HELP

[princessviolet]

Hi
Having really difficult time at the moment and it seems whatever I do we will be unhappy.

I live with my husband of 6 years, my daughter aged 9 from a previous relationship, our 1 year old daughter, and his SD age 10 who comes every weekend.

Basically his SD is quite an angry, unhappy little girl. She lives with her mum and her husband the rest of the time and seems to find the situation difficult - she misses her mum and her stepdad when she's at ours, and often cries for them, and I think misses her dad a lot when she's at her mums.She has difficulty controlling her anger and has violent tantrums where she hits, kicks and yells and swears.

Anyway SD is pretty vile to my daughter. She uses her as a bit of a punchbag and sometimes goes on up to 4 time outs a day for hurting her - this can be in response to a wrong look from my daughter (who I admit can be irritating and winds SD up sometimes by saying she won't play, etc. Anyway a few days ago it came to a head, SD had been on 3rd time out for hitting DD and calling her a little f*er (didn't even know she knew that word). When my daughter walked past her to go to the loo she kicked her again.

So we had it out with SD, had a really good talk with her and listened to her feelings about how she finds her situation hard at times, missing her mum, etc. She sat on my knee and cried and I cuddled her for ages.I felt really positive the next day and as if we had turned a corner. When we dropped SD and DD off at school SD said to me, I promise I will behave better from now on.

Last night DD came home from school and told me she had a secret and that SD had told her not to tell. SD had gone up to DD at school and told her she'd got her into trouble then pushed her. A teacher saw and sent SD to the headmaster.

I was furious that her behaviour was now happening in school. She is often unkind to DD at school, saying here comes my idiot sister, but has never hit her till now.

Anyway my husband in typical fashion said, Let's hear SD's side of the story. I said, Well she will just deny it and lie about it(I have caught her lying so many times even when I have heard or witnessed her behaviour)

So he phoned her and came off the phone really upset. He said that according to SD she had been apologising to DD and had tapped her in a friendly way (there is always an excuse for her violence, she once bit DD and said she was yawning and fell on her!) I just said FOR GODS SAKE do you actually believe that? He then said, My poor little girl, I have brought her into such a hostile situation, you are so against her and this situation is turning her into a horrible person!!! I said, I am not against her, I am just not stupid and can see how things are, and of course I need to defend DD who is being bullied by SD.

He will just not see and always turns on me whenever SD is nasty to DD and defends her. I try to be fair and would be furious with DD if she was hitting or hurting SD.But it is really hard to not be angry with SD when she is so awful to my own DD. She was even foul to DD on her birthday recently and shouted at her.

I don't know what to do. If it wasn't for my DD who adores my husband, she has no contact with her biological father and has only ever known my husband and calls him dad, and our DD that we have together, I'd have been off years ago - the constant conflict and fighting is so wearing and depressing. But I can't leave, because it would break elder DD's heart, and mine to be honest, and I don't want either DD growing up with a part time dad.I do love SD and want her to be happy but she has been angry and unhappy for as long as I have known her, there is a history of very bad depression in my husband's family and I think partly it is just her nature - if she goes somewhere and has a lovely day but one bad thing happens, that's the thing she'll tell you about. We took her to a wedding a year ago and she had an amazing time but hurt herself slightly on a toy, that's all she remembers and that was all she told people about the wedding.

Please give me some advice as to what you think of my situation.

Does DH do any of the disciplining or is it left to you? Reading this it just sounds like you are the one bearing the brunt of sorting things out. If that is the case, I think DH really needs to step upto the plate and deal with his DD's behaviour.

I think your SD is crying out for attention and is behaving badly because she doesn't know how to deal with her feelings.

If she misses her mum so much couldn't you arrange that she just come to yours every other weekend?

Sounds like sitting down and discussing her feelings helped (albeit for a short while) so maybe you all need to sit down more and discuss things to see if you can work out a way of easing things for her (that suits everyone concerned).

Could her mum/dad take her to the Drs and ask for her to be referred to CAHMS? My dd had a really difficult time making sense of everything when her dad left us and a few sessions with them helped her greatly (it also helped me to understand what was happening and ways to try and help her).

Keep trying your best, kids are resilient but it must be very hard for them to adjust to two lots of families with probably totally different ways of living - some kids adjust well and others dont, and we couldn't begin to imagine what each individual child is going through.

Good luck.

I agree that a child coming every weekend who is at school isn't seeing much of her other parent, unless she just comes for part of the weekend. I think older children start to make friends and want to spend less time with both parents and that can mean less time with the nonres parent. 10 is still a bit young for this though.
I agree that you seem too involved here and your husband not involved enough. If she and your daughter don't get on can he maybe do some father and daughter stuff with her alone? I agree with leaving him to do more of the disciplining and you stepping back a bit. Trying to pretend you are a nuclesr family often doesn't work well with stepfamilies and accepting that the child really only has a strong bond with the natural parent and letting that parent be the main carer and spend more time with the child can help.

You poor things - it sounds like such a difficult place to be in, and reading it you just hope that things will work out in the end, but it doesn't feel that they will just unravel themselves. I agree with the other responses - DH needs to accept his role in this. You need to be a partnership to deal with this consistently and collaborate to support one another through the tough bits and celebrate the wins together too.

Is there a way that you and DH can establish some groundrules of behaviour for all the children? Despite emotional difficulties I still think that the rights and wrongs of behaviour need to be addressed - hitting and bullying can never be accepted. Can you get the girls to then 'sign up' to the rules in a positive way - DD too? Seems like they're old enough to engage with it if the adults support and frame it simply for them.

In terms of the contact I'm in total agreement with 2reb above - I've struggled with my DP's expectation that we'll forge a nuclear family and have been through some bloody turbulent times as a result, but now we seem to have a much more comfortable place in accepting that the DSC will favour him for most things and me for just some. Takes pressure off me, him and the DSC too and hasn't resulted in much less time spent together as a family...just not a nuclear family (or whatever you want to call it).

if DSD really does want/need to spend more time with her Mum - could the contact be more evenly spread so you have her a school night and skip every other weekend so that she gets the quality time with her mum as well as you guys? We've been toying with the idea of splitting the kids up for the week night contact every once in a while so that we have them separately for consecutive nights rather than together for one - that gives the opportunity for 1-on-1 time with both us and Mum for both children. Kids seem thrilled with the idea but we've not tested it out yet. Not so straightforward for you in your situation - but does DSD feel that she's not getting quality time with either bio-parent and resent everybody for that?

No answers from me I'm afraid - just lots of questions!

Good luck.