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" I&amp;#039;ve been having a recurring problem with David lately. As a child with autism, David is all about repetition, repetition, repetition in everything, particularly rules and normal, everyday behaviors. Some of these are constant, for instance, David can&amp;#039;t stand to have the ends of his shoelaces longer than the bows, he can&amp;#039;t stand to have sticky hands (even though it&amp;#039;s fine if his face is a mess) and he likes his showers so hot they turn his skin red. But when it comes to other things that I was sure were constants in his behavior, it turns out that Dad&amp;#039;s house has one set of behaviors, and my house has another. And I hate to say it, but it&amp;#039;s all my fault. I have a real tendency to baby David sometimes, and I know it. Part of that&amp;#039;s me not challenging him enough and part of it is that it&amp;#039;s just easier for me to do it myself sometimes than to wait around, expecting him to do something. Take his shoes, for instance. We&amp;#039;ve always had him in velcro closing sneakers because it&amp;#039;s easier for him. But next year in middle school, they have some weird rule that you have to have tie sneaker for physical education, so we&amp;#039;ve been determined to teach him how to tie his shoes. I&amp;#039;ve tried with pretty much no success - he just gets frustrated because his fine motor skills have never been great. So every morning, he puts his sneakers on and I tie them for him. I don&amp;#039;t really have time to let him try for twenty minutes and have me do it anyway. The problem is, or so Anna informs me (and Peter confirms) - David knows how to tie his shoes. He does it at his Dad&amp;#039;s all the time. He also wears blue jeans over there - something he refuses to do at my house (he prefers pants with elasticized waists). And he tries all kinds of new foods over there, too, when he won&amp;#039;t even consider it with me. I need to stop caving into him and pushing him more. When we were married, Peter was pushing David all the time and we occasionally butted heads about it because there were times when it was definitely not a good move and I always felt that Peter needed to pick his battles with David better. It turns out that going to the other extreme and never challenging him is bad, too. Now David does all this stuff, but not for me because he knows I&amp;#039;ll cave in and make it easy for him. Lesson learned in co-parenting - sometimes, you need to remember what your former partner&amp;#039;s strengths were and adopt some new behaviors for yourself.  Do your kids behave in very different ways when they&amp;#039;re with your ex? Have you learned anything from it? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a48230/his-house-my-house/>