Alright so here’s what we are going through. My stepson lives with his mom in Texas. Let’s call his mom (my stepsons mom) Polly. Polly is god awful and rarely lets us speak to him. His behavior is awful and she believes in “no discipline” and that she believes in letting him only learn through natural consequences. It’s terrible. She’s a no-rules household. In turn, our stepson is in incredibly disrespectful. She’s tried diagnosing him with ADHD, ODD, and Autism. I’m getting my PsyD and I can assure you, he has none of those diagnosis. His behavior is out of control because there is no structure but she swears by the “no rules” parenting style and thinks it has to be a diagnosis. Overall, the coparenting situation is toxic. Then to make it better, we have my MIL 🥴 she goes behind our back and appeals to Polly to have control. An example of this would be when him being homeschooled was a battle. Due to my stepson being disrespectful to his teachers, Polly wanted to homeschool him. Dad and I thought this was a terrible idea and that his behavior needed to be addressed. Well...Polly called my MIL. MIL sent her all kinds of things about homeschooling and offered to support her. Of course my husband and I were upset because she needed to stay out of it. Her response? It’s none of our business. She’s tried getting into IEP meetings, everything. If we say no, she goes to Polly. Fast forward to today. We find out through my stepson that my MIL bought him a Nintendo switch. We were pissed. She never said anything to us about it. Of course Polly omitted his awful behavior. We explained to her that she needed to talk to us first and that his behavior has been non-deserving of that. She proceeded to tell us that it’s none of our business and that her relationship with him is separate from us. We were like “um no, we are his parents. There’s nothing separate about it.” She said that we will not control her and that it’s only our business when we have him. We told her if she wouldn’t respect boundaries then she wouldn’t see either of our children (1 lives with us). She continued to gaslight and say “you should be happy I bought your son a gift that made him happy.” We are at our wits end. She causes such a further divide and Polly plays on it. We’re losing control. What do you think?