Step Talk

dealing with a bitter controlling ex-wife and her horrendous ill behaved kids is hard. She is ruining her kids & they take after her. SHe's a horrible horrible person. I've never seen someone so nutso. Everyone hates the bitch.

As a result of EX issues, we also have discipline, continous money demands, viistation conflicts, skid/SM rivalries. In one fell swoop. BM receives substantial CS and we share 50/50, she needs more money because she is getting married , she was refused and told that after 10 yrs these are things she should be working out with her soon to be H, therefore she said the kids cannot go on a trip with us and turned it into the kids don't want to go because they don't like me or my kids. Well the skids went nuts and told her they are going, they like the trip and then she said it's because of their grades like she even has a clue what those are!

Oh such drama

After being here for about 6 months, I can predict the outcome of this one! THE EX will win, hands down...everytime. I cannot think of one person here that does not resent the ex....well, maybe one or two people. But its always her fault!

Everyone likes to blame the biomom, but believe me, if you have MAJOR issues in your marriage, the biomom is only a symptom of the disease.

I remember posting that once and someone telling me that it was bullshit. She would have a perfect marriage if it weren't for biomom. Uh...........don't think so......

Lo and behold a few days later she was posting about her husband's abusive ways. THAT can not be attributed to bio.

IMHO!

Good poll, but definately an opening to bitch about the bio....again!

MONEY, Money, money. The shits really going to hit the fan in my camp soon. BF has been over paying the child support by about $ 100 bucks a week. ( That was the only way BM would sign the divorce papers ) We made it clear that cs would be adjusted every tax season. My guess is she forgot this small fact. And in a few weeks when BF drops the cs down to where it should be ( Maybe because we want to live and pay our bills ) BM is going to go clear off the deep end. It's not going to be pretty.

Discipline! What's that! The BM doesn't know what that word means.
I'ld like to smack her over the head with a dictionary.
Don't even get me started on the bullshit these kids learned by her lack of parenting skills.

Good poll Dawn. BioMom you crack me up.
JO

I know I'm about to get slammed hard by you ladies, but...
I am BD to a Son, and SD to 5 (S)Daughters and a (S) Son.

Due to various unresolved/partially resolved issues concerning All "Our" ( when We are fighting "Hers" and "My Son" ) Kids,Us,transportation, finances, Exes, etc. I have had severely limited with My Son, for several months, and have recently not had basically NO time with Him. When We have tried to discuss My Son coming here, and I questioned what it would take, and got what I Understood, by the wording and tone to be unreasonable conditions, I was WRONG and it turned into another episode of " You Care More about Your Ex, than Me and MY kids..."as usual...

The best part is I'm accused consistently of being "an abusive asshole" and "ridiculous in My Expectations of Behavior" but when the kids She doesn't Discipline push Her too far, She is at least as Harsh as I am, (in theory, She nearly never actually follows through)
or tells them "You are Steve's, I give up..." then when I actually ride Them and MAKE Them and DO WHAT THEY SHOULD, She starts fighting with Me about My Methods of Enforcement, etc. It's EFFECTIVE, I DON'T Corporaly Discipline Them, but I accept NO BOGUS EXCUSES, If It ISN'T Done, They don't get "breaks" every two seconds, etc. until I Give Up and let Them off.

Then if I say something about spending Money for a hotel or staying somewhere else for a day or two on weekends, so I can Have time with My Son, instead of Sympathy, I get how where I'm going is So Horrible and why can't/won't I bring Him Here, when She is the one who has said "He isn't welcome in (Her) House..."

I could go on forever, but I will stop now, because I am getting too far from the root point I was trying to make...sorry.

Steve

I would've thought it would be money first with visitation running a very close second. (I think "ex issues" is kind of a broad term and could include all these other things, so maybe that's skewing the results. I dunno.) My vote was for visitation (obviously!) because that's the biggest problem we have and fallout from that trickles down into just about every aspect of our life. I mean, we definitely have gone rounds with the skids' mother, but it was mostly about visitation and access to the children. I guess that could be considered an "ex issue," since the ex was the one who has refused visitation, but I guess I don't see the problem as being an "ex issue." To me, it's about visitation, not so much about personalities or ancient history.

~ Anne ~

Our bm use to be a really really bad mom...she has done some growing up (slowly), and now I call her a superflake. For us, we don't have money issues with her b/c she is now paying us cs (even though it's a reduced amount, and we don't have consistent payments) it doesn't cause any issues in our relationship, or problems in working with her. We still have a roof over our head, and food in our bellies, so we just don't lose sleep over cs.

Our stress today is much different than it was 6 years ago...and most of it revolves around her flaking out on ss, or on us. She definitely has committment issues...whether it be committing to a s.o., or disicpline, she just can not ever follow through with anything she ever promises. And it can be hard to work with at times.

My biggest issue is not feeling the same about bio son and ss. It is hard for me to treat them as equals.

Its how differently my husband and I were both raised. Which is exact opposites..

I am a tough love parent.
He is not tough on his kids at all..

That is probably it..
Happy

like step-sibling rivalry and visitation and then I figured that all of these stem from the ex. Never met her, don't want to, she doesn't give me a hard time, there's no yelling, no abuse....

BUT - she can't pack a bag for her child, can't discipline her child, doesn't spend quality time with her and is generally inept at parenting.

THEREFORE - her lack of parenting causes visitation difficulties, step-sibling rivalries, issues about money (money to buy clothes that she should be buying and paying for activities she should be paying for)

1 negative + 1 positive = a negative

Money and Visitations seem to be our biggest issues. I have two BM's to deal with. BM1 always wanted to take away our time, and BM2 seems to be playing a game, run by the system, for money.

StepMom

Man has the intelligence to change his life,
Sometimes, he just fails to use it...

Oh, like getting over my resentment of the ex wife and trying to figure out just how involved I'm supposed to be in my stepkids' lives...I KNOW I overthink things, especially with the girls...
I wrote a big, rambly, babbly blog on that just last night.

I'm trying to just go with the flow but it's hard. I wish stepparenting came with a dang manual.

Each of our children have VERY different personalities. I have 2 girls (3 and 5) DH has 1 boy (3). DH and I were raised very different, and have different opinions on how each situation should be handled. SS gets away with a lot, but more because DH does not want him to "dread" coming home to Dad that punishes him, and doesn't want SS to rather be with BM where he is an only child. He is still punished, just not in the same mannor as my girls... it gets under my skin, but we are working through it. The older the kids get and more comfortable they become with being a blended family, the EASIER it is to create rules and punishments that apply to ALL kids in our home. SO our issue it more between US than having anything to do with BM. She can't help the fact that there are NO kids at her house for him to argue with and not share and whatever other issues come along with being siblings... he does not have any reason to be punished much. She does lack in that area... and does not punish him as often as she should. He gets away with a lot there, like back talking and completely ignoring her... BUT- she will change her ways. It was a huge eye opener when he shattered her car window by throwing rocks last week, because SHE allows him to throw rocks. She will learn the hard way and that is not our problem, it is hers. He knows his boundries at our house... and takes advantage of his mom every chance he gets...

even though I voted for Money. I'll explain~ yes, there are visitation issues and there are CERTAINLY issues with her....but what bothers me most is that we have to PAY the bitch, and that I know she loves getting our family's money to do whatever she decides with. She got power, she got control. I can't stand knowing that such a horrible person gets rewarded for her actions. I hesitate to call her the Ex, because she's not the ex-wife. She was a slut, coming from her own mouth. We have no issues with SS as far as anything else goes.

Man, I long for the day when BM's could be denied support when they deny visitation.....

It's a pretty close tie between
Step-sibling rivalry
and
Step-parent/step-child rivalry

since we have the kids all the time, we've virtually eliminated the issues that come with dealing with the BM or BF (correct form of birth-father? or is that boyfriend? LOL! Not funny if used out of context!!!) on a regular basis, but they DO come up and cause problems between us and the kids, or between the kids because the KIDS bring them up and cause friction. Things like at "At MOMs house we got to this all the time" or "You ALWAYS treat [insert name of any other child in the house here] better than me because I'm not yours".
I wish they'd get it through their heads that they are ALL OURS. But it's going to to take years....I try to be patient

renee - *blend