What is the best custody arrangement?
For what it's worth I really think that the ideal custody arrangements is one week on one week off. This would in my opinion minimize a lot of the unnecessary Disney dad or mom syndromes that so often happens when a bio parent only gets to see their child EOW or a few weeks in the summer. This way both bio parents gets the see the "real" behavior on their kids on a somewhat regular and daily basis. I think a lot of part time bio parents are so far in denial as to what their child is like and become completely oblivious to the parenting that needs to be done on their access time. Of course this arrangement would only work if both parents lived close enough to each other that the skid would be able to go back and forth and to school easily. Now in my case we have SS randomly once every 2-3 months and because of that all goes to hell when we do have him. There is basically no parenting. My DH goes into ATM daddy mode and basically ignores me and our DD. now she is only 4 months old right now but I'm afraid that when she gets older she will see how her daddy is different whe. Her half brother comes over and be upset. DH is also reluctant to enforce rules when we have SS because he sees him so little of the time, he just wants him to be happy and have fun. Those are his exact words to me btw. My question is what kind of custody arrangements do you all have and is it working for you?
I've seen that system work
I've seen that system work only once and that was when the parents deliberately owned homes so close together the kids walked home from school and could go either direction. I think it was on the same block.
Sometimes they would go to Mom's and do homework and then to Dad's when he came home from work and other times it was the opposite.
Otherwise I think the constant car trips and shifting about makes for a poor environment for the kids.
Depends on the parents. Some
Depends on the parents. Some people will feel guilty and do the disney thing even if they have the kids all the time. We have SD 50% of the time. Her mother still lets her run her household and I have to school dh about once a month on how ridiculous it is to think that she is "special" because she is only here 1/2 the time. If we treat her special because she is only here half the time and her mother treats her special because she is only there 1/2 the time, she gets special treatment 100% of the time and learns that she is special and that our son isn't. I won't tolerate that crap in my home.
We have SD7 most of the time,
We have SD7 most of the time, and with us she's pretty good. But when she comes back from BM's house she's like hell on wheels, and all the work we did went down the drain. I think it's more up to the parents. If they can both parent effectivly and not let the kid do whatever they want, then any arrangement will work. But we all know most DH's can't do that.
i don't think it will ever be
i don't think it will ever be full custody or even 50/50 in my case. DH is delusional thinking that once SS hits a certain age (12 i think) he's allowed to choose which parent he wants to live with??? has anyone heard of that before? anyways he's totally set on SS wanting to live with us...sigh...
i also wanted to add that DH
i also wanted to add that DH and BM will NEVER be on the same page with anything concerning SS. It's sad really but neither of them are mature enough to put their differences aside and able to co-parent properly.
I'm not sure any custody
I'm not sure any custody arrangement works. We have SS full time now. His BM lives in another country. I guess I'm lucky (LOL) but I'd rather have 50/50 with a sane BM. Unless the BM leaves the picture early, it's still raising another person's child, and SS looks and acts just like BM and we're going to be paying for years of therapy for dealing with his mom leaving him.
People think it's like
People think it's like adopting a kid, but it isn't. SS still has his BM, her parents and other relatives even if they are all overseas.
It's even harder to have a stepkid full time and then have your own kids with your SO. We have our intact family and then SS. If he was going back and forth between homes, it would be easier since we'd have time to ourselves.