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Beginning to dislike my stepkids...

DragonDad's picture

I started dating my fiance about a year ago, and she is the most awesome woman... smart, sexy, kind, educated, professional, artistic ... she is pretty much the best. I have 3 bio children of my own ages 16, 14, 12. My kids are the best, good happy children with tons of interests and good behavior. I didn't realize how good I had it until I met my soon to be step kids. My beautiful classy lady has two bio children, SD 15 and SS 9. They are messy, often disrespectful, lazy beyond belief, have no interests other than video games (SS) and 'drawing' terrible copies of web comics (SD). I actually watched my 9 year old SS walk through the room one day and shit literally fell out of his shorts on the floor. I often will walk into the room he shares with my own bio son, and it smells like someone crapped on the floor. 

My fiance is so amazing, I've often wondered, and even asked her, how these kids are so different from her and what kind of trauma they had to turn them into demonic selfish beasts. The real answer we both know is the bio dad.

After dating about 6 months, her lease was running out on her rented home, so we excitedly decided she should move into mine. My house is 4000 sq ft, 6 bedroom, plenty of room for everyone. We even talked to both kids to make sure they were cool with it, and they both said yes, definitely. It was exciting and everyone happily moved their stuff in, rearranged the house etc. We also had a long term plan to move to a city about 100 miles away, to be closer to my extended family, my own kids, and better work opportunities for both of us. Again, we talked to the kids about this plan and they were all smiles and liked the idea.

Cue the bio dad flipping out when he finds out we moved in together. He hires a lawyer and sues for a decree modification, then proceeds to poison his kids against our household.  SD begins a downward spiral, fails out of 9th grade, starts cutting herself superficially, blaming her mother, and gets institutionalized for a month, then put in extensive outpatient therapy for another month. And then the icing on the cake, she is now claiming she is a transgendered boy, and they we 'dont accept her'. She tells the court she wants to live with her bio dad, who has close friends that are a lesbian couple, the SD calls them her 'aunts'. We know they have been encouraging her concept of being trans, because she told us that when she tried hitting on her young friend in our home - that they had told her to do it because they thought she was interested in SD. We feel strongly the trans thing is about her insecurity and is attention seeking. She has also threatened suicide to her school and friends which is what landed her in the mental institution. God help me, the other day I had an uncontrollable feeling that I wouldn't even care if she did that!! WTF!

SS basically sits in his room playing Fortnite all day every day he is here. No matter what we suggest they are not interested in anything that involves physical activity. We tried going for walks daily with them when it wasnt so hot, and I tell you I have never experienced two people who whined so much about walking around the block. We did that for about a week before we were like hell no.

I love their mom dearly but honestly I have found lately I cannot even stand the sight of those two little monstrosities. I WANT them to go live with their bio dad, they can all live in a pit of squalor and misery and I would laugh. But, its causing my fiance pain and that upsets me. She is such an amazing person. I'm still mind blowing that these two came out of her DNA.

Lately I find myself hiding out on the porch or in my room when they are around, going to grab a burger myself rather than eating with them, and I know this is also causing my fiance pain. She feels helpless to do much about it when they spend half their time at their narcissistic  dads house. I feel bad for her but I'm finding myself unable to control my negative feelings about them, and lately have been lashing out more, mostly to her, about them. She is not like alot of bio moms on here who take their kids side against the Step dad. She agrees with me and tries everything she can to get them in line,  but she is a gentle person and is fighting against the bio dads constant onslaught of bullshit.

I dont really even have a question I just found this forum and wanted to vent like so many others. I'm glad to see that these things are common from all the other step parents writings.

We are planning the move (we have 10 acres of land and are planning a small farm), and it's a done deal, now we just have to figure out what to do with these children. Like I said, at this point I am almost happier to see them live with their dad and visit us on weekends, but I'm worried about my fiance and how she is handling these unexpected problems with her kids. I want to support her but I'm also struggling with my negative feelings towards them, and expressing those feelings more and more to my helpless fiance who is trying to navigate it all.

I hope she finds peace, the life we've started building is what we both want and we love each other very much. I feel we will progress through this, I just thought getting my feelings out or getting anyone else's opinion might help. There are so many aspects I didn't detail.

By the way, we are historically really happy positive people and still are, and wont let this destroy us, although it has upped the tension between us a bit - mainly my fault as I struggle to manage my feelings and not turn it into arguments with her.

Rags's picture

 

Yet another amazing soul mate yet abject waste of skin parental failure story. smh

As much as all of us would like to blame the crappy outcome of Skids on an X... the fact is that our own spouses are at  least 50% responsible for the disaster that so many SKids seem to be.

In this case... your soul mate bride owns this as much or more than her X does.  She needs to own it and fix it.  If my kid walked through my house shitting on my floors my kid would be on his hands and knees cleaning it up with his bare hands and would be lucky to not have his nose rubbed in it like a puppy being house trained. Grrrrrrr!

Time for  your bride to grow some lady balls and start forcing compliance to reasonable standards of behavior onto her nasty prior relationship spawn.  And you need to quit tolerating this crap.... literally.

So much time, effort and pain are invested in figuring out the why of this kind of thing rather than just cutting to the chase and confronting the behaviors through the application of escalating unpleasant consequences for crappy behavior.

Nail the behaviors... ignore the rest. 

IMHO of course.

DragonDad's picture

To be fair she is doing ALOT to try to alleviate the problems with her kids, and I'm not just saying that. She has spent countless hours trying to correct the behavior, signs them up for activities,  hounds them about their schoolwork to the point they go crying to the ex over how mean she is. 

I dont think I'd be able to do anything more in her shoes. She supports me and doesnt coddle them, in fact she insists that they are respectful to me and her, and calls them out.

I'm not blaming my fiance and I dont have blinders on about it.

The kid was definitely made to clean up the shit mess, but what can you do beat the child? 

As for how I dare to let them share a room, these are things that are emergent, it's not like I decided to force my kid to room with the known shitter... it became an issue over time.

When you love someone,  you work with them to solve the problems. If I got the sense she didn't care or tried to tell me I dont have a say, I agree I'd be out the door. Trust me I am a 43 year old man who has been in alot of relationships through the years, if I felt she and I weren't on the same page, I would have a big problem with it. But we are on the same page. I used the term 'helpless' because she can only control what happens in our home, but she isnt some kind of pitiful person who doesnt discipline her kids. I could go on about the various ways she has tried to correct them.

I'm not saying that she is perfect but I also dont see it as something to blame her for. Again, she is working far more on it than I am, not to mention her endless meetings with lawyers, amicus, school counselors, shrinks, etc.

 

Rags's picture

No, of course you don't beat the child... but spank the child... absolutely if it is age and offense appropriate.

There is a reason why since the dawn of man corporal punishment has been used. It is effective.  And the the nice thing about it is that only in DE is corporal punishment against the law.  The good thing about DE is that is is tiny and anywhere in the state is within about 20mins of a state border where corporal punishment is legal if a DE parent has run out of options other than corporal punishment.  If I were an entrepreneur I would build spanking stations at the key roads that cross from DE to MD, PA or VA.  *diablo*  Just kidding of course.  But only kidding a little bit.

DragonDad's picture

My main point of posting my story was to gather advice about how to deal with my own emotions that are developing around the skids... I feel we can work together to correct the behaviors over time or even kick them out and tell them to stay with the bio dad... I think she's actually ok with that! But I find my feelings disturbing and I dont want to spend hours berating my lady about it even though she agrees with me and is working hard on it. 

Rags's picture

Don't make it harder on yourself or your bride  than it has to be and keep it simple. 

I suggest that rather than dealing with this via feelings and emotion that you immediately create the standards of reasonable behavior that will be required and enforced in your home.  Of course this is a joint effort between  you and your bride.

As equity life partners the two of you are also equity parents to any spawn in your home regardless of spawn biology.

Keep it simple.  If you keep it behavior based then you can start to insulate  your emotions from the crappy behavior and make it all purely a compliance issue.  If they don't comply, they suffer escalating unpleasant consequeces and life in a state of abject misery.  If they comply... they get a state of boring mediocrity... if they exceed expectations... they get a state of pleasurable existance.

Again... keep it simple. Adopt a position of zero tolerance for inappropriate behavior.

Lather.... rinse.... repeat.

Now for a question. With 6 bedrooms and only 5 kids why do you require your child to share a room with the shit beast?

DragonDad's picture

One of the bedrooms is vastly huge and we thought the youngest two might enjoy being together as they have alot of toys, their xbox, etc in there. They actually seem to like it for the most part. We have been using the 6th bedroom as an office, although I'm rethinking it now for the new house (which is about the same size).

As for your suggestion for keeping it simple I think that does sound like a good plan, and I will pursue that line of thought more, especially as this custody battle winds down (theres a mediation scheduled for next week). As soon as that finalizes and they can't continue to throw wrenches in things (by claiming they want to move with us one day, then the next telling a lawyer something else, that kind of manipulation), I plan to give them a real talking to about it all and tell them these are the rules, live them or stay at your father's house.

I have also had to curb my instincts to be cruel to them recently (I wont even mention the vengeance tactics my brain starts coming up with...). They are just fleeting thoughts though.

Rags's picture

While I get your thoughts of vengeance and cruelty, fortunately we can make choices counter to those feelings and thoughts. 

For me it was never about those thoughts towards my SS-26 but I sure had them and even acted upon them when pummeling his SpermIdiot and SpermClan into submission legally, financially and socially.  Abject misery and painful consequences were the only things that they comprehended so that is what we delivered to them when they stepped out of line with the CO.  If they had been reasonable... we would have been reasonable... they never were so we took beating them into submission (figuratively of course) to the level of an Olympic sport and we were very, very good at it.  I even came to enjoy it very much though I always struggled with anger towards them for the crap they put my bride and my kid through and sadness for my kid because of toxic nature of the shallow and polluted end of his gene pool. For clarity... SS-26 asked me to adopt him when he was 22. We made that happen so now we have papers clearly stating what has always been the case. I am his dad.

To counter their toxic manipulations of the Skid we adopted an age appropriate total facts tactic so that he could recognize when his toxic SpermClan were pulling their manipulative crap and could protect himself while on SpermLand visitation.  His mom and I worked very hard to never bad mouth them while keeping him fully informed as he grew up.  Once he hit is teens we would fairly frequently find him digging through the Custody/Visitation/Support filing cabinets in our home office after returning from a SpermLand visitation. 

Consistency in enforcing the household rules and standards of behavior kept the Skid in line.  To the point that  he, his mom and I have always been exceptionally close.  His mom and I met when he was 15mos old and married the week before he turned 2yo so I raised him as my own and have been his dad for as long as he remembers.  He always had visitation with his BioPaternalClan (I less than affectionately refer to them as the SpermClan and his BioDad as the SpermIdiot) so he always knew he had two dads.   Fortunately we never lived nearer than 1200 miles from SpermLand so visitation was always long distance.  The schedule was ~7wks per year (5wks Summer, ~1wk Winter, 1wk Spring).  They often would refuse visitation and over the 16yrs we lived  under a Custody/Visitation/Support order there were several periods where he did not see them for a year or more.

With the age of Skids and DKs that  you are dealing with... it is extremely unlikely that you will be able to develop a particularly close relationship with them.   So sticking to the rules and confronting inappropriate behaviors is probably the simplest way to go with the highest probability of success.

Good luck.

 

 

Siemprematahari's picture

Your feelings are not disturbing, they are justified and they are just that...your feelings. I don't think we are intentionally putting your wife down. Perhaps some assumptions were made on her parenting style since we see a lot of parents who do not take the necessary measures to guide and discipline their child/children. If she is absolutely doing all that she can in order to correct this behavior than I applaud her for it. Some people would rather not take any action at all than to deal with problems head on.

There may be a lot of underlying isses with these children that your wife has no clue how to manage and seeking care may help her navigate the behavioral issues. Perhaps the school counselor can recommend someone to address them. She can look into resources to further guide the way.

I think the kids lack structure because there isn't any consistency, meaning when they are with their mother they are taught to clean up after themselves, etc and with dad they do whatever they want. I think therapy is a good start to see why one of the kids is pooping themselves. Can this be a symptom of emotional or health issues?

I know its not easy but she seems like she has the best of intentions and you love and want to support her as best you can. I think it can be done with some time and patience.

DragonDad's picture

Thanks for trying to understand, and I agree therapy might be the best thing, we have just been overwhelmed by the court stuff, moving, and the SD suicidal breakdowns, but yes we have talked about family therapy, in fact I may bring it up again tonight. I do want to support her so I'm trying to learn to deal with the emotions I'm having so that I can be there for her. 

Siemprematahari's picture

This is a great step and its wonderful to know that you want to help her with this situation but 1st want to deal with your emotions. This is not easy! I can understand how stressful this may be and I want to add that there are a lot of things these kids are going through as far as court, moving, and the suicidal breakdowns. These new life issues and transitions can be tough on kids and you both are trying your best to navigate this while helping the kids the best way you know how. Be patient as things usually get worse before they get better but know that if you both remain on the same page this is possible to get through.

Have faith that as long as you both remain on the same page and are diligent in getting help for the kids that things will improve. It may not happen over night but it will.

 

Areyou's picture

If anything, I think you need to hear that your feelings are normal. When you have to deal with and live with and care for kids that aren’t your own yet you have little authority to parent them you start to dislike them just like an employee that talks back yet you can’t fire their asses. You just end up hating them with all of your being.

Rags's picture

Your feelings and the struggles  you and your bride are experiencing are far from abnormal in blended family situatiions.  The key to success IMHO is that you and your bride put each other and the marriage as the only top priority.  Kids are the top marital responsibiltiy but never trump the marriage in priority.  Neither does anything else.

Take care of  you.

DragonDad's picture

We have read in other places that making the marriage priority 1 is the best route, so I agree with that. In fact it was my SO who pointed me to reading along those lines, so I am taking it to heart.