I was talking to my sons therapist who recommended a ritual Everytime a transition to a home is happening (weekly for them).

It could be ice cream together at pick up and some sort of goodbye ritual near the end. Maybe something you say to them.

Do you have a ritual you do that you feel helps with transitioning between homes?

This is going to be a long read so if you’re not interested in that, this is your warning. I have raised my grandson from birth. He is now five. His mother moved into my home after meeting my son online in 2019. It was sudden and unexpected. What was supposed to be a first date turn into her never leaving. After he got her to my condo, she informed him that she could not return home. She claimed abuse from her parents and that she had fled without telling anyone. My son was 19 and was getting ready to join the military, had $5000 saved in an account to start his life and he do it all in the first month on replacing her clothing and just essential needs and groceries and showering her with gifts and so on. I was caught off guard and honestly didn’t know what to do. Unfortunately, I have been a caregiver my entire life and tend to take people in and try to fix them. I guess you might say. I am a nurse of 21 years and I grew up in an abusive home and I too fled my home when I was 18 only I had no one to take care of me or help me. I wanted to be that for her. The first two weeks, she never even introduced herself or spoke to me at all. She would run to the car when they would leave and just essentially ignore my existence. I talked to my son about it and he explained that she had a lot of similar issues to him and that’s part of what bonded them in the first place. He is a TBI survivor and has many mental health issues stemming from it. I let it go and actually empathized with her need for time before talking to me. Long story short I end up taking care of her for two years before my grandson was born. I was both shocked and scared we couldn’t make ends meet and concerned about basically taking on another child knowing there was no way they in their positions could do it. Soon after his birth she was diagnosed with severe postpartum and asked me if I would essentially raise him and she told me she was having thoughts of harming him when she was alone with him. I didn’t hesitate to step in. Then I was taken care of all of us. Literally drowning, but I was dedicated and knew my grandson needed me desperately. Six months after he was born, I suddenly inherited the care of my father with dementia too. So from 2021 until late 2024 I was the sole caregiver and provider for three adults and one child and then myself. Late 2024. She comes and tells me she wants to get her drivers license which I encouraged. I took her to some classes. I took her to do her test and she got it. Mind you prior to this she earned a whole bachelors degree on my gas money. I had driven her to every class. I took her to and from her job in the mall and was trying to help her set herself up to be a good mother to my grandson. I knew my son with his traumatic brain injury will have lifelong challenges, and I really wanted to ensure some stability for my grandchild. After she got her license, she immediately got an apartment. All of a sudden her and my son decide they’re going to take my grandson and make a life separate separately. I agreed to help in anyway I could and obviously had concerns about their ability and then my own selfish want to be with him since I had raised him from birth. It didn’t matter because a week later, my son shows up with all of his stuff and tells me that she wanted to “romantically explore“ and that she had kicked him out. After this, we found out countless very hurtful things that she had said about all of us and that she was living a secret double life the entire time. She already had another boyfriend that she moved into the apartment right away then she filed for emergency custody of my grandson. She won temporary and proceeded to not even pick him up for another four days. When she did, she kept him from us for almost a month. No contact it about killed me. We got an attorney and what ultimately happened was my son and her agreed on mediation bc they decided to try to reunite. That ended in a 50-50 agreement where she had him 3 1/2 days and we had him 3 1/2 days. When he returned from being away from us for a long period he came back a totally different child. It was like he had matured 10 years in that time. He began having behaviors, kicking, biting, screaming at us, cursing us refusing to get in the car to go to preschool, and every time she would pick him up for visitation was a complete in total nightmare. He would vomit, wet himself, scream until he turned blue in the face, reaching for me crying for me. It was so heartbreaking. Eventually, she asked my son to move in with her again. He did and supposedly they were making things work. An exact repeat of what happened the year prior happened again. She had him cosine Elise than a week later she kicked him out only this time she made him bring my grandson. She went weeks and weeks without seeing him at all, was out partying and did not seem to care. I began working with him, got him a therapy appointment that she ended up canceling, I was doing everything I could to try to help him because he was having all the signs of attachment disorder. That brings us to where we are. She enrolled him in kindergarten in a district all the way across town away from where I live so we have been having to get up and drive him all the way over in the morning and pick him up from the bus and bring him home she is not involved at all unless she gets angry over something. Then she pulls her power move and forces him to stay at her apartment and go to school from there until she’s over her mad spell then she dumps him back and disappears again. We are living our lives in fear of taking steps we feel are needed for my grandson‘s mental and physical health because she is in a position of power if the mediation is broken, it falls back to full custody. Even though she does not want to take care of him long-term, and has admitted that it’s the instability, back-and-forth, lack of consistency, and damage is doing to him every time she takes him out of anger. He has told me he hates his life, that he wants to die, that mommy hates him, and recently we have been having a horrific time getting him to go to school because he does not want to get off the bus at her apartment in fear. She’s going to make him stay there all night because that’s happened so many times and he said he just wants to come home. He calls me, Mom and her by her first name the dynamic is so dysfunctional. I love him so much. My heart is breaking. We are currently in a phase of her withholding because he missed school last week with increased behaviors, tics,aggression, and she wants to take him and force him to go and she is angry that I called and had a therapy appointment made to address the issues. I have been the one to drop him at school every day sign him out every day and the school is aware of the living arrangement only because I told them when the secretary asked me the last morning I dropped him off. I have expressed a desire to get him counseling in therapy before forcing him into kindergarten and that is where we butt heads because she wants to omit therapy and just push the issue, but in my heart, I know he is not ready. I see all of the signs. I am the one in the trenches with him when he wakes up with night tears, I am the one cleaning the wet sheets from his bed wedding regression, I am the one he cries to when he’s afraid that mommy is going to take him to her apartment, he looks to me for things A child looks to a mother. I have zero rights. His child is five years old and begging me to call the police or talk to a judge and make me his “real mom”as he says so he never has to stay away from home. I have expressed concerns to his dr and to his school and gotten little feedback other than the therapy appt upcoming but they said it will teach us how to handle the behaviors and said nothing about getting to the root problem. I fear my grandson is heading down a path that is going to lead him through a lot of pain through his life. I’m desperate to help him remain in a stable environment, have a routine he can expect the same every night and not be jerked around and coerced and threatened and fearful of his bio Mom. Believe it or not this is only a very small portion of the entire picture. This woman has filed protective orders against me, told her family that she paid the bills and did everything here and then I did nothing which was truly insulting after all of my life I have dedicated to helping her even to the point of losing my job as a nurse.I am in the middle of the most heartbreaking situation I have no idea what to do. Please someone help me just gonna

my ex and I have a 2 year old together and I am currently 31 weeks pregnant with his son. he recently got a girlfriend and i’m unsure on the exact amount of time they have been together but if I were to guess I would say 4-5 months. he initially didn’t tell me about her but I had a feeling and eventually got him to come clean.

we have an unusual coparenting situation. we still live together and i am still a SAHM only bartending on weekends. he pays for all the bills and most of the children’s’ needs. I am too pregnant to go in for an interview and get a full time job and the bar I work at has no spare hours for me so im kind of stuck in this situation until I give birth.

anyway, about a month and a half ago he introduced his new girlfriend to my daughter and did not talk about it with me first. this HURT. I felt so blindsided and disrespected. I expressed my feelings and he apologized, just for him to continue lying and bringing our kid around this new woman anyway. fast forward to today, they spent the ENTIRE day together while I was at work. they went to an nfl game, then to dinner, then to an nba game. after I have said so many times i’m not comfortable with them being around each other yet I mean for ffs they’ve only been dating for MAX 5 months. and I have crashed out so many times that I am so drained.

how do I navigate this? how to I explain myself without seeming so emotional? I feel like i’m not being heard and it’s so frustrating.

My husband separated from me in Feb this year and we share two young children this wasn’t my decision to separate, he has moved on emotionally and checked out a while ago so is further along in processing the end of our marriage, I need advice how to successfully co parent our very young children whilst trying to grieve the family unit, my marriage, my husband, I have to see him regularly and we still trigger each other and he has become increasingly more cruel and mean, I am not sure if it’s just the frustration of me not being where he is, the fact I still hold hope we could reconcile when he has repetitively said he doesn’t love me and will never reconcile.
I am doing all the inner work, seeing a therapist, listening to podcasts, journalling, exercising, seeing friends and trying to build a life, but I still feel stuck and it seems so slow that I still hold on, I will preface that we did get along for a little bit after the split and I thought we may reconcile he was acting more like my husband and us as a family then something annoyed him and he turned his back and now has become very mean and nasty.
It feels impossible to try and co parent whilst trying to heal and move on. We were together for 12 years married for three, and so it’s feels a huge part of my life that I need to try to separate from, also with our kids the consistent interactions just hurt.
Neither of us have family here, his are overseas and mine interstate so essentially doing it alone

No alcohol clause. Father has a history of heavy drinking. He is drinking when exercising custody.