Bio Mom not parenting well due to ill feelings towards me

Jennifer - posted on 07/01/2009 ( 3 moms have responded )

I am a fairly new step mom. My step son is 3. My fiance filed for divorce several years ago and needless to say it took many years to finalize because she fought anything and everything. My finace and i started dating about 1 1/2 years into the divorce process. Finally it ended this past January. We are on a two week vistiation schedule with the little guy, two days during the week (a few hours in the evening) one week and 1 day during the week (again just for a few hours in the evening) and the weekend the other week.



Things were bad before but it has only gotten worse. I understand if the Bio Mom has ill feelings for my fiance (her ex husband) and even ill feelings towards me as i'm the new person in his life, but i feel she is neglecting the son just to aggravate us. Examples of this include not feeding him anything but junk food so he has an upset stomach when he's with us, teaching him inappropriate phrases to say to us and giving him no rules or boundries at home so when he's with us he is hard to control. There is also a lot of what i consider just laziness in parenting that again i can only think she does to spite my fiance or the both of us such as not putting medication on his eczema, giving him candy non stop and allowing him to have a pacifire in his mouth at all times. (when the pacifire thing was brought up that maybe it's time to start weining him off of it, she said "why, you're going to have to pay for braces anyway!")



I try to keep my cool as to not add fuel to the fire, but it is starting to get worse and worse and it really bothers me. The new thing is the Bio Mom saying negative things about me to the son. The son is telling us (yes, at 3) that he doesn't like when mama says (fill in the blank) about me and that it makes him angry. We have tried nicely and a bit more aggressively in person and in writing to stress that her actions are affecting him and to please stop. We get no response ever.



The son is not potty trained and bio mom refuses to do it saying,"he'll start going potty when he's ready". i do agree with this but you have to encourage it and talk it up. We agreed a few months ago it was time to give up the pacifire and she said she didn't think she coudl be the one to take it away, so we said we'd start it when we had him for vaca for a week. we did, called her daily to let her know we took them out of sight and he was fine and never asked for it. Two days after vaca ended & we went to pick him up for visitation, he had the pacifire. This is when the braces comment was made. She keeps the son up until 11:30pm so she can sleep late in the am (she has openly admitted this).



Does anyone know how we can make the piece with the mom enough for the sake of the son? Please help! I don't know what to do, especially since i'm kind of an outsider but i truely love this boy as my own. It hurts me to see him treated like this. I just want everyone to be civil and take care of the little guy. PLEASE HELP!