leave it up to him. If she is not able to create problems for you, maybe she will stop messing with the schedule. It sounds like a control issue for her. Pick your battles. As long as it does not effect your personal schedule, it might be better to just let him deal. JMO

I think that ultimately there is no way to ensure that constant schedule changes will not effect you directly. It is nearly impossible to plan things if you never know when he will/will not be there. I am a believer that if a schedule change needs to take place, your husband needs to run it by you before agreeing to it…this includes extra time and missed time…i.e. planning dinner…you may not cook enough for ss if you don’t know he is coming or if you want to plan an adult event, then you will need to find a sitter at the same token, if you want to take him somewhere and plan the event on his day, you need to be able to purchase tickets/rsvp/make reservations in advance…the schedule is there for a reason and should be adhered to whenever possible.

Make a GREAT Day!

we use to not have a parenting plan, and I lived the days of ss being dropped off on our door step on a Saturday night at 10 p.m. with no phone call or prior arrangement. Or, she would tell ss "you are only staying with your dad for 2 days..." when he would end up staying with us for 2 weeks...

It can be very challenging to get consistency, but the more you get the less anxiety there is, I feel.

When my dh and his ex gf are working on schedule changes, I ultimately leave the decision making up to him. However, my dh is really good about communicating what plans might be up in the air, and if I have something planned for us that conflicts with schedule changes with ss, then we communicate, and try to work things out. Also, my dh really does the footwork to parent his son over here, it isn't like I'm doing all the work (the step mom that does all the work with no thanks syndrome), so if the schedule changes, it really doesn't impact me, and the effort I need to put into our situation. If you do a lot of footwork with raising your sk, this might be part of your frustation with the schedule changes...

I too get really frustrated with the chaos of bm's lack of organization and inconsistency. I feel that when she wants to dump ss on our door front with no notice, it's like her dysfunction is infiltrating into our house. It does irritate me, I'm all about a schedule. I just remind myself we have 5 more years of her (bm), and then we will only have to see her if we want to...

When it come to my SS or SD's BM's (there are two) it's his responsiblity to take care of it.

We have constantly had to deal with change of custody with SS, and it is not only wearing on us, but on him too. But up until recently, when it came to our time, we stuck with the mediation schedule. Otherwise, it got way out of hand for us. Like, she would want to "swap" days and supposedly, we would in turn have SS on a day of hers in exchange... but when it come to actually 'scheduleing' our catchup/exchange... she would conveniently forget, or argue that we already took our 'makeup day', etc etc. So, we just stuck with the court schedule period, then we also had a resource to use when she didn't "understand" why we weren't giving into her way... because the court has ordered it so, that's why. That's why it's there. When it got really nasty with her, we just told her we're not going to deal with her until she calms down and would hang up the phone on her. (Then I would get online- which ties up the phone line, which kept her from constantly calling up leaving nasty vcmsg...)

Today, things are little better for us and we're in a much better position. She's pretty much 'dumped' SS on our lap now anyway, so we pretty much have most of the time with him now. Poor kid. She's now indulged herself into her "new family", and now SS seems to be a burden to that family because he's the only one she has to cart all the way down the hill for things. So, we pretty much take care of all his after school events now. And my DH is pretty good with dealing with her- most of the time. He's not shy about running her "request" by me while still on the phone with her, because reality is that I'm apart of her son's life. She used to get upset by it, but now, she's learned that I'm not going away, and most of the time, it's me that can take him anyway.

I believe its mostly my DH's responsibility to handle these types of things, however, if it changes my plans, or effects me in some manner, I do speak my opinion and remind him of whatever the issue is. Besides, he and I work together with the kids, his and mine. I would say its almost 50/50 in some areas. So, if something changes on my end even, and it will effect what he will have to do, I check with him first and make sure its ok with him. He does the same. I think a marriage is just that, a melding of two. What he does effects you and vice versa. I don't know that you should be excluded from making these types of arrangements.