Is this a battle we should fight?
Here is the outline of my life and my current concern. My husband and I have been married for five years; he has a 20 year old son and a 11 year old daughter. Both have different biological moms.
My concern is over the stepdaughter and her mom. They have always had what I would call unhealthy relationship. We have 50/50 custody and my stepdaughter has always called the parent she was not with at night to say good night.
My husband has always strived to keep his relationship with her father daughter and balanced. From the beginning my stepdaughter’s demeanor when talking to her mom has changed, she talks like she is sad and only says things like “I miss you too mommy” or “I love you bunches too”. She won’t talk about anything she has done with us on our time even though when she is talking to her dad he asks and is interested to hear about her day with her mom. Her mom often lets her make decisions I personally feel are better left to the parent. In my opinion her mom is trying to be her best friend and not her mother.
Here is my concern; 3 weeks ago her mom got her a cell phone, without discussing it with my husband at all. I feel it is absolutely inappropriate for an 11 year old to have a cell phone. She has unlimited texting and when she was given the phone she was told she could call her mom all she wanted but since her father and I are on a different provider she need to limit the calls to us. We all agreed to set a rule that she was not able to delete any text messages without a parent’s approval. I have become the only one that checks and clears her memory. Her mother is texting her up to 10 times a day while she is in school. This has continued even after her father had a conversation with his ex about her falling behind in school and that she needs to focus. We all should minimize the texting. (My husband and I don’t text her at school at all)
Now I am noticing the texts are usually focused on how much they miss each other and that my step daughter would rather be going to her moms and not our house. I don’t believe she really feels that way however I do think she feels like her mother needs to hear it.
Do we not allow the phone at our house on our time? Do we ask her if she really wants to be at her mom’s more? Do we ignore it?
My fear is her mom is going to use these texts in the future to try to gain more custody and that would tear my husband up.
Wow . . . I have no idea what
Wow . . . I have no idea what to tell you, except that I would expect a judge to see that the texts during school are irresponsible on the mother's part and show a serious character flaw. Ask the provider if it is possible to print out the texts or possibly send them to an email account where you can archive them for future court issues if you have to. If they say no (due to BM being the person paying) your DH will have the right of production when they get to court and (I believe) the cell phone company will have to produce a record of the texts.
I also think that BM's constant focus on how much she misses SD will appear to a judge as a form of PAS. Obviously, SD will not be able to enjoy her time at your house if her mother is constantly texting her about how sad she is without her daughter at home.
I'd talk to lawyer before you make up your mind about anything, but, personally, I'd fight this for sure. It's unhealthy and could seriously hurt SD in the long run. She should not have to feel responsible for her mother's loneliness at 11. BM ought to be encouraging her to have a healthy relationship with her father rather than whining about missing SD.
Nope, when she walks in the
Nope, when she walks in the door to your house, the phone goes in a locked drawer. This is interfering in your DH's visitation with his child and interfering in your family and home life.
As for the the phone in school. Call the principle to notify them that the phone is a distraction and instruct the school to take the phone if it comes out at all during the school day.
Just my thoughts of course.
This is exactly what my
This is exactly what my husband did too.
OP, it sounds to me like something is going on in mom's life and she is leaning on her daughter for support rather than a friend, a pastor or a counselor. It sounds like your SD is having to take on a more grown up role and feels like SHE has to take care of her mother and not the other way around.
Perhaps your husband should discuss this with his x and then all of you should sit down with the girl and let her know that it is her role to be a little girl and to do good in school. That is all she should be concerned about at this stage of her life.
Most schools have a strict
Most schools have a strict policy on texting during school. Im a teacher and if we see a phone we are supposed to turn it into the vice principal. It's very irresponsible for a mom to encourage her daughter to do this at school. Our 5 year old skids are always telling us how mommy cries and misses them when they are with us. Right now they don't really seem to mind but I'm afraid that constantly hearing that is going to make them not want to visit us. I know she thinks she is being a good mom and being "honest" with the kids. But seriously, get your own life! It's not healthy to live through a child
We had something
We had something similar.
When SD had her cellphone, BM was doing the same thing....texting her all day even though she was in school and so was BM's girlfriend(?). One day SD got in trouble because her phone rang during class and the teacher told her to turn off the ringer and SD refused. Why? Because her mother told her to never turn off the phone, even during school, because she might need to call her if there's an emergency. At that time, BM lived over 90 minutes away and only saw her children two or three weekends a month. What emergency could there be? The child's paternal grandparents live 5 minutes down the street, maternal grandmother 10 minutes, aunt 10 minutes and if need be, dad is an hour away and I am 15 minutes away. All people who can get to the child before BM.
Solution: Dad told her to leave the phone home during school hours. Anytime there has been an emergency (like SD getting sick), she uses the school phone or the nurse calls Dad on his phone and he always arranges for someone to get her immediately. Under no circumstances should a cell phone get in the way of school. When SD was home during the schoolweek, she was too busy with gymnastics, doing her schoolwork and getting to bed to spend too much time texting on the phone.
BM does the same thing with the constant I miss you nonsense every ten seconds. She misses them so much that she just moved 9 hours away from them. It's all PAS. It's pathetic that parents do this to their children. I'm not sure if you can put a complete stop to it but at least you can stop it while it's at school.
AZ Retro, I feel for you and
AZ Retro, I feel for you and can totally relate. I could have written this post myself about 2 years ago.
I never, ever thought it was healthy or normal in any way for such a young child (i.e. 10, 11, 12) to have a cell phone. Just plain ridiculous IMO.
However, FDH allowed his kids to get cell phones fairly young (11ish I think) - they are FSD16 & FSS13 now.
The part of your post that REALLY burns me up is the constant "I miss you" "I love you" "I miss you, too" "Mwuah" conversations BM used to have with FSS13 (and still does!!) when he is here with us/his Dad. We share 50/50 custody of skids with BM and it has always made me wonder:
HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY MISS HIM THAT MUCH, BM, WHEN YOU JUST SAW HIM YESTERDAY or 6 HOURS AGO?!?!?! Why is she making him feel bad about being with HIS FATHER?????
Back then, I never knew there was a term or name for what BM was doing. I just thought it was extremely rude, extremely intrusive upon SS's quality time/visitation with SS for BM to constantly call the cell phone and have conversations with him like this, over and over again, sometimes multiple times a day!!!! :jawdrop: :jawdrop: :jawdrop:
I'd hear SS have the SAME conversation with BM, over and over and over again:
I miss you, mommy.
I miss you, too, mommy.
Mwah (kiss sound), mwah, mwah, mwah
I love you, mommy.
Miss you, too, mommy.
OK
Miss you, too mommy.
OK
Love you, too, mommy.
OMG! Put a bullet in my head, already!!! WHY ARE BM'S LIKE THIS?!? Can't they see that this is MENTAL/EMOTIONAL abuse to make your CHILD feel BAD about "leaving Mommy alone" and visiting his FATHER??? WTF!!
Now that I know there's a term for it (Parental Alienation), I am a strong supporter of laws that need to CRIMINALIZE this behaviour! A parent should have their visitation SUSPENDED/TERMINATED for instances of PA like this and their child support should ALSO be SUSPENDED/TERMINATED, they should be FORCED to attend parenting classes until this is stopped!!
You bet that the minute a PAing BM's massive CS$$$ (legalized extortion) is stopped, it'll make her THINK TWICE about alienating her child(ren) from their own FATHER!!!!
BM wanted SS10 to have a cell
BM wanted SS10 to have a cell phone this summer, because she couldn't reach him for 2 days.(we have custody) DH told her that he would not be allowed to have it at our house, if she sent it home with him it would be taken away.
Thank you all for your posts.
Thank you all for your posts. You really are just confirming exactly what I was feeling. I just stumbled on this forum and most likely will be posting more just to hear from people that have been where I am.
We had a discussion with SD about how we understood that she wanted to talk to her mom but that her job is to do well in school and have fun with whatever parent she is with at the time. We are giving it one week and going to check the texting and if it hasn’t stopped the phone will be turned off at our house. I think it made an impact because today she only had one text from her mom and she hadn’t responded. (That or she is deleting them now, which is why we are giving it a week)
There is always something going on in the BMs life that she leans on her daughter, an example would be last year when her partner left her BM called us and asked if she could have SD on our weekend because she really needed SD while the partner was moving out for support. We said no way. However that may illustrate how dysfunctional my SD and BMs relationship is.
I didn’t know there was a term for what BM does I just knew it was wrong and it has happened since they split up.
I think in a week the phone will be turned off on our time.
DH and BM are not at all
DH and BM are not at all friends or communicators. they are nice and do not fight but when he talks to her he knows she will say what he wants to hear and do what she wants. The example is that he had a sit down with his ex to discuss the phone and she said she understood and the texts still happened.
As for it coming from DH i knnow and that is a struggle we have as he isn't on top of many situations. *sigh* I have been having him do the talks with the SD and be the one with the difficult jobs.