Step daughter taking me to the edge....please help
I have an 18 year old step-daughter that I am not getting along with. Quite honestly I have had it with her. It is at the point where it has caused such stressful moments in our household and I believe I am starting to build up resentment towards my wife. I love my wife very much, and I know this situation is very hard on her, not only because of how it affects our relationship, but also because she is having trouble with her own daughter. First of all, I have tried to fill a void for both my step children because of the absence of their bio logical father and also because of my biological daughters due to the fact of how much of a difference there is for what I do for mine and the lack of what their father does for them. My wife has allowed the oldest to drop out of high school last year due to lack of interest in school but also under the premise that she would take classes to get her GED. She has now been going to these classes for 10 months and she picks and chooses when she goes to these classes. I am always questioning the process, wondering why it is taking so long. I am always told it is a process, that each individual is different. I agree to this to some degree, but when I come home this past Friday after a long and strenious day at work to find her in bec and decided today was another one of those days she felt she didn't need to go to class. After questioning her and her mom, I find out she is ending classes the middle of this month and she is further back than originally expected. She will need to sign back up in August with really no light at the end of the tunnel. Secondly, we made her get a job last November at Mcdonalds after 7 months of me staying on her and her mom to get applications in. She has been suspended from work now 3 times due to the fact she doesn't show up on the days she is scheduled for. Oh, and believe me, it's never her fault. Either the managers changed the schedule on her without calling her, or instead of getting a ride to work after her classess, she went to her friends and ended up without a ride and so on and so on. Thirdly, she has a cat that completely destroys the spaces she occupies. We have lived in 2 houses now and both the bedrooms and both garages have been completely destroyed by the cat. The smells that come from her room and the garage is disgusting. To the point I do not allow her to keep her door open for any length of time. We have to beg and threaten her to take care of her cat. Fourth, she has been so lazy that she has not gotten her drivers lisence yet. So getting her to school, to work and anything else, ie friends, nails, shopping rest on her mom and myself. Everything for us is at least 20 minutes away. I get so pissed when I find out that her mom has taken her out to get her nails done together, or that she decided to take her to her friends house. My wife and I are not on the same page. I dont think we should be making life comfortable on for her. We also pay for her cellphone, which has been taken away so many times. Lastly, she makes bad impressions on my wife's other daughter, 16, by offering her cigarettes, being sexually active and sharing those experiences with her, disobeying and so many other things that would take to long to list here. I am also afraid of some of the danger she puts my 2 daughters in. When she was 17, it was around 8 at night, and there was a knock at the door. Keep in mind I was not suppose to be home yet and my wife's 2 daughters were home alone until I got there. When the knocking at the door happened, she screamed not to answer, which set the alarm bells off and I answered the door and to my surprise the were 3 mid twenty year old men with beards at my door (I live in a gated community, so she gave them a code to get into our neighborhood) looking for my eldest step daughter. Needless to say, that did not go over so well. Because of these decisions, I feel my house and all of it's member are in danger due to her actions. She is going to 19 in a week and I think for my sanity, I need her gone, but this is not the same feeling of my wife, please help!
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Set a reasonable time frame
Set a reasonable time frame of about 6 months for her to move out. Maybe the tune of the daughter will change? It'll also encourage the younger daughter to not turn out like her sister.
You don't have a SKid
You don't have a SKid problem, you have a wife problem.
SKid needs to launch, but simply putting her out is highly unfair. After all, her Mommy has set her up to have no life skills, not be employable, have no work ethic, no education and no plan. I have to wonder what is wrong with your wife that she willingly creates such a dependent child who is set up to fail in life.
This also didn't happen overnight. So where were you while Mommy Dearest was crafting this circus? The fact is, you are part of it too. You might not want to recognize that or own that, but you are. Because no reasonable adult would have allowed this tragedy to take shape to begin with.
So you and your DW have to have a little sit down, and maybe some counseling, and create a plan to help this really parentally damaged child grow up and launch.
*Kid needs to be enrolled in a GED program and forced to go, or she moves out.
*Kid needs to be told to feed her cat and clean her cats litter box EVERY SINGLE DAY or else it goes to a no-kill shelter, along with a $500 donation that SKid will work off.
*Kid needs a full time job that she needs to attempt to succeed with. If she is fired of her own fault, SKid is out.
*Kid needs a plan to get her license.
How exactly does Mommy think this kid will make it in the world? What job does she see her daughter having? Really ask her to sit down and think about it.
I agreed with ^this^ until
I agreed with ^this^ until blame was placed on OP... Not his monkey! And no way it's his fault for how any skid turns out. That's not even a little bit fair.
You definitely have a wife problem. And perhaps moving out or counselling for the two of you with the aim of opening her eyes is in order. I often wonder if our BM's hubby thinks this way about her - she's very similar to your wife. I'll never understand a parent who's so insecure they want their kid to fail either, but boy they are out there!
Tell your wife she needs to
Tell your wife she needs to find sd a place to live and if sd can't swing it on her own, dw needs to make up the difference by getting a job or a second job if she has to, but that you are not going to bail her out. Your wife created this mess. She's an enabler.
We have a similar sd18. Her stepdad made it hard on her so she left, BM would have loved her to hang around a little longer to be her party buddy. DH and I did not invite her here so she launched, via her older sister. While she was living with her sister (two long months) it was the same, always on the couch. She left her sisters to go live with some guy. In the last month with him she got a drivers license and two jobs. They do it when they know they have to, when their peer group embarrasses them because they have no money to contribute to the beer pool.
Personally, I would have
Personally, I would have confiscated the cat long ago. No uncared for critters in my house, period. The cat is now mine and properly cared for and, oops, look at that, sd, the kitty loves me best now. Good lesson for Mademoiselle Entropy.
But I wouldn't live with Mademoiselle Entropy at all. I would tell wife the kid goes or I do and the cat goes with me. I would probably leave that stinky house to them and go start fresh with my own daughters.
I don't know how you have managed to maintain any respect for your wife through this years long process. I told my dh when sd was 13/14 the minute she turned 18 I was treating her like an adult and that meant no living in my house. I think it's preferable to gradiate the launch of a kid but both her parents seemed to have no eye to the future and I knew there was no way she'd be ready for anything whatsoever but a life of couch lounging and ramen. Not having it so my telling my dh this harsh boundary was my way of motivating him to start preparing her better.
If I hadn't done so, I feel certain that my life would be yours pretty much this very minute. She's 15 now and hanging on to high school by a thread. DH knows she can't stay here as an underage dropout nor an adult failure to launch so he's working as hard as he can to prevent her total sink into ultimate entropy.
It's too late for you to lay that groundwork so just start with the here and now.
A. Tell your wife you have told her for years your objections to the behaviors the girl was allowed to exhibit.
B. Now you've had enough. You're not living like this any more.
C. Either she creates a plan to fix this or you do. She has to do it right now. If the plan she comes up with is obviously unreasonable to you, veto it and move on. You're moving out. The details of that are up to you. Might want to check out the posts of SnoopyStep.