Brief recap...ss lived with us last year and went to middle school in our district. After ss learned that we follow through with discipline, he quickly decided that he wanted to move back in with bm. Bm made him live here the entire year. In June, ss went to bm's/gma's for entire summer. At the last minute (late August), bm said to dh..."I know I shouldn't let ss make adult based decisions, but...he wants to live with me." So bm pulled him out of our school, enrolled him in her school district. The first day of school, bm called me to let me know how wonderful the school was, and how wonderful ss was doing in his new school. Okay, great.

One month later, bm decided she was breaking up with her bf. By this time ss was not liking his new school...the kids were picking on him for being the new kid. BM pulled him out of school, dropped him off at my sil's. She was planning on moving herself back to an area so he could attend our school. 48 hours later, she is back with bf, and ss is out of school. He missed 1.5 weeks just for this.

Then we all decided to have ss live between both places 50/50. The agreement is that her bf will commute ss to school on their time, and then pick him up from our house after school. He has missed an additional 3 days of school b/c either cars were broke down, people just letting ss skip school, or my favorite..."bf didn't have to work so there was no sense in him driving just to commute ss to school.." excuse me?

I understand that it is a pain in the ass to commute a child 45 mintues one way to school...but isn't this the bed you made? We have repeatedly offered again and again that we would take ss full time. We would even take him full time w/o cs! We make enough, plus she pays for clothes, so the money isn't an issue anymore.

We always get from bm "ss is fine...he's on honor roll..." so that means he can just skip school whenever he wants? He has missed 11 days of school this year! Anytime we express concern over this, she always minimizes the situation as "not a big deal". Just like dropping him from your medical insurance, not letting us know, and watch us sign him up for full contact football w/o saying a word. Then laugh at us when we buy expensive individual catastrophic medical insurance....her exact words..."he'll be fine...he won't get hurt..."

How do we communicate to her that making decisions for a child means that you include his best interests in them? She is with a man that won't commute a child in to school simply b/c it isn't on his way? I wouldn't have thought twice about getting up out of bed and running ss across town to get him to school, to me that is a no brainer. She won't have us have ss full time b/c she can't say no to ss. This is so frustrating. SS isn't my kid, but I worry more about his education that bm does...this is the part I don't understand.

Honestly, I like the 50/50 b/c ss's attitude can be too much for me at times. So for me, the break is nice. With that said, this year, his attitude has been improving as far as the mouth goes. We still have our ups and downs, but it is not as bad as last year.

I just wish we could express to her how important an education is (and she would take it seriously), and how she is setting herself up (and of course us) for having a real battle on our hands getting him to school in his late teens. I wish we could make progress with her in this department.