Things are out of control at my house and I do not know how they are going to end up.  It is incredibly hard to raise kids when you have "yours" and "mine".  Both parents think the other is too easy on their own child(ren).  Our home is no different.  While I am not painting a picture that my daughter is perfect, I have always raised her in a strict sense and she knows what is right from wrong.  My stepsons are raised by mothers who do not take the time to raise them properly and their father wants to be their "friend" not their parent, no needless to say, they tend to be more misguided.  All 3 of my stepsons, in their short lives, have stolen, they have lied right to their fathers face, they have all been in trouble at school, and they all sneak things they know they are not supposed to do, touch, watch etc.  Hylari's faults are that she is extremely mouthy and she has lied to us before.

But what happened this weekend is unexcuseable in the way my husband handled two different situations.  We were on our way to AJ's basketball game on Saturday morning.  Brock had brought a toy gun with him in the car in which my husband told him could not go into the school.  He had brought the gun from his mothers house, which I am surprised my husband let him bring it over to our house in the first place because we do not do "toy guns" or any guns what so ever at our house.  This gun was one of the long guns, I believe a riffle would be it's correct term, but I don't know much about guns so I am not 100% sure.  So we are driving down the road and Brock asks if he can play with his Gameboy game at the school.  My husband told him he could not because he got it taken away the night before for something he did....I can't remember what it was.  Brock proceeds to pick up the riffle, puts it up against my husbands head and pulls the trigger.  At first my husband did not do a thing about it.  I sat there shocked that he didn 't even have a reaction to what Brock did.  I jumped in and told Brock to give me the gun in which he promptly handed it to me.  My husband then calmly told Brock he was grounded from the game system for the whole day long.  That was it.  Nothing else was said.  I am still sitting there just floored about what happened.  I told my husband that I was throwing the gun in the trash once we got to the school.  My husband told me that I couldn't throw the gun away because Brock's mother bought it and I can't throw things away that she buys.  Hello????  Am I the only sane person in Brock's life?????  Once we get into the school Brock asks me if he can have his Gameboy.  I started to talk to him about what he did wrong and asked him who his dad was.....hoping to get a response that his dad was his father, who he needed to respect and listen to.  Brock's response was he is part dad and part devil!  Now I know he was upset with his dad but still.......this all is way out of line in my mind.   We get home from the game and I start cooking lunch.  I always go and check on our kids every 15 minutes or so just to make sure no one is doing something they shouldn't be.  I go in and check in on Brock and he is in his room playing a game system that he brought from his mothers house.  Myself and AJ both let my husband know and he did nothing.  I am thinking to myself...your son held a toy gun to your head and pulled the trigger so you grounded him from the game system, yet he is playing a game system and you are aware of it and you are doing nothing.  Several hours later when I went to check on Brock again he was playing the game system again.  This time I was not going to let my husband do nothing about it.  Of course, my husband acts like he wasn't even aware Brock was doing it the first time.  The game system gets shut off.  Up to this point my husband has never sat down with Brock and talked to him about the toy gun situation and how wrong it was.  Sunday afternoon rolls around and Brock asks my husband if he can play on the game system.  My husband grants his request although I am thinking since he got it taken away the day before and he went behind my husbands back and played it two different times that we were aware of that he shouldn't get to play at all on Sunday.  And especially because my husband had still not talked to him about the toy gun incident. But my husband let him play.   The boys end up going home on Sunday evening and my husband never mentioned it.  It was like it never happened. 

Late Sunday evening Hylari is getting her school stuff in order and her binder is messing up.  She starts throwing a fit and talking real loud about her "STUPID BINDER!"  I told her to calm down and she responds back to me and is overly dramatic and very out of line in her tone.  My husband tells her she needs to listen to me and do what she is told.  She then blows up on my husband in which my husband blows back up on her and grounds her.  I do not disagree one bit with my husband grounding her.  She was talking completely disrespectful to both of us and throwing a fit over a binder in which she needed to learn to control herself.  I am glad he grounded her because if he wouldn't  have I would have done the same thing.  However, it was his delivery of yelling and screaming at her.  Her attitude is not acceptable but neither was the way my husband handled it.  Part of the lesson was to teach her to control herself and how can my husband do that if he wasn't doing it himself? 

Furthermore, I couldn't understand why he was so incredibly upset and mad for her being mouthy yet was so calm and collect when his son pointed a toy gun to his head and pulled the trigger? Then his son defied him by playing the game system when he was told not to because that was his punishment.  My husband let the whole weekend go by without a second thought about the incident but the way he reacted to Hylari being mouthy you would have thought she burnt the house down. 

It is getting out of hand to where my husband sees being mouthy as the worst offense our children can do yet when his boys stold from us, lied to us, and now the gun incident he acts as if they spilled a glass of water on the floor.  In fact, once we got home from AJ's game my husband opened the mail and noticed that Mike had made a 5 hour long distance call on our phone.  My husband calls Mike and calmly says, "I am not going to go off on you but you made a 5 hour long distance call on our phone and I am going to have you pay for the charges."  After any incident with the boys my husband always takes the time to explain to them that he loves them and that he has to be a parent.  Yet with Hylari he goes off on her and never looks back. 

I have completely had it.  I have told him from the get go he HAS to treat Hylari better than he treats me or he will loose us both.  I don't have a problem when he disciplines her when she does wrong but he must deliver it in a way that is acceptable.  It is very obvious for Hylari and I both to see her discipline is delivered in a way different tone and manner than how it is delivered to the boys. 

I had always said I was going to order the Raising Up Boys audio book because I think it would be good for my husband and I but I never did.  This morning that is the first thing I did when I got up.  I read the reviews and it says that it not only helps with raising boys but with girls too.  Of course my husband said he does not need to listen to any CD's to be a good parent. 

I basically told him the CD's were ordered and he was welcome to listen to them when they come in.  I also told him there would not be another "next time" that he treats Hylari in the manner as he had in the past.  He did mention to me that he "dropped the ball" on the gun incident and will deal with it when Brock is over on Wednesday.  He did ask me how I would feel if someone threw away a toy of Hylari's that I did not authorize.  I responded to him that if I was stupid enough to not throw away a toy gun that my child pointed to my head and pulled the trigger myself that I sure hope anyone that was around me that seen it happen would be smart enough to do so.  Of course, he had no response to that because he knows I am right.  Futhermore, I do not want to be part of the equation of children that I helped raise and did not teach right from wrong who end up having major legal problems as adults.  I understand that he doesn't get to see his boys that often but that does not excuse the fact that God blessed him with these boys and he needs to be their FATHER.