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Advice:11yo SD has violent thoughts towards new babies in the house

Filama's picture

I need some advice/support/reassurance about my SD's thoughts towards any babies her dad and I might have. About a year ago, while at a friend's house, my SD had been going on about how awful babies were and the mother of her friend asked her how she would feel about my husband and me having a baby. Her response was repeated to us by the mother as "I would smother it with a pillow". Needless to say, her friends mother banned my SD from visiting. Both my husband and I talked to my SD about what she said but she could giv neither of us a valid reason as to WHY she said it. We enrolled her in therapy however, the goal of those seasons turned more towards helping her adjust to changes and deal with the crap treatment from her bio mom. Therapy never explored the statement about killing a baby and with her therapist retiring, we are in a position of having to find a new one. In the meantime, I have identified strong indicators that would lead me to verify her with ASD were she a student at my school, and so our search for a therapist is more difficult as I want someone who is cabable of assessing for ASD and so my SD has not had a session in quite some time.

Through all this, I had forgotten about the baby comment but it now plagues me as my husband and I are talking about having our own kids soon. I am suddenly scared of what it means to my future children to the point where I don't want kids yet. The thing is, my expertise is with teenagers. I get them and how their brains work; little kids and tweens are foreign to me and I really don't know if what my SD said is typical of SD's in her position or not? Am I unecessarily worrying or am I right to be secretly thinking about putting off kids until she leaves home?

Filama's picture

Thank you for the reassurance that I am not blowing this out of proportion. The issue is that we have 100% care of her. Bio mom is completely unfit and there have been abuses in the past both at my SD and that she has been witness to. I have worked so hard to make up for the poor parenting during her formative years but she is still so negative towards the notion of us having kids. I've never heard another violent comment but there is plenty of hate talk. But then again she is a negative person. Everything sucks including herself and she rarely can see something for the good it might bring. And it only gets worse when she comes back from the odd visit with her mom. Literally, months of working with my SD are undone in one 4 hour visit. It's so disheartening. But that's besides the point: she lives with us all the time so I can't demand that visitation happens elsewhere Sad

LikeMinded's picture

Even if she's not violent, you have a big problem.

I have an SS who is 10 and he has very bad ADHD--to the tune of not being able to sit long enough on the toilet to finish his business. He also has some kind of developmental delay that makes him behave much younger than he is. For example, he recently asked me "what animal does a potato come from?"

He's not a mean guy, and he loves my son who is 4. And since he's the one who is closest to him in age, they hang out quite a bit. I have to watch all the time, because my little guy wants to emulate SS10 who doesn't make smart decisions,.

Well, last year, we were all swimming at a hotel on our last evening of summer vacation. I came out of the pool for 1 minute to give the older kids some chips, and all of a sudden my 4 yearl old is drowning! My wonderful SS10 had taken off his water wings to "see if he could swim", and was just watching him drown.

I quickly jumped in and saved him, but I don''t trust SS10 anymore. There was absolutely no ill-will there, just plain stupidity.

So either way, whether she's violent or not, if she has psychological issues, you are looking at problems Sad

Filama's picture

Realistically, waiting isn't a real option. I'm almost 31 now and my husband is 37. Waiting 7 years is puts both of us into the slightly too old category. I know 38 wouldn't be too old to have children but I am aware of risks plus the decrease in fertility as I get older and I don't want either of us to be too old to enjoy running around with young kids. Im feeling a little backed up against the wall with my options.

Filama's picture

Um, if you read the op properly you would note that it was the friend's mother who banned her, not me. Yelling at someone to tell them they are being extreme doesn't actually work as it only makes the yeller look extreme.

I am well aware that even adults say "stupid crap."

Were I to hear this kind of comment from any child at my school, I would be legally obligated to report it because SOME mouth offs do actually lead to bad things, and a whole rigma roll involving guidance officers and monitoring would occur. No one has made this about step children vs bio children. And why should it be? I would be asking the same thing if it were my bio child saying these things. Why devalue my feelings just because I am a step mother and not just a plain mother? A rational devil's advocate response to see the other side would have been more effective thank you.