My step sons' came over this morning (SS14stb15 and SS7stb8). We are getting ready to go out of town tomorrow so I was outside cleaning out the car. Even early in the morning the heat is off the charts where I live so I was super hot and sweaty. I came in to get some paper towels and saw my older SS reaching for a new bottle of water. Yesterday I saw that he has at least 10 if not more empty water bottles in a pile right beside his bed so I said (albeit it was probably more of a snap) "no, you have tons of bottles in your room I know you've only used once. You need to get one of those and refill it." SS looked at me and walked away wordlessly. He isn't mouthy usually but I could tell he was offended. I rarely correct him on anything (he is a typical teen but not a bad kid or trouble maker) so it was probably the equivalent of me smacking his hand.

A few minutes later I was back in the driveway and he came out the front door and went walking right past me. I said "heading out?" and he either didn't hear me or pretended not to hear me. I could tell he thought he was going to high tail it straight back to BM's house. All I thought was good riddance. I love my step kids and we have a good relationship but I have too much to do today to worry about something so trivial.

So then, about half an hour later SS comes walking though the front door and goes straight to his room. I thought to myself, I guess he got over it, and carried on with what I was doing. Almost Immediately my phone dinged. It was a loooong text message from BM, telling me that there have been some issues between her boyfriend and the kids and they prefer the kids not to come back to their house when they're are supposed to be at our house unless she is home. She said "the kids" but I know she just means my older SS bc never once has SS7 gone back to his mom's house on our time even if she is home.

I forwarded the whole thing to DH, I have zero interest in trying to police SS's whereabouts during the day. it makes sense to me now why BM really didn't want the kids coming back over on Father's Day until she got home, she probably feared a blow up with her BF over it.

DH sent me a screenshot of his reply and it was basically, "I'm at work during the day the same as you, take his key away or change codes if you don't want him in the house."

I guess this is a pitfall of living in the same neighborhood.

Edited to add: not that long ago, DH blew up at SS for going up and down the street with his friends knocking over some of our neighbor's trash cans and SS puffed up and stormed off to BM's house. BM didn't make him come back right away. Now she wants us to enforce SS not doing the same thing she already let him do.