i live with two of my own children and two step daughters. One is 17 ( will be 18 in Feb.) the other is 16. I’ve had them in my life for six years. When my husband and I got together he didn’t have any visitation ever set up. The girls mother was in prison, they were never married and her mother took the girls. He always had them living with him while they were together and then the family just shared them after they split up. The mother of the girls got heavy into drugs and trouble to where she spent two years in prison. My husband and I got  legal visitation rights after we got married. At first they were visiting us regularly and then once mom was out of prison she got extremely jealous after a few months and started causing us problems. She would lie and tell the kids they wouldn’t be in my life long, I wouldn’t stick around, I was just trying to buy them. I was just trying to care for them because they were still little then and they weren’t being cared for properly. They had no clothes, they had old dirty panties, dirty socks, head lice badly for years. I just couldn’t take it. I was divorced from my first husband and I had 3 children of my own, and we lived a certain way. I worked hard. My ex husband and I cared for our kids still and made the best of our situation. My husband had warned me a lot about this woman and her family. I had no idea how bad it really was. He kept telling me she would get back into drugs and leave them. Of course I never believed that. No one could just leave there kids! Well I was wrong. Three years ago she came to him and said she was losing her rental. Could we keep them a few months, well that was it. She went downhill fast after that. She is dating a guy who sells drugs and she looks horrible. She stopped seeing the girls and barely calls. She definitely stopped harassing us. She just left. The girls once in a blue moon see her at there grandmothers house but we live an hour away and no one in the 3 years has ever asked us to see them or share them and now of course they are older. The oldest works hard, and the other is just about to start a job. The issue is, they have never taken to me at all. In all the years, the beginning was fine, until she brainwashed them. I’ve done everything for them. I’ve bought them clothes, shoes, back packs, perfumes anything at all they would need. I decorating and always have them bday parties and I sat every other weekend for years picking out head lice and they do not come near me. I don’t get it. Now my husband lost a job and took this new job and I said before he left “ I’d really like to make sure that with you leaving that the girls understand that I’m in charge and that they have to follow my rules” They are not bad kids. They don’t get in trouble, they have good grades BUT they don’t have respect for me. When I ask them to do things, they don’t do it and he has never stepped up to say if you don’t do what she says “ this is what will happen” so because there is no consequence, I’m screwed. For some reason my husband takes severe offense that I would ask for him to punish them when they disrespect me, and I’m on the verge of another divorce. It’s been 3 years of everything I say, I don’t get. It’s all there way or NO way. Just because they aren’t out getting arrested and have good grades. He says they are screwed up from there mother. That’s it. So they don’t have to do any chores or take care of a dog they brought home after we said no, and they don’t have to respect me because they are screwed up. I’m angry and I’m not sure I can make it until they move out.