First weekend with the kids after going back to school...

We had step-son 12 most of the summer and step-son 15 a good part. We made alot of progress in a number of areas - attitude, hygiene, picking up after yourself, actually helping around the house even beyond your own mess. Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't children happily waltzing around the house with feather dusters but they would at least get up and get in the shower without being asked 12 times and pick up their own messes.

Now that school has started we're back to every-other weekend and you can guess what happened after two weeks back with their mom... yep, we're back to square one. Dirty socks laying everywhere, table manners like a pig (especially 15 y.o.), swearing, spending pretty much the entire weekend in front of the computer playing video games except when dragged away, attitude that we would dare impose to help clear the dinner table, wrestling with each other in the grocery store... UUGGHH!!!! Not to mention we were supposed to pick them up from school Friday but their mother of course screwed that up. After much back and forth, here and there she finally called at 9:15 that night but by then was back on her side of town and wanted us to drive 20 miles to pick them up instead of the 5 it could have been. We told her to piss off and she could drop them off in the morning when she had to be on our side of town anyway. Should have known better, finally at 3:30 Saturday afternoon F had to go pick them up. Of course all of this puts us both in a foul mood so we start off the weekend stressed and then get to deal with the kids and all the attitude/behavior regression. On the plus side step-son 12 still does respond to requests with a pretty positive attitude but the good habits have definitely taken a hit, also on the plus side we will still be trying for custody of him this fall. Not as good with step-son 15, it was one thing to push the habits a little at a time while he was there for a longer stretch but his attitude is SO bad if you dare contradict anything he says or does. I’m afraid I’ll be back to disengage stage soon with him… but maybe we’ll get lucky.

Wasn’t it nice not hearing these kinds of posts from me for even just a little while?? As always, thanks for listening!