Sorry for the name changes? hopefully the three letters identify me to you lot? [paranoid]
(quick synopsis: she used to come 3 days one week, 4 the next but her mum has been trying her damnedest to alienate my DP from their DD?s life and affections since they split 6 years ago and, following him putting his foot down regards her extortionate demands for money ? she has succeeded in that DSD has decided her dad is a giant waste of space and she hates coming to see us and spending time with him. Only needs her Mum in her life and has lost all interest in DH, me, my DD and our wider families ? classic parental Alienation stuff. Her behaviour has also become very bad ? lost interest at school, hanging out with older boys, bad attitude etc. We?ve had a few ?wins? lately, with her confiding in me that she doesn?t always want her Mum to win the battles, hates the way she is always in the middle and resents feeling like the only adult out of the three of them. But generally, DH is losing her more and more day by day)
So DSD is now steadily coming on a Friday night and staying for Saturday day time every other week. I?m pleased for DH that this happens as we thought at one point she wasn?t going to come at all. But, as pleased as I am and as nasty as it sounds?. I hate it!!! She is a huge presence, messy, often moody, shows off, has poor personal hygiene (leaving sanitary towels out all over the place and talking and joking loudly about her period, popping blisters whilst sitting on the kitchen side-board etc.)
I can deal with the fact that she?s a teenager when she was here more as I felt like the mother of the house (not her mother, but THE mother) but now I feel like an alien (a giant bleach blonde alien with a mega loud voice and who has since December taken on all of her mother?s frankly vile attributes and mannerisms) is invading my house on a weekly basis.
I guess a lot of her behaviour is typically teenage, but I don?t feel like she?s mine anymore and I have no patience with it. I know that?s shameful and I feel horrible but I can?t just turn it on for a day a week and even if I could I feel that it?s pointless trying to have any influence on her behaviour as she has no respect for me, or this home.
I can?t stand the way she just breezes in after no contact for a whole week and helps herself to food in the cupboards etc. When she lived her I didn?t mind so much (well, I brumbled sometimes) but I felt like by being here she had earned her status in the house. Now I don?t feel any desire to provide for her. I just want her gone 
So I think I am probably letting her know this. i am withdrawn when she is around and frankly I feel bullied. she is becoming every inch her mother and I feel my home is being invaded.
I want to be alpha-female, and I am all week long. Then suddenly I become this unconfident little person... sorry, I'm rambling, does this make any sense at all SMs...?
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Step-parenting
Now finding it very hard when she's here
BOMsback · 05/03/2012 17:28
Thanks RB, I guess my attitude at this stage is - if you choose not to be a part of this family then fuck off! 
I am shcking myself, I was always so ready to "take her on" IFKWIM but I guess it's a bit of an emotional bank account situation i.e. she's making a lot of withdrawls and no deposits! If it's your own kid you have unconditional love to see you through... even if it's not your own kid, you love them as such if you spend ime with them. If sshe's not my kid... and she's never here... and i dont like the person she is becoming... then Im screwed!!!
I dont think she helps herself to food because she feels at home.. I mean, it is that... but it's not how this home works, she's just treating this place as she does her Mum's place, with no respect for it not being such.
We have different rules her, like un-written rules. i.e. basic respect. No one helps themself in the way she does. Say, for example, we have 4 yogurts in the fridge. We would all help ourself to one, not 2 or 3.. because there are 4 of us so that's one each, right? and if there was only one left, everyone else would defer to me to make sure it wasnt put aside for DDs lunch box or similar. Or another example - sausages - everyone else would check that they weren't aside for a meal... but not her, she just puts them ALL in the oven and scoffs them down, leaving a mess in her wake.
That is all fine at her Mum's but it's not fine here (at least it always was when it was just the two of them, and Mum was a stay at home mum, it may have changed now they've moved in mwith Mum's fiance). I know it sounds a bit school maam-ish, but I work a really long week and in order to keep everything running smoothly I meal plan, cook plan, clean plan and it has worked really well for the 5 years we've all been together here. Now I feel like my world is being turned upside down and i've been invaded.
Okay, now I am waffling! Where's the wine... 
And now I feel bad for saying all that as sometimes I'm very fond of her - for example a week or so she confided in me that her boyfriend was presurissing her for sex (she's 12!) we had a long talk and I felt really close to her agaain - but it was short lived
It sounds awful - but this is inevitably what happens when a 12 year-old-child isn't parented 
Her mum is her BFF, her Dad is scared witless that she will vote with her feet and he will never see her again, and you have had your authority undermined - so your DSD is adrift, with no boundaries, guidance or limits.
Of course you resent her, who wouldn't? Why should a child be given the freedom of adult status without any of the responsibility that goes with it?
You are in an impossible situation, BOM, one I have lived through and still bear the scars
I can relate to some of this too. DSD has just ignored 5 phone calls (one each day) and 7 text messages from my DP in 5 days. This is the girl that we provide a contract mobile to and who sends thousands of texts messages per month. The girl who has the mobile surgically attached to herself and never, ever lets it out of her sight. She takes it in the toilet, to bed, in the shower room etc. etc.
So when DP asks her why she hasn't responded, her reply is that her phone was in her bedroom! Yeah right!
So she turns up, waltzes in, hoovers out the fridge and does exactly what your DSD does with the yogurts. I buy yogurts for DS and I packed lunches, DSD has the privilege of school lunches but that doesn't stop her eating all the yogurts in the fridge in one go!
If she wasn't so incredibly lazy, I have no doubt she would do the sausage thing too, but yogurts are easy, it only involves getting a spoon out of the drawer.
She sits in the middle of the kitchen listening to DP and I conversation and when I try and include her, she will just pick fault with anything we say or contribute with a not very helpful "meh". She tells DP what she expects him to pay out for and never, ever manages to actually ask nicely for anything.
As time goes by, I do have a fondness for DP other 3 children (in varying quantities) but I really don't like DSD1. I am still optimistic that when she leaves home and actually has to get off her backside, she might become a nicer person but seeing as everyone tells me how like her Mother she is, I seriously doubt much will get better in the future.
Oh god redhen, sounds like they'd get on famously!!!
I get taunted with stories about how AMAZING her Mum is and then a little sideways look inviting me to comment, which I never, ever do! But it is soooooo hard!
One day I'm going to snap and say "No, it's NOT cool that your Mum has managed to reduce her working hours to 5 a week and that she gets her boyfriend to drive her there even though it's a 2 minute walk away - it's NOT funny that she also gets him to take you to and from school so she can lie in, and as for her understanding that you need time with your boyfriend and so leaving the two of you in the house alone all day... it isn't kind and respectful of your maturity, it is SHIT parenting - it is actually fucking lazy, utterly embarrassing and frankly pathetic. She is not someone to aspire to, she is a vile, shallow, narcisistic, vacuous dickhead and no, she doesn't love you more than your Dad does - she doesn't love you at all, because she doesn't know how to love anyone besides herself"
Ooh, that felt goood!
You poor thing having your home invaded by a rude, disrespectful, entitled teen. I feel very, very sorry for you.
What does your DH do to make DSD toe the line?
Hmm, what does he do? well, first of all - I love him very much, he doesn't really know what to do but I think he always wants to do his best... He does pull her up on things most of the time. Kind of. He is more likely to do this if it is something that directly affects me, which I do appreciate but I also feel like it shouldn't matter who it affects, but more that the behaviour is wrong.
I don't want her thinking that the guidelines are there so I am not upset - they are there to make her a decent human being!
If she is bad, really bad, then he docks her pocket money for the week. But invariably she earns it back by doing some empty, bollocks thing that she should have done in the first place anyway.
When she is here, he isn't very proactive, they kind of bumble around the house doing their own thing and I really don't think he has a clue what to do with her. It must be quite a shock really - he told me at the weekend he is struggling with the fact she looks nothing like him and looks just like her Mum. I think he could cope better with this before all her Mum's personality traits started showing in such an obvious way. I get the impression now that he can't wait for her to leave either... I can't beleive I am sayng that. What an awful thing for me to think/ admit... I'm sure he doesn't feel exactly that way.
I can sympathise that, as a SM, you do give up if the forces of nature working against you are too great. I have been through some tough times as a SM arguing with my DP that issues around my DSSs' upbringing needed to change. While he usually agreed with me, after being exposed to rational argument 
, he then had to fight it out against the opposing forces in situ: exW, his mother etc.
We have actually won the battle and the DSSs identify with DP and with the behaviours and expectations of our home rather than those of their mother. But it was a very long drawn out battle that nearly killed me!
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