Nobody told us how hard co-parenting could be. And co-parenting right now during a global health crisis? It's been darn near impossible. To keep her ex in the loop, one woman has been sending him photos of their daughter — just silly and sweet things like her daughter participating in online challenges and snacking on frozen vegetables — but got "bombarded" with angry texts criticizing her in return. Now the mom's instituted a new policy: No more photos to her baby daddy. Is she wrong?
The mom explained that currently she's the only one with custody of her 8-year-old.
Her daughter's father lives in the city, so for the moment he's not getting any visitation, she explained in a post on Reddit.
Usually the mom thinks it's nice to send her ex some photos and videos of their daughter throughout the week.
We would think that gesture would be even more appreciated now that the two can't see each other. But nope — her ex has been more "cranky and critical these last few weeks."
"I get that he's stressed, but so am I and some of it is very aggressive," she wrote.
One of the videos is of their daughter trying to put on a shirt while doing a handstand.
Just like actor Tom Holland did on Instagram.
"She was laughing the whole time and because she was doing a sort of angled handstand against the wall, she would fall on her knees and not her head or neck," the mom recalled. "I thought it was a cute video."
Her ex obviously didn't agree that the stunt was harmless.
As soon as she sent the video, he responded to her with a slew of text and voice messages "yelling at me for letting her do something so dangerous and calling me a reckless mother and an attention grabber."
The mom swears she didn't even post the videos onto social media; she only sent them to her daughter's dad and grandma.
In a second video, the mom managed to capture something really rare: her kid eating vegetables.
It's usually a parenting win when you can get your little ones to eat greens, so when she and her daughter recently figured out that she only will eat peas and corn if they're frozen, she wanted to capture it on film.
"I thought the picture was cute and sent it to him," she explained. But he took it to mean that the mom wasn't feeding their daughter "nutritious and filling meals."
Truth be told, the whole thing has been very draining to the Redditor.
So she made the executive decision that she's no longer sending him photos of the kid. Period.
"He's welcome to call whenever but I'm done sending him snapshots of our daughter's day because he's so d–n critical," she reasoned.
Her ex, however, thinks she's being unfair.
In fact, he's angry and thinks she should keep sending the photos because he can't have visitation at the moment.
"Some of my friends are on my side, but a few think I should keep sending the photos and just ignore the criticism," she continued. But is she wrong for refusing to send photos to her ex?
The comments section was in agreement: He lost the right to any photos of their daughter.
In fact, some thought there was something shady going on.
"Don’t send him anything else," one person warned. "He’s already proven that he is going to use those photos to accuse you of being a bad mother. He’s done it twice now. Don’t give him any ammunition."
"My first thought when I read his responses was he was going to twist these things around if given an opportunity to make you look like a bad mom," someone else wrote. "Maybe like a Skype call or FaceTime or something live like that. So he can see her and hear her real time."
"To me it sounds like he’s trying to set her up as a bad mother, possibly for custody reasons," a third commenter agreed. "Maybe I’m paranoid but his flipping out over little things and instantly saying 'You’re a bad mother!' Is suspicious."
Other people thought she needed to take a step back before going nuclear.
"Don't cut him off completely — you have 10 years still for potential legal battles," one commenter advised. "But do the minimum and then ignore any [expletive] that comes back. He's trying to pick a fight."
"Has she even tried talking to him about this yet, though?" a second commenter wondered. "Like… Using your adult words and saying hey, I'm doing my best here to keep you included during this hard time. I understand it's stressful for you and that you miss her, but do you realize how awful you're being to me in the process? Could you knock it off? I don't have to be doing any of this."
A third person had a good piece of advice if Dad can't behave.
"I’d send 'curated' pictures," the person advised. "I had to do this for my in laws who would hone in on the one bad thing in the photo and say something under the pretense of 'we know she’s having fun but you shouldn’t let her do xyz,' when xyz was her pretending to use the vacuum cleaner, or feeding her baby real applesauce and making a mess.
"So I started sending posed pics in neutral settings," the person continued. "Her smiling against a wall, her smiling in the sunshine etc."
To us, that is the only compromise the mom should make.
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