THCreate

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post but this thought comes from a shot to the heart.

I’ll begin with how my children are so important to me. I’ve molded my kids to be amazing humans who are learning their roles on this planet since birth and am blessed to have been given the opportunity. I’ve given them all the tools they’ve needed to meet their social, physical and mental needs.

There comes a time when you feel you’ve done everything as a parent to raise your kids right, just for all your hard work to be reversed by something out of your control.

If you follow my blog or my YouTube channel, you know I’m in a delicate situation where co-parenting is never as simple as it sounds. These situations tend to never be on the same page, but to be fair, maybe I’m on the same page as my kid’s mother about 80% when it comes to a rotating schedule so our kids can see both parents.

This Sunday morning, my son, daughter and I went to church as we regularly do weekly (even when my kids aren’t with me on my Dad weekend off) and my daughter climbs in the front seat. She sees a cup and asks if she can have a drink and I tell her no. She commented on the cup and volunteered that she recently drank Sprite. Sprite. My daughter is 5. Sprite? You mean the caffeine-free soda loaded with sugar, excitotoxin and leads to dental decay, obesity, etc.?

Upon hearing the word Sprite eluding her adolescent lips, my blood began to boil. I could have stuck my hand in a pot of water on the stove and it would have reached 212°F easily.

The reason for such anger was that it wasn’t the mother of my daughter who gave it to my daughter, instead her mom’s boyfriend. STOP!

When you coparent, it easily creates tension that you never wanted in the first place. It creates its own unnecessary anxieties as you have to wonder if the other parent is doing everything you would be doing if you still lived at home. I’m not a perfect parent, but I maintain and abide by a strict set of rules that I designed and inherited along the way that gives me the autonomy to be a great dad.

You have to understand the level of frustration I felt, being a father who is involved in his child’s lives day in and out, that when I heard something out of the ordinary, such as the boyfriend of my kid’s mother giving my daughter Sprite, you have to understand something. I’ve never given either one of my children a soft drink because it is not necessary for a child’s development to give them those kinds of drinks that wreak havoc in your body.

This post isn’t being written to knock on step parents or the boyfriends of ex baby momma’s, but to express the stressors of co-parenting from two separate homes. Know your place. Know your role. Don’t reverse what I’ve worked hard to create. It’s something so minute as this, that can easily turn children into rebellious beings.