NYS if that matters.

I have placement of my son. We get subsidy for daycare which is a godsend. It goes off of my work schedule since my son lives with me. He is enrolled full time and has been for about 10 months now.

My ex got ordered to pay support 💲 the other day and is throwing a massive tantrum. He's reduced his work hours to part time despite the support judge telling him he should persue full time work to pay support. She based his payments off of full time work and he's been in a rage for days.

He told me that he will no longer be sending out son to daycare on his parenting time bc he only works part time and he doesn't need it. I'm the only one who needs it. If he does this, my son will lose his spot in daycare and that would be devastating for us both. He's in the best daycare in the area, he's very happy and thriving here, he's very attached to his teachers and often talks about loving his friends from school. He struggles immensely with changes to his routine.

He told me that he will be contacting my subsidy caseworker and letting her know he's only working 24hrs a week and can now provide childcare so I'll lose the subsidy. I will lose my job and there's absolutely no way I can afford to pay the $1,400/mo for daycare.

Can he just decide to stop sending our son on his time? I feel like that's something that would fall under joint decision making bc it's a huge part of my son's life.

So I am a stepmother to two children and also pregnant. The oldest has no issue sleeping in her own bed, the youngest (8) refuses to sleep in his own bed. For context his mother lives with her mother and they share a room and bed, he is very clingy and has a lot of attachment problems. I understand sleeping alone can be scary for children but how do me and dad ween him from that? Because I’m expecting we need to have him able to sleep by himself when baby comes along, he will be 9 by then. Often times his dad falls asleep in his room with him which wasn’t too much of a problem however I’m going to need his help with the baby throughout the night when she comes and having a 9 year old in bed with us plus a baby on the bedside is just too much.

It’s also caused arguments between me and dad because he often falls asleep and the child will stay up all night watching tv. I’ve walked in the bedroom to dad dead asleep and my stepson watching YouTube at 5 am and admitted to not sleeping at all that night, which often comes with behavioral issues if he stays up too long and isn’t well rested.

Because his mom isn’t able to do the same at her house we end up looking like the bad guys, but I’m pregnant and tired of waking up to elbows in my face. We’ve had conversations with him but he is very stubborn and calls us bad parents when we bring the situation up. Any suggestions or anyone going through the same?

New partner thinks this is a red flag on my part. New partner has never been a parent.
Situation:
Baby's (2years) father's birthday party and we're invited tomorrow (new partner is not here to attend and was not invited personally)
Today baby's father cried at drop off saying he was having dreams about us. He didnt say anything else and left in tears.
Im still going to attend his birthday tomorrow because I think birthdays are important and my son should attend his father's birthday.
New partner thinks I shouldnt attend
What do you guys think?

She wants to spend holidays together as a family with our child. This woman left me last year broke my heart and now is coming around more. I’m not sure if I’m ready to do this as I still love her, she’s the love of my life. Anyone ever experienced this and have any advice for this hopeless romantic??

How do you guys deal with potty training with an ex who refuses to participate?

I stayed home with my daughter my entire parenting time. She was basically 80% potty trained by the end of my time with her. At this point was only having max 1 accident per day if that.

I texted my ex to let them know and explicitly said please no diapers except at bedtime.

My ex agreed and said yes of course I will continue the potty training!

Well it’s day one at my exes house and there’s multiple social media posts of my daughter in a diaper….

I am so frustrated. Our daughter is almost 3 and is showing all signs of being ready.

I 26f and my "ex" 28m have been seeing each other again the last few months. I say ex for times sake but we dated for maybe 2 months at the beginning of the year. He decided he wasnt ready for a relationship, i was mad at first, but we chose to see each other physically a few months back. Long story short, pretty sure im pregnant. I dont think he will have an ugly reaction, i actually think well end up just deciding to be together (considering now roles have switched on the "i dont want a relationship right now" topic). Outside of doing the do, i didnt want anything more until the last few weeks, but hes been doing a lot of extra stuff and saying more things to start the conversation of getting back together. Now, boom, a baby. Im not super worried about us as coparents but i want to be prepared for anything and get advice for ground rules anyone in a similar situation has set or wishes they wouldve set. Whether we were to live together and just coparent the first few years, try being together, or totally separate coparenting w a newborn, etc. Im not sure what to expect because, as life usually goes, this wasnt how i imagined or planned it. I thought id be married or at least in a long term relationship when i had a child, so this is kind of a shock to me and will be to everyone who knows me. Were both fairly responsible people so this is a wild plot twist. I just want to be sure ive thought of as much as possible once we sit down and talk about it and figured people whove been through this have a better idea of what issues arise in coparenting than i do. I appreciate yalls help in advance!

Dad has 4 nights of visitation per month, and doesn’t have any form of custody/responsibility of our son. It’s happened probably a dozen times, but dad will ask if I have x-items (medications, homework that got left at the wrong house, etc.) and ask if I can bring it to him in the middle of an empty parking lot almost 10 miles from where I live. I try to meet there if I’m able to cause I don’t really care, but the majority of the time I’m working so I say “I’ll be at work but I’m near his school/your work/mutual locations, and you can grab [items] from me there.” And EVERY single time, Dad completely loses it and says “I will never under any circumstances meet you anywhere except this parking lot. Never ask me to break our court orders again, I’m never going to agree to what you say and I’m never going to meet you anywhere else, etc.”

Our court orders say nothing about this and we now have a middle schooler that has to walk this awkward hostage standoff every time we exchange him or meet for anything.

Has anyone else gone through something like this? I’m so stuck. I tell him it’s not really fair for our kid to go without the items he’s asking for just because he insists on this one meeting place across town from me but I’m really just at a loss at this point.

Has anyone ever woken up one day and seen your ex for exactly who she is and been completely disgusted? It happened to me recently and I used to have this vision of her that was very mature, intelligent and absolutely gorgeous and ultimately I realized that she’s none of those things. She’s just gross snd I’d literally never touch her if the opportunity presented itself. Especially after the last year of her being ‘popular’ at her various small town ER jobs. For context she’s 33.. going on 13. It seemed odd that she got right back in birth control the day we broke up..but she’s been ‘faithful’ riiiight.. I think the better question is who aren’t you or haven’t you slept with and that must be why she’s too busy to allow me to see my son but I’m happy that her needs are getting met, good for her, such an amazing woman. Those DM’s must be a lot to keep up
With but her insecure ego can’t get enough.

I’m dad, and I have an 8 year old daughter I won full custody of (physical) and we share legal custody.

Ever since we split around 6 years ago, her mother has always been extremely over loving to our daughter to the point that it truly feels manipulative, and an attempt to make our daughter think about her 24/7 while here.

Our daughters grandma (mom’s mom), has also been that way, and they try to control many aspects of her life, and put down/not support the things that happen at my house, and nothing here is exciting or supported.

Our daughter clearly picks up on this which leads me concern for emotional issues. Recently, without any discussion with me, grandma started sending very mushy letters to her “can we go shopping? Yes/no” and numerous questions like that about planning fun events there, going over the top about how much she misses and loves her and “think about you all day every day”, etc.

Now, mom is going to start mailing letters of similar nature as well, again, without any discussion with me. They do live about 3 hours away in a different state.

1. Should I be upset that mom didn’t communicate this plan with me about the letters/mail correspondence? They do have scheduled FaceTime calls.

2. Am I wrong for wanting to open and ensure the mail is not too manipulative or emotionally damaging?

It’s all new to me, and with the history of manipulating (part of the reason for full physical was alienation), I really don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong.

I genuinely want to hear other people’s perspectives because I feel like I’m losing my mind.

I have primary custody of my two children, ages 2 and 3. Their father has visitation every third weekend. Our divorce decree, which he agreed to, states that if he moves outside the designated area, he loses overnight visitation.

Knowing this, he voluntarily chose to move over an hour away to live with a girlfriend and her children. At the time, he’d known her for approximately TWO WEEKS.Because of that decision, his visitation changed to Saturdays, 9 a.m.–6 p.m., every third weekend. No overnights.

Despite this, I’ve tried accommodating him with additional time, hotels, and Airbnbs. But it’s not working. The children have fun with him, but they come home extremely dysregulated. Hitting, fighting, tantrums, sleep issues, etc. It lasts for DAYS, and I’ve documented a consistent pattern. don’t believe he’s intentionally doing anything wrong during visits. I believe the instability and transitions are difficult for two toddlers.

Recently, they got sick after visiting him. Obviously, sickness happens. But it brought up an even bigger frustration. Who handles the appointments, sleepless nights, medications, and everything else? Me and my fiancé. Their dad gets to return to the life he chose while I’m responsible for everything that comes afterward. I ended up reaching out to his girlfriend. Not my smartest move, I know. But I genuinely couldn’t believe another mother would support a man voluntarily reducing his time with his own children to live with her. Turns out, she knows and fully supports his decision.

They’ve been together around four months, and she’s already referring to parenting my children as “we,” “us,” and “team,” talking about how much they love the girls despite never having met them. Her responses also sounded completely AI-generated.

Ultimately, they’re both comfortable with him being a weekend parent. He considers himself a present, involved father and doesn’t believe he’s done anything wrong. When I asked about accountability for voluntarily choosing less time with his children, their response was essentially, “The choice was made. How do we move forward?”

But why am I expected to accommodate a decision that HE made at the expense of his relationship with his children? I understand some parents have limited visitation due to circumstances outside their control. But this wasn’t one of those situations. He had the opportunity to be more involved and willingly chose less.

And now I’m expected to make his life easier, deal with the emotional aftermath of his visits, and support their plans to eventually become a blended family. Am I wrong for thinking that being a good dad requires more than exercising the bare minimum visitation? Because I genuinely believe my children deserve better than a father who’s content seeing them twice a month when he could have chosen differently.

I really want unbiased perspectives. Am I expecting too much, or has the bar for being a present parent gotten this low?

My daughter's father and I have been co-parenting since our daughter was 3 years old. She's now 17 - senior year of high school. Sadly, my ex and his girlfriend of nearly 7 years are breaking up. They own a house together and have seemed to be really great partners with a great life. I'm sad because their relationship has been a positive overall on coparenting and I've been relieved to have things been stable for a nice long stretch. I'm uneasy with the idea of pretending. They've decided to not tell my daughter and to pretend that they're still together. (My ex's girlfriend sleeps elsewhere when my daughter's not there). This arrangement—for a year?! This is because they don't want to disrupt things until my daughter goes off to college - next Sept. I will respect their wishes and of course not say anything to my daughter, but it's so stressful.

My question for this community is, what should I be concerned about now and in the future in terms of taking care of my wellbeing and also looking out for my daughter, now and in a year when she heads off to college? And what might this mean for my daughter's relationship with her stepmom (which is positive and good) when they split up?

Have any of you navigated this and what worked/didn't and what do you wish you'd known?

Just wondering if in other coparenting dynamics, did the oldest sibling start driving themselves and younger siblings between houses once they started driving?

I guess I can see the logistical side of it but I am just not comfortable with them having siblings in car with them just yet. I figured oldest would get himself back and forth but I didn’t expect CP to send him to get his sibling today. I checked in the orders and it does say an adult must pick up. I really don’t like CP got kid a sports car and he just got license literally 2 hours ago, so it seems very premature to me. Like let me get use to him driving first then maybe passengers. I don’t know? What did you do?

Went years with no issues, suddenly this school year it’s a whole weird to do.

Kids are 11 and 13. We go week on, week off with a swap on Tuesday after school. It works, requires almost no deviations, rarely conflicts with school so we don’t have to see one another, weekend plans can take up Friday or Monday for a holiday, etc.

*Except* we have a Thursday night “mid week” dinner visit from 5:00 to 8:00 that dad’s camp will not discontinue despite it being a huge waste of time, conflicts with sports majority of the year, and our kids hate doing.

It worked fine when they were little and had nothing going on. It also worked the last couple years of middle school with him taking them to things, and me taking them to things instead of getting that time for “dinner.” A true non issue.

This school year he’s decided it’s not working taking them to their activities and has elected to request to reschedule his time and encroach on weekends every single week.

Doing it back just feels petty and dumb, and I don’t care to annoy my kids. We follow our order pretty religiously, it allows for us to request reasonable rescheduling if there’s conflict. I’m not really pals with the guy, or his wife, but I feel like I should say something or ask what gives. Not sure how to word it.

Has anyone been able to get a change for something like this without any major circumstantial changes - not looking for legal advice but is this a modification type of thing? Or maybe any creative solutions for dealing with it? The kids have asked to do away with it and he was infuriated by the notion - the suggestion to do away with it came after multiple weeks of requests for new days. I agree with the kids. It’s only three hours. A good phone call would do imo.

Any advice or ideas are welcome.

My daughters dad is inconsistent. We finally got a custody agreement last month and he didn’t even bother to show up to court. After receiving it he was extremely mad. He hasn’t followed by it at all. His inconsistency shows up in my daughters behavior sometimes. For example, he texts her iPad sometimes and this time he sent a boo basket. She got upset and it lead to a tantrum. She is working in therapy through it. Should I block him from her iPad? We don’t have anything in our custody agreement about communication outside of parenting time.

My daughter is doing really well with transitioning between houses. I’m thrilled about that! We do 50/50 and I’m struggling myself with the transition between Mom and single woman. Do you have any habits or routines that help you reset from one to the other? When she first leaves for Dad’s, I feel so empty and lost. When I first get her back, I feel like I’m out of sync with how to Mom and awkward. Never felt like this before. I was just Mom all the time and didn’t switch on and off. Any advice?

I’m looking for a specific book that would work for me and my son’s dad.
My son is 3 months old and currently lives with his dad. I see him through supervised contact at a contact centre.
I’d love to find a book that we could both write in, where I can record what happened during my contact sessions and his dad can write updates about our son’s life, such as his development, milestones, health and routine.
Ideally, I’d like something designed specifically for separated parents or supervised contact, rather than just a regular notebook.
Has anyone used a book like this or got any recommendations? I’d really appreciate suggestions! ❤️

Anyone deal w a coparent who just won’t respond. His weekends are Thursday- Sunday. If school is closed on Monday he refuses to communicate return time. Order isn’t specific so it seems we should agree. Anyone else?

I am in htx relocating to CA. I have a toddler that will be 2 in Dec. We are trying to come up with a parental agreement on our own but I am proposing a gradual increase as he grows rather than the 42 days they require for the summer plus spring break and holidays. If both parents agree how likely is it to get rejected?

Co-parenting question.

I have 2 kids (4&6 boys) from a past relationship, relationship wasn’t good and co-parenting has been rough. I’m the part time parent and they live a state away so I only get to see them maybe once a month.

My boyfriend of 1 1/2 years, he had me quit my job to stay at home to focus on baking and spend more time with him as well so he got me a car and credit card. He is everything I could ask for, he’s perfect, saying he also wants to propose this year and is booking an engagement photographer.

The thing is, every single time I bring up my kids he gets quiet or says nothing, everytime I buy something for them he has this look, everytime I have them over to visit he is extremely distant and barely talks to me, he even gets upset when I accidentally fall asleep with them watching movies and wakes me up to go sleep in the bed with him.

I have talked to him how this bothers me and I want the kids and him to have a good relationship. He says he just has nothing to say, he isn’t good with kids, he is overwhelmed, he doesn’t want to invest in a relationship with them to be told he isn’t their dad.

I keep hoping it’ll change and it doesn’t. What can I do? I feel like I’m picking between what feels like the love of my life, best friend and my kids

Little backstory we live in Missouri and we had our daughter in 2018 I was 16 he was 18. He was never taking care of her or providing. Wouldn’t get a job, or drive. So I spilt. After that he was in and out and his mother basically did everything as in driving to get her and asking to see her. He asked sometimes but it was mostly his mother. I had moved an hour away to better ourselves and since then he has went no contact because I “moved so far” I have offered park days to which he denied. I still kept in contact with his mother and did FaceTimes and updated pics over the years but I have recently stopped responding to the texts because as much as I appreciate it, her father should want to do these things as much as her. Now it has been three years with no contact from him, the last date he heart reacted a picture of her on her birthday in 2023. Recently his 18 year old girl friend texted me asking if it was possible to get spilt custody. Mind you he’s almost 30 and still living in the basement of his mother’s house. She is 8 years old and has been with me 98% of her life and even goes to school here. We have conversations about him together that are not Ill. I have never talked ill about him to her ever. She tells me she doesn’t want to go over there, and before that she said “I know the face but not the name” to a picture of him. Do I let her go over there even though she’s uncomfortable? Do I just go to court? Any advice is so appreciated especially if you’ve had a similar experience! TIA

hello, 21 year old mom here, and i have a 3 year old.

i’ve got a bit of a complicated issue, me and my boyfriend split up a few months ago but are still living together. my issue with him is i feel like he prioritizes his hobbies and gaming over parenting. from the day our daughter was born, i have been the main parent for everything. im worried about how his parenting will be if i move out. i schedule every appointment, i do all of the cleaning, all of the mental gymnastics of everything, while my ex boyfriend sits on his playstation 24/7.

he works 6am-2pm, and i work 4pm-11pm. our daughter wakes up at 7:30 everyday. i am awake from this 7:30, from anywhere to 1-3am every night, and also wake up with our daughter hourly every single night. this has taken such a huge toll on my body and i feel so sleep deprived 100% of the time because of it.

the worst part about this schedule is i have always had a strict routine with myself when it comes to leisure or hobbies, and i will wait until naps/bedtime to work on my hobbies. i’m a musician, so sometimes i need to have some alone time during the day to properly record my music without distractions. nap time is only an hour, which means before work i only get a single hour of leisure time. after work i shower, make dinner for myself, clean up the house, and finally can get in bed and hope and pray im winded down enough to sleep. (which is extremely hard knowing your kid is about to wake up every hour on the hour.)

me and my ex have the same work schedule, and on our days off i try to sleep in because i don’t get to bed until pretty late. anytime i sleep in, im shamed by my ex for sleeping in so late (11am) because “im a grown adult and should have better habits” to quote him. this is frustrating to hear because every other day of the week i am giving my 100% to our daughter. we go on walks, color, play monsters in her tent, read, everything you should do with toddlers. i dont know if i have ever seen my ex boyfriend do this with her. i have NEVER once seen him INITIATE play time with her. she either has to cry for it, or i have to yell at him for it. (which is also used against me!)

the part that really bothers me the most out of everything is how little interaction there is between my daughter an ex due to the games. from the second he gets home, he is playing his playstation until bed. doesn’t even change out of his work clothes. plays right on our living room tv where our daughters toys are at, with both headphones on. i would say he gets about 7-9 hours of game time PER DAY. he claims he doesn’t wear headphones while im at work but i find that hard to believe considering his lies about other unrelated stuff.

i would like to add that im a big gamer too, i love gaming but since my daughter was born is has been so much harder to balance my hobbies. some months i literally dont have the time to do anything fun AT ALL, and if i do get some fun time,
(while he is also gaming mind you!) im still “on call” for our daughter and have to tend to her even if hes closer, because he plays games that cannot pause.

this bothers me so much is because i get basically ZERO time to myself because of being the “on call” parent. yeah i scroll every so often like every other person on this planet, but it has been years since i have had the time to sit down for over an hour to myself. like i said im a musician, i haven’t been able to finish a single song since my daughter was born. but i can guarantee he’s 100% more games than i can count on my hands in just the last two years. the only single time i get to myself is my days off, or the hour and thirty minutes between me and my ex’s shifts. (which mind you, are interrupted every 5 minutes because he is on his game not responding to her questions, or she’s getting into something that he hasn’t noticed because he’s gaming with headphones on.)

i have tried probably thousands of times to bring this up and talk about it, how he should be more present and responsive to her. everytime it’s brought up he literally just doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong, or will turn it back on me and my attitude about it. he doesn’t think having today’s lunch smashed into the carpet is a problem, and doesn’t think he needs to clean it up. he doesn’t think that not responding to our daughter when he’s busy is a problem. he doesn’t think that giving her air fried pizza rolls for dinner every single night is an issue. he doesn’t think that our leisure time is unbalanced because “i stay up so late.”

i do want to say he isn’t a BAD parent, because there’s times when he’s loving and cuddly. there are times when he plays with her (after being begged to) but it’s very rare. rare and short lived enough that i can’t really give any examples lol.

he gets to my head a lot and tells me that IM a horrible parent because of how little patience i have with our daughter sometimes. sometimes i just get so frustrated being the “only” parent that i think i yell a little more often than i should, which im trying to get into therapy and meds so i can work on. everything he says and does is so contrary though, because there have been so many times that i have had to stop him from yelling at our daughter for stuff that she shouldn’t have been yelled at for. i know neither are okay, but i think there’s a huge difference between being worn out after 12+ hours of parenting a toddler and yelling because they won’t stop pounding on the apartment walls, and yelling because they spilt the open drink you had laying on a table in her play area.

i typed a lot but i guess id just like to know how much of this is normal, and if my fear of him not being a good parent when i move out is rational. i am quite literally petrified to leave my daughter with him for multiple days, knowing there will be no cleaning, no playing, no real food, nothing fun. i told him once if he doesn’t improve his behavior i would see about taking full custody but i genuinely don’t know if that’s something i can do, or have the guts to do.

just want to add that as i was about to post this, he is yelling at her for asking to use the potty while he does. she isn’t fully potty trained yet. quite literally saying stuff like “OH MY GODDDD NO YOU DONT” and telling her to go play. at what point does this become neglectful? has it already gotten this far and am i just dumb for letting him get to my head and tell me it’s normal? would a case like this hold up if i wanted full custody?

I’m happily remarried to an amazing man. Early in our relationship we spoke about having kids (in addition to my child from my previous marriage with my toxic ex). We were on the same page and wanted 1-2 more kids. Everytime I bring up having a baby, my husband becomes tense. With lots of digging, he’s hesitant about having a baby (although speaks of future children) due to my relationship with my “coparent” and our decree. He’s worried I won’t prioritize our child, since my ex tries to control what he can, though we try our best to avoid getting there. I know our family is complicated, and I try to have boundaries with my toxic ex, but I also feel like my husband has trauma from his own upbringing as he comes from a broken household and projects his fear towards our future.

What I’m trying to get at is, we can’t be the first in this situation introducing a child into a coparenting family and balancing that act. I would love to hear about your experiences in this situation. Any advice? I truly want to have a child with my husband and my biological clock is ticking…

There is a long history here, I will try to keep it consise.

It started 6 years ago with my x cheating on me with her, and for awhile I was very angry and not myself. I admittedly do not like her, she was well aware of our relationship and got into this knowingly.

Before I found out and we were still together, she was constantly buying son gifts and candy etc. I put a stop to this because her behavior was raising red flags for me, like she was trying to play house or buy son's affection. He was 5 years old at the time.

After we split, I tried to keep son away from her, but of course that ended up being unsuccessful. His dad and I have generally had an okay coparenting relationship, and I eventually chilled out and tried not to rock the boat as much as possible. I was never interested in keeping son away from his dad, just her as she was and continues to be a red flag. We have no court order as we have never needed one and both enjoy the flexibility. I try to let things go with her as much as possible while still sticking up for/protecting son.

There have been many little comments and bs over the years from her that I have brought up to x, but he comes roaring to her defense every single time, so I'm not sure how to navigate this latest issue.

Son has had CBT, he currently has a psychiatrist and is medicated for ADHD, and has pretty bad anxiety. He is extremely open with me, but has always struggled to communicate with his dad. We are on the waitlist for a new therapist as his old one moved offices.

It is very clear from his own opinion and words that son does not care for her. I have brought this up to x in hopes he could meditate, but nothing. He unfortunately seems to put his gf over our son constantly, but nothing is ever blatant enough for him to open his eyeballs.

Unfortunately, there have been many instances of her making weird comments, being rude, or just straight up being cocky and mean. Son cannot stand this behavior and doesn't get along with her.

He is now 11, which as we all know, with this age comes insecurity, discovering who you are, hormones, etc. He has been trying to work on his confidence, but is struggling hard.

Son likes his hair long. It is currently about shoulder length, nothing unreasonable or unmanageable, and I think he looks like any other young boy his age. He is a little small for 11, and prople often assume he is younger than he is. I don't think he looks "feminine," not that that matters anyway. But HE worries about it, and often wears a hat to look more "boy-ish."

I took him today to get a trim, and he ended up telling me what x's gf said to him in the title. He finished with once again expressing his dislike for her, and I'm just so annoyed. This age is already so hard to navigate, and he is stuck living part time with someone who seemed to try to draw him in with lovebombing, and for years now has been slowly cutting at his self esteem with these little comments. I of course did the usual of, don't worry about what others think, you look great, be yourself etc etc. But I am just wanting to address this before it continues to get worse as he gets older. His homes should both be a safe place for self expression, not critical of his appearance. I also of course told him there is nothing wrong with femininity, but I understand as a young boy trying to find himself how these kinds of things can be hurtful.

What do I do? Do I address her behavior with x again? I already know it won't go well. How would you all handle this?