My Ex Gave Our Boys Burner Phones for a Nefarious Reason. This Is Not “Harmless Fun.”

This is a newsletter bonus question. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My ex-husband, “Grant” and I have two boys, “Evan,” 12, and “Zachary,” 13, whom we share custody of. The boys spend every other week with their dad. I’ve recently discovered that Grant is allowing the boys to do something that has me furious and is prompting me to consider going to my attorney to have our custody arrangement amended. As it turns out, Evan and Zachary have been making obscene phone calls to random strangers and even businesses on burner phones that Grant has been providing! When I confronted him about it, he said it was “harmless fun” and excused it by saying that he used to make crank calls when he was their age and that it “keeps them occupied.” My requests that he stop supplying the boys with the phones immediately were met with the refrain of “my house, my rule.” Is it time to speak to my lawyer over this and possibly the family court judge overseeing our case?

What kind of obscene are we talking: fart jokes or sex ones? If this is silly, gross humor, it’s not worth getting the courts involved; its a simple disagreement over parenting styles and the appropriate response is to model what you expect of your children when they are in your care. If this is truly raunchy adult humor that exposes your kids to ideas that are too mature for them, then you need to raise the issue. Otherwise, it sucks but you’ll have to come to terms with the fact that you and your ex have different ideas of what’s suitable for children. You only need to challenge that in court if there is a threat of real harm present.

I’m a senior at a local university, commuting from home, and my younger sister is leaving soon for a distant school. It’s just me, my sister, and our mother in the house, and I’m worried that I’ll be smothered now that Baby Sis is going away. Mom’s a single parent and does everything she can to keep us close so that she’s not lonely (this includes asking us to sleep in her bed for weeks at a time, and it’s been this way for years). Now that my sister is leaving and it’s just me, I already feel bad about leaving Mom to do homework on campus or stay after class or anything else that keeps me out of the house.