Need co-parenting help (long)

[explorer2001]

Not a parent but here are my thoughts.

Re school you win, social development is incredibly important. Also look into gifted/advanced programs. They can likely provide more than you/he could by way of resources. I was very much like you describe and ended up getting to work with the national forest service in school because of the gifted program. No way I'd have had that opportunity if I had been homeschooled.

Re religion, evolution, say what you need to say. Will he be pissy, yes. Will he/is he respecting your desires, no. So the only way for the kids to have a balanced Outlook is for you to provided it. When he's pissy about you "not respecting his views" merely point out that he painted you in to a corner by not respecting yours.

Re sex ed, sexuality. Educate the kids re safe sex, stds, etc. You can still encourage them to wait, but not make sexuality shameful.

Good luck.

[stephbfan]

- Home school. What are your Ex's credentials to think that he can home school your child? I'm not against home schooling but I'm sure I wouldn't let my ex do that with our daughter. He is not dumb but I just don't think anyone can do it. I don't think I could do it myself.

- Religion. I think this one is hard to enforce. You will have to deal with the fact that your ex is going to teach her some Christian believes. Even if he doesn't "teach" per se, she is going to be surrounded by costumes. I guess in that case, I would ask my ex to do what he is doing but to not teach her that being agnostic or any other religion for that matter is wrong. Im Catholic and my ex is Greek Orthodox. DD is being raised as Catholic but we are not teaching her this is her only option. If at some point she decides that it is not for her, she will have all my support.

If he doesn't agree about the schooling and refuses to fill out all the needed paper work, I think this is a battle worth fighting and I would take him to court for it.

[ECB]

If neither of you are willing to budge, then the next step might be to involve the courts.

[stephbfan]

Jul 16, 2012 11:55:50 GMT -5 inara said:

Jul 16, 2012 11:44:00 GMT -5 stephbfan said:

- Home school. What are your Ex's credentials to think that he can home school your child? I'm not against home schooling but I'm sure I wouldn't let my ex do that with our daughter. He is not dumb but I just don't think anyone can do it. I don't think I could do it myself.

- Religion. I think this one is hard to enforce. You will have to deal with the fact that your ex is going to teach her some Christian believes. Even if he doesn't "teach" per se, she is going to be surrounded by costumes. I guess in that case, I would ask my ex to do what he is doing but to not teach her that being agnostic or any other religion for that matter is wrong. Im Catholic and my ex is Greek Orthodox. DD is being raised as Catholic but we are not teaching her this is her only option. If at some point she decides that it is not for her, she will have all my support.

If he doesn't agree about the schooling and refuses to fill out all the needed paper work, I think this is a battle worth fighting and I would take him to court for it.

He has none. He doesn't have a college degree and has worked at a family-owned business his entire adult life. Other than a handful of credits he earned in Early Childhood Education classes at the community college, he has no experience with teaching.

Hell no, I wouldn't let him home school my child. Since you are around a year, start saving money for a lawyer and if he refuses to cooperate, just take him to court.

Ask him, what is exactly his experience in education and what would be his plans to do so. I'm sure that he would need a curriculum or something to go by with. Let him hang himself first by showing you, how little thought he has put into it. Ask him specific examples on how he think he can provide your daughter with a better education than a school where she can socialize with other kids and is being educated by people who know what they are doing.

By doing this you don't look like a bitch in front of the judge and then it looks that you actually considered the possibility before shutting him down.

You also need to be straight forward and say no. It is not happening and then name all your reasons that should be factual and supported.

[margaritagirl]

Possibly see if a mediator could help draw something up? It might need to become official in the courts, although I'm not aware of how this is done.

As a teacher, I am anti-homeschool due to socialization issues. I have an above grade level daughter, and while I don't think she was "challenged" in kindergarten, she learned new skills and had a blast, while also learning how to act/function in a classroom setting. I just challenge her here at home, which is what you and XH could continue to do.

As for religion, I am in the opposite of your boat. I am Christian, my XH is athiest. I take my DD to church and expose her to my beliefs, and my XH discusses with her that he doesn't believe in a God. The way I see it, DD is being exposed to both sides of the coin. As she grows older, she'll probably begin to form her own views, and XH and I will have to accept what she chooses as her own path. Knowing it changes and kids aren't very independent thinkers until college, I'm not too concerned about it. I think XH and I both know that we won't push anything down her throat, but rather have intelligent conversation and expose her to our own beliefs/lack thereof. As for your XH, he can't share his beliefs with your children and not be OK with you doing the same. Cross the sex education bridge when you get to it.

He will probably never agree with you, but if you want to share your views, he has a right to share his as well. It's that simple, unless a court order says otherwise.

[mandimija]

What Stephb said. I'm a deeply religious Christian, but also weird (at least compared to my fellow Southerners) that I think homeschooling is a bad idea, won't touch abstinence-only education (though I will encourage waiting), am a staunch believer in evolution/solid science in general, don't like the idea of sheltering a child from the real world because it's juxtaposed to one's religious beliefs, and firmly believe that a child needs to be exposed to many differing points of view, allowed to choose his or her own, and to treat other views as valid even if they do not share them. All of that to say, I'm with you.

As an educator, I'm also appalled at the idea of this man wanting to homeschool his child without at least some kind of college degree. I have my master's, and I wouldn't touch homeschooling a child (at least not past 4th grade or so) because I'm simply not qualified in certain areas (like math or science) and therefore would not be capable of providing them with the best possible education. Simple as that.

As a Christian, I have an issue with the religion your XH seems to be foisting off on his daughter, especially because the man doesn't seem to practice it himself (that, and the theology is wonky at best, but that's just MHO). He cheated on his wife and treated her terribly, yet demands 'purity' out of his daughters? For serious? Consistency fail.

I agree that you may well need to take this to court. He's doing what I see several ultra-conservative Christians do: demanding respect for his beliefs while not respecting yours and the fact that you *both* need to decide *together* how to raise your daughter and get *equal* say.

All of that to say: I think you're right in this case and that your XH is being an asshat.

[formerlyak]

School: My ds was academically advanced for his age going into pre-K. So were a lot of kids in his class. If you find a preschool where a lot of the parents are well educated, my guess is that there will be a lot of kids just like your dd. That is what we found with ds. While he was still known as the "smart" kid in his class, he got a lot out of preschool (and kinder this past year). Teachers are smart. They know that if a kid isn't challenged they will get bored. The good ones find a way to challenge the smart ones. For my ds and one of his friends, they created a higher level reading and math group and gave them more challenging assignments to work on while the other kids worked in their own groups. No one was "called out" but they all had level-appropriate work. In pre-k, he was challenged with some social tasks. For example, he is pretty outgoing and friendly, so his "job" was when a new kid came in he would give them a tour and introduce him to the other kids. This is a great skill to have in life and I am glad his pre-K teachers gave him this challenge.

For the religion thing, I know my parents were different religions. They agreed to let my mom bring us up Catholic as long as at a certain point we then got to choose if we wanted to continue in that church or not. Both my brother and I chose not to continue when it got to that point, because we didn't believe in the politics of the Catholic Church. If he lets you "win" on the school thing, I'd maybe suggest compromising on the religion thing. Let that be what he "teaches" her (the basics of Christianity), but fight against the purity bs (because everyone knows that it really means jack to the kid). And set an age at which point dd gets to decide if she wants to continue with that religion or not. Or you could take the path my dad's parents took -- agree that he can teach her about his beliefs as long as you can also teach her about yours. When she reaches a certain age, she gets to decide which path she takes.

I'd look into meeting with a mediator.

[dakotadangerdog]

i'm not a parent, but holy shit I would be PISSED if I was you. I would NOT allow him to homeschool her, and I would sure as shit teach her that Christianity is just one opinion, there are many religions, none are correct, and creationism is bs lol.