Is it conflicting?

amother

Wheat

Sun, Jun 18 2017, 3:20 pm

Dd5 visits her (otd) father one day a week and holidays and an occasional shabbos. She gets kosher by him and watched quite a lot of tv plus he dresses her different to my standard of tznius etc.
I don't make an issue of things when it's not necessary as I choose my battles.

My question is though, is it confusing her?
And if it Is, what can I do about it?

WhatFor

Sun, Jun 18 2017, 3:41 pm

I think children can understand the concept of "I do one thing at Mommy's house and another at Daddy's." I think it would get confusing and painful if one parent started putting down what the other parent did, and I think there's a risk in that if you try to talk to her about it.
If at any point father starts violating the terms of the divorce agreement, talk to him directly, not daughter, and not when daughter can hear.

amother

Rose

Sun, Jun 18 2017, 6:46 pm

If it touches on your core values of tznius and such, then I do think it is confusing. If it's just a style/preference issue then you can go with the idea that mommy and daddy have different rules/styles. But if for example you send her to a Bais Yaakov school where she learns to wear long sleeves and long skirts, and daddy wants to put her in tank tops and shorts while she's with him, then that's going to end up being very disturbing for her at some point. Could be now she's too young to care but you need to figure out a policy now because where are you going to draw the line?

I am in a similar situation and we put in the divorce agreement that he needs to follow the standards of her school while she is with him. That way she gets some level of consistency between both homes and school, and we don't have to deal with more specific disagreements because it's one general rule (I.e. instead of having me vs. him on clothes, food, movies, etc, the rule is always follow school policies.) Not saying he's never going to break that rule but I felt it was a good starting point.

amother

Firebrick

Sun, Jun 18 2017, 8:01 pm

I don't think it's confusing to children when each parent has his/her own way of dressing the child.
I'm in a similar situation.
As long as you don't speak badly about the other parent, and you try to neutralize any negative charge you might have about him, your child will be ok.