Maintaining Consistent Contact

There are going to be periods of time for most of us when the stepchild is with the other set of parents. And if this period of time is an extensive amount of time there is no reason why we shouldn't maintain consistent contact while they are away.

Our son chose to stay in Maine with his birth mother this school year after he had been here this summer. During the summer months he had told his counselor that he wanted to move back to Montana, we had made the appropriate motions with the court and our lawyer, and $2,000 later, he changed his mind.

His father and I were deeply hurt, we had looked forward to having more time with him than a week at Christmas, Spring Break, and summers. He had been accepted at a prestigious private middle school here in town to make up for the year that he had spent in Maine. (What they were teaching him in the seventh grade were things he had learned in the fifth grade here in Montana.)

Ultimately, his social life and comfort in already being established in his school won out.

The point of all this is, even though we are 2,500 miles away, there is no reason to not have regular contact with the kiddo. We mainly use the phone, since he hasn't demonstrated responsibility with his tech devices that allow him to access the internet at all hours of the night. But we could if we wanted to, there's access to Skype, (it's free, you should check it out), email, and all those social networking sites. Although our son's accounts have been disabled on those for the time being, they could work for you too.

Our consistent contact? A phone call every Sunday evening.

I Walk Away

I used to handle all the communication between the birth mother and my husband. He didn't want to talk to her, she didn't want to talk to him, and the mediator (me) received the brunt of the attack from both sides.

I don't mediate anymore, I don't talk to the birth mother on the phone unless she or I answer it, and any email communication between my husband and her gets the final okay from our lawyer. Granted, the lawyer is more expensive than I am-but not so expensive as the cost to my sanity.

I am tired of being asked what I think the birth mother is thinking, or what she might do, how will she respond to [fill in the blank]. And it isn't just my husband asking, it's his whole family. How in the hell I became such an expert on the woman I have no idea. We are two totally different people and haven't ever had a conversation with her outside of our son; and the culmination of it usually ended up with me being screamed at over the phone.

I am now entirely hands off, whenever I'm asked anything about the birth mother, I just shrug my shoulders. I no longer make the phone calls or write the emails. It truly isn't my concern. I love my stepson dearly, and I would rather him be with us, but it isn't my battle.

I am happy now that he is 13 and that much closer to being of the age where he can decide where he wants to live. Though I'm not sure if the birth mother will listen to his wishes since she deems most of what he wants as "whimsical".