Finding this forum today has been a life saver! I HATE my step daughter, and I don’t know how to fix it. I met her when she was three and we started to bond, but then her bio mom did the “she’s your step mother and she trying to take daddy away from you” . At the time she was still super sweet and daddy’s little girl but still lovely to me. She was her ever other week and we got along well. But then jealous bio mom cut my husband down to ever other weekend, and ever time she comes over it’s like she a new more horrible child. I thought at first that I was carrying resent ment from the bio Mom and putting it on the daughter, (especially after the bio Mom and grand mother convinced her to say that my son touched her inappropriately to try and get us out. ( step daughter immediately clarified to us -when we saw her a few days later- that she just meant that my sons hand had brushed her bottom while they were playing, but that her grandma has asked if he’d ever touched her privates so she’s answered as honestly as she knew how) but I worked through that and spent the year she was five with her very well. There were a few disagreements but nothing major. I felt like we were making progress and I was proud of both of us for working through it. In the last few months though it’s like she’s trying to test every limit, challenging everything I tell her, straight out asking her dad for things I said no about and then when he backs me up she’ll throw a fit and scream for over an hour about how she wants her mommy, which hurts him and so he tends to give in because he’s afraid she won’t want to come back. She deliberately gets the people around her in trouble, she treats everything like it’s disposable. She thre a fit the other day because she wanted my sons LEGO collection that he finally built up after I’d finally convinced him that if he wouldn’t clean up then I wouldn’t buy any more. So her dad made me say that it was both their collection, so she took it in her room threw it all over the floor for three days, until her dad made my daycare kids clean it up because my step daughter claimed they were the ones playing with them. When I asked him about it he got mad at me. When she does break, lose or ruin things she expects us to immediately go out and replace it, and cries if we won’t. She an attention hog and can’t atand not being in the middle of everything even if it’s something as simple as my husband kissing me she’ll always desperately “need” something right then. She won’t eat unless it comes out off a fast food wrapper or it’s sugar, but she’ll throw a fit if she’s expected to eat something healthy even after the doctor stated her at risk for obesity based on her growth chart. She’s here for a month because there is no school and I do t know how to do it! My son gets away with NOTHING, not in a bad way but in the way children are supposed to be raised and he sees his sister staying up all night watching tv, and eating candy all day, and I am tired of having to be the mean mom who tells him he can’t have any and we don’t watch tv after lights out. He’s asked me why his dad likes his sister better and I’ve tried to explain that it’s not that he likes her better he just is afraid she won’t come back if he tells her no, but I still get the looks like I’m betraying him every time I say no. I’m so frustrated right now and I’m only a week and a half into the month and I already just want to go away till the months over. Weekends I can handle because it’s two day, I can cut my son a break for two days every two weeks, I can suck up my attitude for two days, I can keep my mouth shut but I don’t know how to do THIS. My husband does try to be supportive but he feels stuck between us all and his fear of losing his daughter is legitimate. The last time we started trying to teach her how to act she started screaming every time she was dropped off and barely came over for 2 months. The bio mom uses her daughter to punish my husband and if he upsets her she finds reasons to not send her over and he won’t or can’t do anything legally because he’s afraid that the courts won’t help him because he’s the dad. My husband is the sweetest guy in the world and I love him and know this isn’t his fault but I’m losing my patience and we’re hving yelling fights because I don’t know how to be whatever it is I’m expected to be here. I do t know how to keep my patience, put up with the attitude, deny my son and have a smile all at the same time. It feels impossible. I want to believe we will work through this but it’s starting to feel like so much damage is being done at the bio moms house that everytime we see her she’s so much worse that I’m terrified of what happens when she hits puberty.. I just want to check out from her life but I can’t actually allow myself to do that.