I have two step kids and one baby BD. We're forever dealing with the stress of OHs criticism and desperate need to control us and communicate with us. Our history is that she and my OH had a very difficult relationship. Her behaviour towards my OH ended up giving him an anxiety disorder. He's never wanted to spend time with her since they split up and gets stressed in her presence. Although he tried to be friendly initially, for fear of losing his children, she was really unfair to him when they split. He had them almost half the time and yet she insisted on keeping all the benefits they were entitled to at the time, all the child benefit and also expecting him to give her extra money, which he refused to give her routinely but would give her bits of extra money when she was stuck. She treated him like a babysitter and would badger him constantly including phoning him at work all the time. 
 

When I came along, on the surface she was friendly asking us to spend time with her and her partner but this was the last thing my partner wanted. She was obsessed with us being a 'blended family', but what had become very apparent was this means to her that she just wanted to boss us about, treat us like lackeys and regularly offer not so veiled criticism of our parenting. This came to a head this year at which point I pulled myself out of the WhatsApp chat the four coparents shared as she was causing us too much stress. I shouldn't have been involved in communications with her at all but she was very keen to involve me and I was trying to do my best to make things work. But nothing we do is ever good enough for her and I'm not sure why she thinks we need her approval or care for her criticisms. 
 

She's always made a big deal of having them slightly more than us. We have them 46% of the time. We've said that we would take responsibility for them on Wednesdays to balance it out to 50/50. But she has ignored this and has asked numerous times that we  reassure her that our 'arrangement' (contact time) won't be changed by us. We've said it won't and that we need that consistency too. She often suggests we take them for extra time as hoc  but we want simple split care to minimise our dealings with her and keep things simple. She says she has the majority of the expensive times with them but this isn't true. We have them for the same amount of weekend time with them as she does and it's her choice what she does with them in her time; she can make it as cheap as expensive as suits her. 
 

On Saturday my partner received a handover email suggesting he took the kids to their dental check up this Wednesday during her time with them. It was the first we'd heard of it. My OH said he couldn't as he was working which she knows! I'm on maternity so she probably was trying to get me to do it. A favourite game of hers, bossing me around, especially when it relates to my car (I'm the only driver in the famil). We're happy to take the kids to any appointment but she has always been pretty controlling of things like this and has taken responsibility for them. Although we do things like take them to medical appointments during our time with them and go to school events in the day and when we can (even though neither of us wants to have to be around her). She works from home much of the time and so it's easier for her to get to school events. This is the email my OH received. Her tone is fairly standard for her. On the surface polite but using handover to point out my partners and mine failings (in her view). We'll do more but my OH has never said he wouldn't! Don't want to change contact times as we've offered before and she's wanted things to stay the same until now when it appears, pretty unreasonably, that she has a bee in her bonnet because she expected my OH to not go to work on Wednesday to take them to an appointment  he knew nothing about before now! All this makes you really anxious as she's often unreasonable like this and you worry how things are going to go if you don't do as she said. Any advice, about the email contents below or in managing the anxiety BM causes. I feel like all this stress affects our time with the kids, how 'present' we are, and just taints everything. 
 

Hi

I know you are very sure that you do 50/50 shared care. And you know I have said before that based on everything we do and also the drop off times (you drop off v early and pick up late afternoon) that it really isn't the case. 

Things like dentists, doctors appts, haircuts, going to assemblies on a Fri - these are all part of parental care and as such if a parent is doing 50/50 care then 50/50 of this stuff is part of it. 

We do not begrudge doing this stuff at all! Work is re arranged for assemblies,  Drs appts and dentist appts. I took Xxxx for a haircut today as she desperately needed one. Same with Xxxxa few months ago. 

More colloboration and sharing of these things as part of 50/50 shared care would be greatly appreciated. Also a look at your pick up and drop of times, especially during holidays to ensure that you are 50/50.

Thanks