Discipline and Co-parenting

Disciplining children can be hard enough as it is in a traditional family.  But add divorce, joint custody and getting remarried to the equation and it makes it even more difficult.

The girl’s father was very lazy, nothing bothered him and it took pulling teeth and ultimatums to get him to lift a finger.  Now I’m in a relationship that is quite the opposite:  Frank does things way before I even need to ask.  The problem with this type of personality though is that he is ‘Johnny on the Spot’ when it comes to my girls and the proper discipline.

I’m from the school that no one disciplines your children except their own parents (unless of course they’re staying at someone else’s home and the parents aren’t around). 

Frank is from the school that anyone can and should take matters into their own hands.  [I don't mean literally.  Neither one of us has never laid a hand on any of the kids.]

For example, this just happened the other day, Frank and I stayed up way later than we normally do watching movies and then the following morning Frankie woke up and we didn’t hear him cry.  Kaitlyn’s room is right next to his so she went in his room, took him out of his crib and brought the baby into her room to play with the idea that she was helping us out. 

Me, being the lover of all things sleep, loved this.  I’ve allowed her to do this in the past, either by me asking her to go get him or vice versa so I’ve seen her take him out of the crib many times and she’s never had a problem.  Plus, if she had a hard time taking him out and accidentally hurt his legs or something he would not hesitate to cry.  But that scenario has never happened.

So I wake up with Frank walking into our room with the baby and he said “Did you know Kaitlyn takes the baby out of the crib?”  I said yes and thought that would be the end of it.  He then says “I don’t want her taking him out of the crib unless she asks us first and we say its ok”.  To which I replied ok and went back to sleep.

The next day as we’re all sitting around the table having lunch and Kaitlyn tells Frank something funny that happened that morning and Frank asked if she got the baby out of the crib.  Her and I both said yes.  He got pretty upset and said he didn’t want her to do it anymore.  I told him I recalled that he didn’t want her to do it without getting permission first.  He then said no, he doesn’t want her doing it at all.  He explained that he doesn’t feel she’s strong enough and didn’t think it was a good idea.  Then I got upset that he was doing this in front of the children and not allowing me a say in this.  I explained that if the baby was getting hurt he would cry as she was pulling him out of the crib, etc.

The most frustrating aspect of all of this is that he and I (like all parents) are supposed to be a united front.  So we can’t argue about it in front of the children.  But at the same time, pressing issues need to be dealt with immediately so the kids understand the consequences of their actions right away.

The other reason this hit home a little too much is because just a couple weeks ago, the girl’s father told me that the girls tell him that I do ‘whatever Frank says’.  This absolutely boggled my mind, first, because supposedly it came from the girls and second, I do not do as I’m told.  I never have.  So this was a complete shocker.  Now I know that my ex loves to say stuff to get under my skin and he never has a nice thing to say about Frank but the thing that cut to the core of me was wondering if that was really the girl’s perception of me?  Now I know they’re only 7 and 6 but still.  He also told me that the girls tell him that I make Frank his dinner and his drinks.  I told my ex that this is coming from our children and that I make dinner and get drinks for everyone.  I also added that I used to make dinner and drinks for him and I too when we were together.  It was then that he realized what I was saying (or at least pretended to).

So after this heated moment at the dinner table all of these thoughts started running through my mind.  And all I kept wondering was what the girls were thinking.  So since Frank raised his voice I decided to raise mine.  I told him “I did not appreciate him talking to me that way, especially in front of the children and I wanted an apology.”  He started to apologize right then but I said I wasn’t done yet.  I then said “if you have a problem with how I do things around here talk to me about it behind closed doors where we can resolve it between the two of us.”  He told me (in front of the children) that I was right and that he was sorry… and then everyone was silent for the next few minutes.

Now this isn’t, of course, the least or worst of examples.  It was just the most recent.  We’ve always had this problem about discipline.  He thinks I’m not consistent enough and I think he’s too harsh.  We’ve been to plenty of parenting classes due to horrendous allegations by my ex where we learned that you have to tell a child 2000 times each behavior you’re trying to correct. 

Last month, my youngest daughter got all her toys taken away by Frank because he’s had to tell her too many times to pick up her toys after she’s done playing with them.  And he did this when I wasn’t home.  Now I understand that there should have been some form of consequence but I thought taking away all her toys was way over the top.  I also don’t think that he, being the soon-to-be-Stepdad, should be the disciplinarian.  And many counselors and other people in the field we’ve spoken to agree with me on that.

But he disagrees.  He doesn’t believe he should’ve waited til I got home to let me handle it.

Anyways, the point of me sharing this is to try and figure out if I’m alone in this.  I can’t be.  But does every blended family household go through this?  Or anything remotely similar?  Did anyone grow up in a broken home?  What were your experiences?  How would you have handled either scenario differently?

PADI Certified?

Call me crazy… but why are people paying for this certification?  What is stopping people from buying their own scuba gear, reading “Scuba Diving for Dummies” and then going off to dive into any ocean they want?  Is there some sort of scuba police that I don’t know about where they’re waiting to ask for your PADI ID?!

Don’t get the wrong idea here, the money isn’t the problem – its’ the time.  Frank and I and the kids are going to Hawaii in the next month and Frank wanted to get certified before we went.  To me it seemed like a logical thing to do until our ’scuba instructor’ told me yesterday that Frank and I have to watch a DVD, read a 150 page book, answer the 5 chapter tests, get acquainted with our RDP contraption, and meet him on Friday for an orientation meeting!  What the heck!  All I want to do is breathe under water!  Does it really take all this to get that accomplished?? 

Frank and I have been scuba diving before.  Well let me rephrase:  I’ve been scuba diving before.   A couple years ago we went to Cabo San Lucas (ahhh) and we added scuba diving to our itinerary online while we were booking the trip.  When we got to the hotel who was sponsoring this adventure the instructor gave us our gear, told us there was a 15 minute instuctional video and when we were done to meet him on the pier at the boat!

This scared the heck out of Frank because he’s not the best of swimmers coming out of upstate New York and all.  He was expecting a class at the hotel pool.

I wasn’t scared yet.  I had never been scuba diving before but I had been snorkelling in Catalina Island before.  So since there was no formal training being given here I just thought this was going to be easier than I ever imagined.

We got all our gear on, met our instructor at what looked like a fishing boat, drove out to the picturesque rock formation that is on every postcard from Cabo and then we threw the anchor.

 

The instructor who could barely speak english reminded us to swallow every foot to a foot and a half and to wave to him if there was a problem.  Frank and I initially had problems starting because we weren’t used to breathing through a straw.  This was it for Frank.  He was freaked out.  He climbed back up into the boat and told me to go ahead.  It took me a while to get the hang of it but eventually I did and went down.  I loved it.  I saw a family of seahorses nestled into the ocean wall and I had this fish follow me for most of the whole experience.  It was a pretty euphoric feeling.

A little scary at first but well worth the anxiety.  I’m a little nervous right now about doing this in Hawaii but mostly because we’re taking the kids with us.  So we’ll see how it goes.