I have to say that after ten months of co-parenting, things have gone pretty smoothly. I’m lucky enough to have an ex who is cooperative in all matters of coordinating our children’s lives. But this past week an issue has come up and it is something that has left me unsure of how to proceed.

As I was on my way pick up Oliver and Amélie from school, S called me to let me know that Oliver was pretty badly behaved for the past two days. He wasn’t listening well and stayed loud after being asked to quiet down. S told me that she told Oliver that when he went to Papa’s house that evening, there would be no computer time and no movie time.

Now for the most part, I am in agreement with S about what constitutes unacceptable behavior, though sometimes we still have different standards. We do regularly communicate about what we want and we try to make the two households as consistent as possible so there are not two different standards.

But I don’t remember it ever coming up that how one child behaved at one house would be disciplined at the other. I don’t know why but I feel I need to actually see the offense in order to provide a discipline that strikes the right tone and is portioned out in the right amount. I just don’t feel comfortable disciplining Oliver for offenses that I didn’t see. I’m not even able to sit him down and talk to him about it because I just don’t have the references and specifics to talk to Oliver about his behavior.

Has this happened to you? How do you address it? Should I ask S to portion out her own discipline after Oliver goes back to her house this weekend? And what good would that be? I happen to believe that discipline should be handled as soon after the offense as possible.

Depot Dad is stumped on this one.

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