Parenting step kids when with other parent

[TheFoz]

How does this work for others? Say if kids have stepped out of line, is the other parent contacted in order to help the parent that has the children deal with it?

Something fairly significant occurred last night with one of my step children and their mum contacted DH at 1am to get him to deal with it.

On one hand I feel like DH is the child’s father and so should be still involved in parenting no matter if he’s with his mum or not. But on the other hand I feel like this is how it is when you are split from your partner, you have to deal with things yourself.

How are things done with other families?

If it's something significant then you'd hope you be able to work through it as coparents.

When my husband's ex-wife was single, she would let him know immediately if something serious happened (ie one of the children got hurt). When it was something insignificant she'd usually just fill him in later on.

Often when the children wouldn't listen to her or were breaking rules, she'd call him to back her up on the consequences.

I much preferred this to when she later married a complete asshole and put him in the role of dad.

fyi, I wouldn't be happy about 'getting him to deal with it' as that implies she wanted to hand over the whole situation to him. Coparenting and showing the child that they're both on the same page is very different.

My partner has been rung before when his child hasn’t been listening to mum. This is because he respects dad more or is more “ scared” of my partner so usually by just seeing dads name on the phone means he will automatically stop doing what he is, this also means that it should show the child the mother/father are together in discipline and boundaries and have each other’s back so you can’t do something to one and not the other etc. as a step parent I say nothing and stay out of it

It depends on the situation.

There has been serious incidents I contacted my ex about immediately. The same with him. In the teen years that did at times involve middle of the night calls

Day to day stuff was dealt with by dh & I.

That’s the thing. She wanted DH to go to her house and collect the child and bring him to our house for the rest of the weekend.

It’s great that other people can co-parent, DH and his ex can’t.

What did he do?

Yes, it would be helpful to know his age and an idea of what happened. If he’s 5 and getting out of bed to eat chocolate, I’d have a very different view than if he’s 15 and carrying a knife.

I agree @MeridianB

I think sometimes ex’s just love to insert themselves into your lives on a regular basis. It’s often not even about the kids, it’s more whilst they have the attention of your partner, you do not.

You can 100% co-parent without calling up your ex everytime there is a problem!

Oh trust me, they had a lot of difficulty co-parenting and he was thrilled when the kids were older and he could deal with them directly.

Unless it was an extreme emergency, hell no to coming over at 1 am.

I won’t post what he did but suffice to say it’s closer to being 15 and carrying a knife.

There’s been a lot of behaviours in the last year or so, risk taking type stuff, much of it I would feel is normal teenage stuff, coming home past curfew, smoking, breaking grounding etc but this was a bit more extreme.

Unfortunately DH is a Disney dad and doesn’t seem to want to deal with it head one, he’s more the type to bury his head in the sand.

Then it sounds like she needed the other parents support to deal with a difficult situation. Doesn't sound unreasonable.

It certainly sounds like this was something worth the 1am phone call, shame if he's a Disney Dad but not much you can do about that either, try to disengage and let him get on with it.

Unfortunately DH is a Disney dad and doesn’t seem to want to deal with it head one, he’s more the type to bury his head in the sand
Which is perhaps why it has ended up as being a serious situation at the other home. It does sound like she was reasonable in her call given the incident being closer to a teen with a knife ...

Yup. He should stop trying to be his son’s friend and do the much harder and more important job of being his parent.

He could start by speed-reading ‘Raising Boys’ by Steve Biddulph which sets out the importance of responsible male role models in the life of a teenaged boy and how lack of structure will undermine their chances of normal social and emotional behaviour/growth.

Can you encourage him to help set him son up for a successful life by giving him the structure and boundaries he needs now?

If it was something significant that needed dealing with at 1am, then absolutely definitely his father (both parents) should be there as needed.

Then yes. He absolutely needed to go round there and deal with the situation. That is not a petty squabble, that is a serious crime.