My husband and I have 3 girls, 3, 5, and 12. Our 12 year old is his from a previous relationship.
Our 12 year old has an undiagnosed stomach issue. We’re working with a gastroenterologist, they’ve done blood tests, stool tests, colonoscopies, endoscopies, biopsies down her gi tract, ultrasounds, CT scans, and MRIs. There’s a few things that it might be but nothing fits so far. We’re going to another hospital across the country in a few weeks to see basically a real life Dr House.
Her mom can be problematic. She believes in natural medicine and fought her being put on meds, gave her supplements that made her worse, withheld medication, and missed appointments. We had 50/50 custody until recently.
My step daughter was missing 3-4 days a week of school and was falling behind so my husband and I thought it would be best to home school her. We had already made the decision to homeschool our 6 year old for other reasons and I taught elementary and middle school in that district for nearly 20 years so I’m qualified to teach her.
Her mom refused to allow us to homeschool her because it would be unfair for us to see her on her moms weeks and she refused our other suggestion, which is online school through the district, because it doesn’t count as real school.
We were already taking her to court over the difficulty with meds and appointments so we added the fact that she’s stopping my stepdaughter from getting an appropriate education to the list. Judge sided with us and we are able to make all medical and educational decisions and she sees her mom for 2 hours on Saturdays while being supervised.
My family and my husbands family thinks we’re being cruel to my step daughter and her mom, especially because she had gotten better about complying with her doctors orders after we threatened court but wouldn’t budge on homeschooling. In their minds we took her daughter away because she didn’t want her to be homeschooled.
Now I’m wondering if I’m wrong for insisting on homeschooling and taking things this far.
Oh come on. What else were you supposed to do?
>My family and my husbands family thinks we’re being cruel to my step daughter and her mom,
The only person that matters is the step-daughter. Her mother is actively making her health worse. She denied every other option you put up. You all are going to get in trouble over her missing that much school.
What does the 12 year old want in all this?
She wanted to live with us, not be homeschooled, and see her mom closer to every other weekend unsupervised.
Given that she doesn’t want to homeschool, you need to be thinking about how you are going to transition from homeschooling while you’re working out medical issues that keep here out of school and get her back into school.
I won’t say you’re the ah, but are you not able to try and meet more in the middle to what she wants? At 12 her choices should have more weight when possible. Personally, I’d put more weight on her choices than her mom’s if they’re reasonable.
If she doesn’t want to be homeschooled I would probably recommend trying to work on getting her in school. There are so many social aspects that she’s probably missing. Even though you sound like a competent teacher.
A public school won’t slow down to let her catch up for the days she misses class. I was homeschooled due to an illness, and I’m doing fine socially. I just ended up socializing a lot with other sick kids in the hospital a lot.
With the amount of technology available nowadays and schools having the set up for online learning because of Covid they should be able to support a sick child better imo. Hybrid would be a good option if available in the district.
Info: what does your step daughter want to do?
You need to know that homeschooling is not like teaching public school. I’ve homeschooled two kids for 9 years now, and have many friends and coworkers who homeschool as well, and you need to be super aware of the differences. (In fact, every friend I have who started out as a public school teacher and is now homeschooling their kid says the same thing about how hard it is.) Which means you need to investigate the local homeschool scene (some of them are great, some of them are very not great), the local opportunities that align with both your kids’ needs, and identify external learning resources you are going use or have on standby. And you need to evaluate how you’re going to manage homeschooling kids 6 years apart.
That said, I’m firmly in camp NTA for needing to meet the whole needs of the 12 year old, and this is potentially one way to do so.
Just know that you are getting into something that you aren’t actually trained for the way you think you are. It is something of a given that your kids will cooperate with you the least. (You might read Brave Learner.)
ESH: The mother absolutely should not be in charge of the child’s medical decisions. That said, what your stepdaughter wanted – to live primarily with you, go to the same school with her friends, spend every other weekend with her mom – sounds like a more ideal scenario.
It is a shame her wishes were not taken into consideration.
ESH. The mom for withholding meds, but also you for forcing home school when your step daughter specifically doesn’t want to be home schooled. It makes sense that she is falling behind, but why is she missing 3-4 days a week? 12 is a key time socially and honestly home school will further isolate her from her peers.
Has your step daughter been evaluated by an OBGYN? I ask because a decent number of women I know had terrible *stomach issues* around 10-12 years old and turned out to have Endometriosis, PCOS or something similar that started to show prior to the onset of puberty.
You went from 50/50 split custody, to your step daughter only seeing her mom for two supervised hours a week.
I agree that it’s probably good that she’s no longer making the medical and educational decisions for her daughter, but:
>In their minds we took her daughter away because she didn’t want her to be homeschooled
I mean… you kind of did.
She’s no longer in charge of medical or education decisions, so I guess I’m confused why she is being kept away from her daughter so much? She can’t keep you from homeschooling or taking her to the doctor or giving her medication, so why is she now limited to two supervised hours a week? That’s an extreme change from 50/50.
Edit: I refrained from making a judgment until OP gave some more details, because I was confused why the daughter was having such limited interaction with her mother now. But after reading OP’s comments, I have to say YTA.
Because daughter ***wants*** to see mom more, *and* wants to go to in-person classes. Taking daughter out of school until her health is more stable makes sense, but OP admitted there’s no plan to send daughter back to school, even though that’s what the daughter wants. OP also made it clear that the decision to keep daughter out of school is more about OP’s own issues with how the schools are run, than anything about daughter.
It sounds like both the decision to extremely limit the daughter’s contact with her own mother, *and* the decision to keep her homeschooled indefinitely, are based on OP’s own control issues, and not what’s best for her stepdaughter.
Mostly because she was giving my stepdaughter natural medicine, supplements, random pills, etc. that were making her feel worse.
I’m sorry, why is everyone glossing over this fact? This is WHY mom no longer has regular visits or weekends. “Random pills”??? She could have put her own daughter in the hospital or worse!