Dear God, do I understand!!! Especially, the "shadow gives him more room." The skids are in our room, in our BED, watching our tv, if my DH MOVES his kids hunt him down, they ALWAYS NEED SOMETHING!!!! It's like DH is their personal servant there to entertain their every whim. He walks out the door to run to the store for 5 mins and ALL I hear is, "where's my dad" 50 times.

I try to set up boundaries, it doesn't work, they just do what they want...

The answering to an 11 year old, OMG.

Piece of advice if its ok, draw the boundaries with skid, for YOURSELF! Your DH is gonna have to find his own way. And don't b shocked if DH gets a lil pissy cause ur not jumping for skid all the time like he does. For the most part I will not take skids to school or pick them up, unless there is an emergency. I work all day too, and ur right, skid is HIS responsibility NOT yours! Back off as much as you can. It's bs being expected to cater to a kid you didn't raise. So many step parents are stuck dealing with a child someone else raised completely different than they would have. It's ridiculous to expect an adult to change him/herself and what they expect in their own home!

If you don't set boundaries, you will feel the resentment begin to creep in. Then your posts on here will begin to sound like a lot of ours do. If you want popcorn, make it for yourself and if ss wants some tell him to make his own. They sell micro popcorn cheap at Walmart! I mean seriously, you have to literally set the boundaries piece by piece, like not driving him places, making his own snacks, doing his own laundry one day per week, cleaning his own room, helping with chores, etc. You have to start enforcing he do things for himself with DH's help. I had to literally parent my skids THROUGH DH for awhile b/c he didn't know how to parent in certain areas like cleanliness and so on. Then your job will get easier. Just to duck and hide won't work, you have to teach the kid before you can know you don't have to parent him so much but do the teaching through DH. Like for instance, Honey I noticed ss's laundry is heaped in the corner of his room, would you buy him a hamper next time you're out and in the meanwhile show him how to put it into the washing machine with soap and then the dryer and then fold it and put it away. It literally takes you reminding hubby step by step how to teach ss. I met dh when ss16 was 12. He knew NOTHING and was still peeing his bed and all that crap. I went into shock at first too. SS would literally lay on DH on the couch while watching tv or DH would go and lay on SS's bed to watch tv. It took me awhile before I realized this kid had zero skills in being in a family in a home and DH had no clue. Anyways, good luck hon and we're always here!

SD17 was like this a lot and still has some boundry issues but has gotten better about it. She was constantly up in our shit! I told DH I wasn't putting up with it and he had better fix it or I would. And I did, stopped keeping my mouth shut. It has gotten much better.