Life at our house for the kids is full of routines. There will be fruit at breakfast. The kids are required to make their beds and pick up their rooms every day. There are bedtimes. There is also mandatory time to call their mom on the phone. After dinner we always make the kids stop whatever they're doing, we dial their mom's number, and we put the phone in their hands. "I don't feel like talking!" is never acceptable and they get on the phone with her whether they like it or not. We don't make them stay on the phone, but they get on the phone. There's no drama when they're here. Stella barely ever has to text my boyfriend other than to schedule exchanges or get updates from doctor's appointments, and things are so...peaceful.
The only non-peaceful thing about the times when the kids are with us is worrying about what hell Stella is going to try and start because of my parenting. Because of Stella's lack of parenting, and her letting Skeezer do all of it in the past, a judge actually had to issue a court order banning anyone other than Stella from punishing the kids while in her care, and the judge also had to mandate that no corporal punishment be used in her house. Yeah, she's great. She's so great, in fact, that she let her boyfriend administer hot sauce to her 5 year old's tongue, and we believe that he also put it in the child's eyes, as a punishment on a few occasions. The children told my boyfriend and me about that months later, which is why we had to get a judge to issue those orders to Stella.
When the kids have bad attitudes with me, they get a warning, a chance to fix their mindsets, and then if they don't shape up immediately, they get a time-out in which to shape-up. No screaming, no spanking, no hot sauce, no soap, no nothing. Just a time-out. My boyfriend parents them the exact same way. In fact, when we got together and later when he introduced me to the kids and I started watching them on school vacations, our parenting styles were something we had a brief conversation about and then didn't find the need to discuss again. Why? Because we think the exact same way when it comes to appropriate behaviors from the children and appropriate punishments. We have the same outlook on the kids' diet, on bedtimes, on the importance of encouraging a relationship with their mother, on treating others with respect. We believe in the same boundaries and the same ways of teaching them to respect us and others.
However, with everything we do, and more specifically, everything I do, there's always that shadow of the kids' mom hanging over my head. What are they telling her about me? What is she going to try and take me to court for? Is she going to decide to accuse me of child abuse in retaliation for her boyfriend being accused and investigated by Child Protective Services? What kinds of problems is she going to cause for me because I'm involved in the children's lives?
This past summer while the kids were with Guy and me at our house for their portion of the summer break with their dad, it came to light one night that Stella's boyfriend Skeezer had decided to punish Johnny on at least two occasions by putting Sriracha Chili Sauce in his EYES. After the kids told us what had happened, we spent the next five days gently prodding the kids for more information, then when we were convinced that the punishment had actually been administered, and that getting it in Johnny's eyes was not a one-time accident, we took the kids to a therapist to see if they'd tell her the same thing they told us. They did. Guy called CPS and started an investigation. The same day that Stella was supposedly contacted by CPS, she also decided to go to the court and take out a restraining order against me and listed the kids on it. When one goes to get a restraining order, no proof is required. The only proof they have to supply at the time of request is an incident or two, according to their own recollection, where another person threatened or harassed the person seeking the protective order. Stella decided to accuse me of impersonating the children's parent and threatening a co-worker if I wasn't supplied a camp record for a camp she had signed Marsha up for at her work, as well as accuse me of having been hostile to her at a parenting time exchange a week earlier (what had really happened was that she had started approaching our car at the exchange, she has a protective order against Guy right now that was also granted to her based on similar lies, not wanting her to create a scene with Guy and be able to accuse him of violating his order, I put up my hand to her to signal "stop" and told her that we'd be over to her in a moment. She took that as my being hostile to her in front of the children). She put the children on the initial petition for the order, but she didn't realize that they never made it from the petition to the actual order and that the judge had simply issued a "stay away" and no-contact order between the two of us. Two weeks after it was issued I was able to get it dropped by requesting a hearing and proving that I had not done the things she was accusing me of. Still, though, that was my very first time having to go to court to defend myself, and although Stella came out looking like a vindictive lying bitch, I would still rather not put myself at risk of having to repeat that experience.
I try and parent the kids without thinking about their messed-up, awful mother, but sometimes it's really hard. It hurts when Marsha and Johnny will.not.shut.up. about "One time..at Mommy's...she let us do this-and-that-and-see-whatever-and-stay-up-until-really-late..." and when they go off on tangents comparing things at our house to her house. Her house has no structure and Marsha is considered an equal party in making decisions. Not appropriate. Ten-year-olds should not get a say in making household decisions such as where/when to see their father, whether or not to talk to Guy on the phone, bedtimes, diet, etc. Yet in Stella's house, it's Marsha who gets to make a lot of the rules. It also stings when the kids are getting punished and they scream, "I WANT MY MOTHER!!!! I WANT TO GO TO MOMMY'S!!!" But of course, they know it hurts, and that's why they scream it at me. Later, they usually apologize for lashing out, but it still sucks.
I can't worry about what Stella is going to do to me or what the kids are going to report back to her about, every second of my day. The best I can do is be a good parent. Forget about Stella, make my own rules with Guy, and parent those kids the way they're supposed to be parented. If she wants to drag me back into court, fine. I say bring it on, because I've done nothing wrong, I cover every inch of my butt with evidence to back up everything I do, and I'm not afraid. Stressed at the prospect, yes, but not afraid.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete