Aaaargh! I'm in a tricky situation here. I moved into a HA house a few months ago, and I've never lived on an estate before so I'm really not sure how to deal with this.
I have 2 dds age 4 and 10. NDN's daughter is 8, we'll call her H. A while after we moved in, in late spring, H started coming around to play with dd2. Dd1 finds H extremely annoying and if H is here then dd1 just shuts herself in her room (to be fair, she does this quite a lot even if H isn't here...she loves reading and is happiest holed up with a book).
Our back gardens are tiny and for some reason both of my neighbours have gates going into my garden from theirs. So H has direct access into my garden, and my back door is usually open so she just turns up in our house.
For the first month or two, it wasn't an issue that H was here as she did a good job of entertaining dd2, who is really full on, and she very polite and well behaved. H's parents very rarely take her anywhere or do anything with her, and she tells me that before we lived here she would just always be in her room by herself. By contrast, I get out and about with the kids as much as possible, we do stuff like geocaching, swimming, lots of walks and dd2 is lucky enough to have a pony at my DM's place not far away so we spend a fair bit of time there. So I do feel sorry for H, and have taken her out with us quite a lot since we've known her.
The amount of time H spends here soon got out of hand though. Literally as soon as we got home, she would be here, or as soon as we woke up in the morning and I opened the back door for the dog, she'd appear. As she got to know us better, I began to see the more annoying parts of her personality. E.g. she lies, a LOT, stupid little things but it happens all the time. And instead of hanging out with dd2, she started trailing around after me all the time. Literally everywhere. I can't get a moment's peace from her. And she talks, and talks and talks, inane stuff, so a 5 minute sit down where I would plan to sit and check my emails etc, i now have H sitting right next to me wittering on. Even while I eat my dinner, she's there chattering away.
I am a LP, and my youngest dd doesn't see her dad so I have her all the time. I find it hard to get the emotional energy for my own dc, and now it really does feel like I have 3, not 2. I think H has also started to consider herself as part of the furniture here too, and gets jealous if I go somewhere without her, e.g. if we go to see the pony. I do sometimes put my foot down and just firmly tell her we are not taking her, but I find it difficult as she looks so disappointed, and then dd2 kicks off because she wants H to come too. And I can't really give her a good reason as to why She can't come, apart from the fact that she does my nut in and I just don't want her to!
I feel really sorry for H that her own parents do fuck all with her, and it's sad that a lot of her lies seem to be about stuff that she is going to do, e.g. She'll turn up in the morning and say that she is going swimming or bowling later, when I know that it's not true. It's like she has a fantasy existence. But at the same time, it drives me mad that I've become responsible for entertaining her. How do I handle this?