Unfortunately I won't be able to do much about the size of place I can afford for realistically a couple of years. Combination of not setting good boundaries on her using my savings to set up her career while we were together, the split of assets in the separation, and redundancy due to the pandemic, even affording the cheapest place available at the moment (which is what I've got) is an issue. We're both at fault here, she spent beyond ours means but didn't give me a fair picture of what was likely to be coming in, I abdicated responsibility for managing it better and setting limits on it, the situation is what it is now.
Eurgh, I don't think I can adequately explain the sweets thing without writing something that looks like it's making a mountain out of a molehill (and maybe it is, that's why I came here to ask, maybe just throwing it out here means I can put it to bed and decide not to bring it up - and you know what, if a whole bunch of people tell me that's the case then that's fine).
Our parenting styles are not that dissimilar TBH, if we both wrote a list of reasons why our marriage failed I don't think either of us would write anything to do with parenting/the children. I get your point about control, but I'm responsible for the children 3 days (2x 1.5) out of 7, the child in question has challenging behaviour (to the point where she's had sessions with a variety of specialists to examine it, but no one has identified a particular condition), and so if her expectations are set on one side, then if I don't give her the same then I have to deal with 1-2 hours meltdown. The thing is, she won't get bored of the sweets, the only way out of it will be to have a few weeks of meltdowns, once something is in her routine, it's in her routine - and one of the big causes of meltdowns is things that challenge her routine. We had to get creative with snacks to ensure she gets the right kind of nutrition every day. And she already gets sweets and (mostly natural) sugar anyway, at least a lollypop (or the world ends), marshmallow at the coffee shop, dark chocolate covered rice crackers, honey, jam (off the top of my head, there might be other things) - this is every day. If it seems like I'm overly sensitive here, we're both trained in nutritional health (different niches though) and the idea that having "sweets and treats" causes dysfunctional relationships with food into adult life, and we've had to put a lot of effort into getting the right diet that supports her being able to manage her own behaviour. It's not come up yet, but it would be entirely in character for her to see them in a supermarket and have a meltdown if I refused to buy them for her. Putting aside that her mum would never buy them for her in the first place, if it was her mum doing it, having a simple conversation about it wouldn't be an issue (her mum is more learned in that area than me, so I usually ask just to understand, then defer to her judgement - I realise the obvious question here is "well isn't this mum's judgement by proxy anyway?" - no, if the bf was asking before bringing something for the kids I'm 100% sure mum would say bring some playdoh or something arty, not food, for the reasons explained above).