My stepson is 10. I’ve known him for six years now with my husband. We have our son together, who is three. My husband’s ex has another child from another ex, who is 15. His ex is a narcissist. The first five years of our marriage, she moved in four different boyfriends, who ended up leaving. The son also went through several after school nannies. The poor boy has been affected by all of the changes all around. He started acting up when he was 5. It got to the point where he was physically violent against other children, that the school had to have him in a separate room by himself during study times. He was bullying children and they bullied back. In the end, the mother put him in a different school after his entire class surrounded him and told him that he should go home and kill himself because none of them liked him. Lots of complaints against the school on how they dealt with it. He is now a very anxious, nervous and unhappy child. I feel for him. I fully admit that we had a great relationship when he was 3-5 years old and then the acting up started and I stepped back to let my husband spend quality time with his son. But also because his son was mean to me and to everyone. It is completely understandable that he was this way. Any child would be this way in his situation. I am also not one to fully blame parents when kids are acting up like this. It’s not fair. I sympathise with her in that she is a single mother that works full time and has two children. However, after one year of being with my husband, I have nothing to do with his ex. She tried to ruin our wedding and she has said nothing but nasty things to my husband about me. When our son was born, she told my husband that she wished he died, as our son is the worst thing that ever happened to her. She’s a 48 year old woman, btw. Finally, we didn’t know each other or get together until almost four years after they split. She threw him out and then tried to take his son away. She was threatened with jail by the courts for this and her lies. We did have one point two years ago where his son started making up stories about how his father and I and his grandparents were treating him. His ex didn’t believe him, but the school started questioning it, so my husband ended up having his EOWE visits at his parents’ home for six months because we had our own son and his other son wasn’t saying horrible things about our baby and with all the horrible lies. In the end, we always stuck by his son. Once my husband finally was able to reason with his son and had lots of long talks with him, he started coming back to or home. We always tell him we are here for him and we love him. If he acts up, we always make sure we tell him that it’s the behaviour we don’t like, but that we always love him. I want to make this clear to everyone. The poor kid doesn’t deserve any of this and I wish every day that there was something I could do. In the process of all of this, everyone has reacted naturally, by overcompensating for this poor kid’s troubles. He eats junk food for every meal. He even has a chocolate sundae at 8am. He’s on three different medications due to digestive and stomach issues because of his bad diet. If he wants it, his mother or my husband’s parents buy it for him. There are no limits on how much TV or electronics he gets. His grades are very poor and he doesn’t want to try at anything. We stopped bringing him or to eat because he is rude to servers and when we try to explain to him how wrong it is, he says they are servants and he doesn’t care. We have tried in every way to explain why it’s good to be nice to others, but he says it doesn’t matter because his mother says he doesn’t need friends and that he can just buy people. When we try and explain that others can be mean back to him, as a consequence, he says he will just tell his mother. Whenever we try to play football with him or help him with homework, he tells us off or says he is better than us and doesn’t need anyone else’s help. He would rather not try at all, rather than fail. My husband is getting really down about it. He broke down in tears after this last weekend telling me that while he loves his son, he can’t stand being around him. We both talked and won’t give up on him. However, even my husband admitted that one day, he feels he won’t want to see his son again. We are not the only ones. None of my husband’s family like him. Our friends no longer visit when he’s here. Even his sister that lives with him avoids him. This, I know would only make it worse, as it’s how a child tests their parents and adults. All they want is to be loved. But how do we get through to him? It’s not his fault. We both know that, but we can’t have the essential time to help parent him. My husband’s ex would prefer she is liked by their son rather than being a parent. She will agree with my husband about the issues, but then go against it and give their son more stuff and no consequence for bad behaviour. Any advice?