy and saying to a good friend "oh yea, he says his ex is a complete psycho" and my friend said "my dear, ALL ex's are psycho's, don't ever for one minute think you aren't one yourself".

Coldtits, I agree.
Ladyanon, Its the way its done thats important. No you cant encourage a child o question his mum but you can educate him in facts. Arming kids with a good education cant hurt.

clam; good point about points of view. Although, if someone came on here and said 'AIBU to arm bend and give my kid who is healthy and well a different set of foods each week that he cant eat..?' I think we'd all scream YABU!!!!

The thing about "alternative" therapies is that most of them are neither proved nor disproved, so how can you arm a child with "the facts".

The same could be said of religion?

Haha yes, I have to keep a real check on my own 'psycho' behaviour! But I do, because I respect my daughters step mum.

My partner has never descibed his ex as psycho though.. gold digging, lazy, bigoted, racist and homophobic maybe... but ive known her for 3 years and all of that is based on pure proven facts!

You can teach about healthy eating and so forth so that if/ when (as I predict would happen) the mother gets over this and moves on to a new fad, the child has not missed out on the 'normal' health & eating training that he needs to learn.

Making the assumption that his mum is too busy with the faddy stuff to be teaching that as well - that assuption could be wrong. But It wouldnt hurt to both teach him.

Re religion; if you had a non religious couple who got divorced. One married a Muslim and one married a Christian. I think the child should be taught about both religions. There is no proof that either are right no, but there is background information/ history etc the is factual that the child could be told about.

There is factual info about food that this little one could be taught about too.

Insisting a child proves or disproves 'alternative' therapies is not what I said. As you implied yourself, there ARE no facts in these cases.

however, the body's immune system works in a certain way, and that is a fact. Certain food intolerances will appear. that is a fact. A food intolerance to chocolate that only reared it's head just before Easter, when no intolerance to chocolate had ever been observed in 8 years - NOT a fact if it has not been medically diagnoses by a properly conducted scientific unbiased test.

And as for never questioning their mother - if my children, at aged eight, did not have the debating tools to question me, I would feel I had let them down. Children SHOULD question 'mother'. they should question everything. Questioning is how we learn. Blindly accepting just because a bigger person says so is how we end up with situations like Guatanamo Bay.

coldtits - I agree completely. Of course children should be able to question their parents. It's not about respect/disrespect, it's about learning to think for yourself and be able to make decisions which affect you without having to go to an 'authority' figure at every opportunity.

Of course, at 8, this boy is probably only just embarking on that, but, Ladyanon, I would consider it far more dangerous for a child to accept as fact or gospel everything which one parent says without learning to judge whether it is fact or just opinion.

As I said before, I have been the child in a similar situation, and my lack of ability to judge what was fact and what was my mother indoctrinating me with ehr own personal beliefs caused me to waste a lot of money and time on supposed healthcare which did me no good at all.

Testing food intolerances is one thing, but this does not sound like what that is. This sounds like a long term pattern of dietary exclusions on a temporary basis. My mum did this, and the point of it wasn't to find a specific allergy. The point was, apparently, for the rest of your life to test yourself every month/week/day and see what foods were in or out for that period of time. Even my mum gave up on that one in the end.

Hey everyone, thanks for the posts. It has been really useful to get a WIDE ranging set of opinions and has made me re-think the situation. So!

DP's son has the good and bad foods list for a runny nose. I admit I know NOTHING about arm-bending but a runny nose doesn't figure high up on my list of things to be really worried about. It started off being the usual stuff e.g wheat, dairy etc but now it seems to change and sometimes he can have butter but not milk (aren't they the same). I have tried to understand and I do realise that lots of people get a lot of help from arm-bending but ON A PURELY SELFISH level (and don't flame me for this coz I know it is stupid) I just find it frustrating that one week I will prepare some yummy HEALTHY food like a roast chicken and I will get told that it is a bad food. DP does help with the cooking but who wants to eat spelt pasta every weekend.....

DP and me have a baby together and all that is cool. The 4 of us have great weekends and I really can't stress how much I love the little boy and respect his mum for being his mum. Your posts have helped me see that I need to continue with that respect for her wishes.

But some other context - NO TV (DP lets him watch Strictly but we were asked to "rearrange our weekend schedule" as the little boy couldn't filter Craig R-H's negative comments). DP just ingnored her. We have both chatted about the problems of different lives at different houses for little biy but also how we need to run our own life our way.

BTW Ex-wife walked out on DP and took little boy. She has so far made the divorce slow as "it seems to soon"...... (2.5 years ago). I suppose personally I just want feel a bit more secure - that's what it all comes down to.

Bit garbled as am currently COOKING tea - tonight it's fish cakes and lots of veg and am hoping that will be OK. We do have a bit of a guilty pleasure of trifle that little boy knows is naughty but he wolfs it down.

Thanks again ladies.

Many so called allegy testing methods, including kinesology (sp?) have now been shown to be inaccurate.

Few people have a real allergy to food items, and the only method of testing so far shown to be accurate is the NHS method of skin tests. This method accurately showed my nephew's severe allergies to nuts of many types (some people can be allergic to peanuts only), and also my mother's allergy to strawberries.

Many people develop food intolerances (not the same thing as an allergy) and often on a temporary basis.

Cutting out different foods groups, especially for children, can actually LEAD to health problems, if not monitored by a properly qualified nutritionist or dietician.

It is quite wrong for posters to tell the OP to step away because she isn't a parent. As a stepmother, she will have/share responsibilities such as shopping and catering for her family and that will be hugely complicated if her DSS' diet means she must exclude certain items - and it is much worse if those items change every time he comes to stay.

You are just going to have to go with it. Don't make huge plans for when you have a DSC to stay, but respect the wishes of the mother.
Or get out of the relationship right now.
And, God forbid, what if DSC did have an allergy attack on your watch. You would never forgive yourself.

You can roll your eyes at DP secretly when these requests are made, but seriously, go with it. It's only once every fourteen days.

'butter but not milk (aren't they the same).'

Butter is fat, without milk protein or lactose. Milk has both milk protein and lactose.

Going off certain foods temporarily to see if symptoms improve is one way to determine if an allergy or intolerance exists. It's not the same thing as cutting out food groups indefinitely or some sort of fad diet. In the case of nasal symptoms, dairy is often the culprit. As long as adequate calcium is available from another source, cutting out dairy, for instance, does not necessarily lead to problems. My DCs have been dairy free all their lives. The runny noses (and accompanying post-nasal drip, coughing, stuffed noses at bedtime and wakefulness during the night) are not a problem.

There are lots and lots of posts on the Allergies Topic wrt food allergies and therapies, methods of investigation, remedies, etc. A common theme is the frustration of a lot of parents whose doctors seem to know very little about food allergies. The science is still a developing one, it seems, with lots of grey areas, and what works for one child might not work for another.

As far as the TV goes, having been in the position of the mum who was told by one DD's friend that her DD wasn't allowed to watch TV while she was playing with mine, in my house, where my other DCs were happily watching whatever was on, I have to sympathise with you on the TV issue. Here I would say, your house, your rules. But in the case of the allergy thing, ask the ex for some reading material, spend a bit of time on the Allergy Topic here, and also ask the ex for a bit of advance warning (a few days at least) on what's on and what's off so you can plan food for the two days out of fourteen, as NonnoMum says, that the child is with you.

Or just ask the crystals. For they are wise, and know many secrets.

Not very funny, really. I have exILs who 'didn't believe' in food allergies, asthma, or the need for asthma medication. exFIL was a surgeon, and as far as he was concerned, if your problem didn't involve something that could be surgically removed, then you didn't have a problem. He also thought psychiatrists were quacks.

That's true. Those two examples - not believing in arm-bending as a diagnostic tool for allergy, and not believing in the existence of allergy - are the same. Very good rebuttal. Elegant.