When The Kids Are Failing School At The Other House

When The Kids Are Failing School At The Other House

Often times when we step in to bail the other parent out, we are enabling them to continue failing as parents. We think we are helping the kids, and perhaps they do benefit in the short-run in some way, but in the big picture we are usually playing into codependency dynamics.

This is a game that currently gets played out with the kids' schooling, especially when they are learning remotely. One household lets them fail and the other gets pulled in to bail them out. The home that lets them fail offloads all accountability onto the kids and onto you to rescue. When dealing with a narcissistic ex, they create a situation where you seem to have to choose between engaging the narcissist and letting the kids fail. It is one of the classic games they play.

We know that bailing the other parent out is part of the narcissistic game that keeps us feeding attention to the other parent. They fail and struggle to draw us in and to offload responsibility onto us. We rescue and compensate for their lack of engagement with the kids and get baited into needless contact with them.

But we’re not doing anyone any favors. Yes, of course we always have a responsibility to make sure the kids do well academically. Academic success is a core responsibility we always carry as parents. The way we can help our kids in this seemingly no-win situation is to introduce logical consequences when they don't show up for themselves to take initiative in their own education. In other words, we have to train them in the skill of showing up for themselves and performing self-sufficiently, which may require us to be the disciplinarian.

We take on this role because we do not want the kids to develop the habit of hiding behind the narcissistic parent's neglect that enables the kids to be lazy and undeveloped.
.
.
#coparenting #coparentingdoneright #codependentnomore #coparentingwithanarcissist #coparentingwithatoxicex #blendedfamily #blendedfamilyproblems #divorcedmom #divorceddad #divorcedparents #divorcedmoms #parallelparenting #unapologeticparenting #narcissisticmother #narcissisticfather #toxicrelationships #toxicfamily #stepparenting

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

This is unapologetic parenting podcast dedicated to candidly and unapologetically discussing parenting, divorce and co parenting. We take on the topics most people don't want to talk about and offer support and solutions to help you be a better parent, co parent and human being. Now without further ado, let's get right to it. My name is Carl Knickerbocker. This is unapologetic parenting. And in this episode, we are talking about not bailing out the other parent, and very specifically about the academic issue. So I had put up a post talking about the importance of not bailing the other parent out every time that they fail or come up, totally lack luster, don't show up or forget this forget that. to not fall into that codependent co parenting kind of enabling trap. That's where they underperform, they screw up, they do things or don't do things for the kids. And you have to keep coming in to bail them out, bail them out, bail them out, bail them out. And a lot of times that shows up for us as parents as being oh my gosh, I have to show up for the kids, I have to do this or, or else no one else will or they're going to fail, they're going to go without they're going to this they're going to that. And we need as the other side of that equation to stop and back off, set our expectations as low as possible. And I sincerely mean that put your expectations down to the rock bottom minimum of what that other parent is expected to do. basic food, shelter, clothing, the kids come back in one piece, great. No abuse. All right, you get your gold sticker. If you do anything above that, oh my gosh, I'm shocked and happily surprised. But anything above and beyond that we really can't intervene that much on or we really shouldn't intervene at all, because all it is doing is probably feeding this attention grab, feeding this codependency thing that's probably leftover from the past, it is enabling and rewarding bad behavior and never having them become accountable for themselves to just step up, finally grow up and go learn how to parent or at least be an adult or something. I share your frustration I so share your frustration on this one. But in the space of academics, this seems to be coming up a lot, especially since so many kids have been on remote learning. And what we see. And what I see is that at one house, the kids operated very, very high level, they get A's they do this, they do that they turn in their assignments, they do great. And then at the other house, not so much. They miss assignments, they have absences, their grades are significantly lower. And there are a number of factors that come into that. One is exactly what we're talking about this whole enabling thing. So over at the other house, at least in our experience, there's a different set of values surrounding education. Here we places high high super high premium on education, on learning and going to great schools on performance on grades, academic I mean, we just that is like our thing, or one of our big, big things over at the other house for years. Yes, the story has always been Oh, well, their feelings are more important than their performance. And as long as they feel good about it and their mental health and so delicate flower shouldn't have to learn anything. And I was okay, I failed grades when I was growing up. It's okay if they fail to. I mean, that's literally the thinking that is sadly reinforced by a whole lot of BS out on the interwebs through the pandemic about how unimportant academic successes, you know, it's okay, if your kids are a year behind, it's okay. If they don't do anything, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. We need to focus on their self esteem. Like magically they're going to have self esteem by not accomplishing anything. It shows a fundamental disconnection with how self esteem actually works. And then what the building blocks is of actual success are and just the gains that get lost in momentum and everything else that gets lost going into the future. Anyways, that's a whole other soapbox, I could just go off on just that awful, awful, awful advice about education not being important. So there's that one component where there's that enabling codependency underperformance to try to provoke input, and they want the letters they want the attention, they want you to send notes, they want you to be like, why aren't you doing this? You need to you need to you need to because they feed off of that if they're one of these narcissistic folks, and you can't play into that. You know that goes nowhere, you know that it accomplishes absolutely nothing good, you know that you're going to just be repeating yourself until your face turns blue. And nothing different is going to happen in the space of that kid's academics over at the other house. The other side to this is the kids role in that dynamic. So the kids depending on their age, if they're, you know, fifth, sixth, seventh grade, they're big enough, they know better, they know that they need to get their work done, get their act together, do their assignments, turn it in, there are very, very few excuses of mommy didn't do the mommy didn't follow up on me. It's like, so what your mother didn't follow up on you, you follow up on yourself, everything is right here on your dashboard. And so that's where we have this, this thing is where, you know, well, should we not bail out the parent and thereby, not bail out the kid? Or are they really two separate things that the parent failed, but then find ways to help the kids succeed. And I think that's the key right there is to separate the two issues and say, let's work on what we can actually influence which is going to be the kids and the quality of their performance. And so a big thing with the kids, is you need to have consequences for that behavior, because they're just probably getting rewarded, and nobody cares. And they go and nobody checks up on them. And they're just over there being academic sloths over at the other house. But then when they come back here, perhaps I say, Alright, you missed this, you missed this, you missed this, these things will be done, you're going to lose this and this and this. There are consequences for not showing up for your academic career. And so you have to put logical consequences on the other house, typically, the other parent is just like, Oh, well, if they don't do it, I guess they'll fail that would be the natural consequence of their Ninan. And it's like, Alright, so you're going to turn it over to a child to suffer the natural consequences of playing into your game, and being short sighted because that's what most kids are, and tank, their education and not build in the discipline and skills they need to succeed. Well, that's where the logical consequences come in. That's where we get to say, No, there are going to be consequences, you're going to get your work done, it's expected of you. And you will show up at this house with everything done. And if not, there will be expectations that you will finish it, your grades are going to be up that sort of thing. So that is one way to approach it. You need to focus on the kids, you need to attach the logical consequences to them not showing up and getting their own work done. And it needs to be just reinforced over and over and over again. And this is why this is because of the future. This is because we're training you for college. That is how you navigate that space. You let the parent fail you help the kids succeed. Let the parent just go their way and not show up and teach the kid to show up for themselves wherever they are. This is unapologetic parenting podcast dedicated to candidly and unapologetically discussing parenting, divorce and co parenting. We take on the topics most people don't want to talk about and offer support and solutions to help you be a better parent, co parent and human being. Now without further ado, let's get right to it.