This is my very first post here. I googled something along the lines of “I can’t stand my stepdaughter” and was brought to this website. 

Backstory: I met my SO in 2016. This man is everything that I could have ever asked for. But, we are a big family. He has three children from previous relationships and I have three from my ex-husband. I’m “gaining” a son and two daughters; SS16, SD13 and SD5. I have a son, 9 and two daughters 8 and 3. We also ended up getting pregnant early on in our relationship so we have a little girl together who is 1. 

That being said, my three children and our daughter together live with us full time. My kids father has little involvement due to safety and abuse issues from the past. My SO’s older children never come to stay with us, they have little to do with their father aside from family reunions, and phone calls/texts. Their mother does little to encourage a healthy relationship and often times we are putting in 100% and literally getting ignored by the older children when we attend sporting events or birthday festivities. SO pays child support and that’s about all their mother cares about. 

SD5 has a different BM from his other two. We try to pick up SD5 as much as possible, but her mom often refuses to meet halfway or anything to make it easier. It’s a roughly 4 hour trip one way to pick up SD5. Honestly, overall she is a sweet child. She listens well for the most part, is relatively polite. She lives with her BM and an older brother so she doesn’t do well with sharing. A lot of the issues I have with SD5 are not even really her fault. She is a stage 5 clinger to any males in the room. Especially her father, but even my stepdad (known as grandpa) she clings to him. It truly freaks me out as I don’t see how it’s appropriate for a 5 year old to be like that to an almost complete stranger. She is speech delayed so I often have difficulty understanding her. When her father is home she has to be on top of him, is quick to say “he is MY daddy” to the other children, and she refuses to take his “no” as an answer. For example; “Daddy can I have a cookie?” He responds with “no” and she will walk away but come back literally 3 minutes later with “can I have a cookie now daddy?”  And it truly makes me irate because when her dad is working and she asks me for something and I say no, she goes on about her business. 

My SO’s behavior and parenting approach also makes me upset. In regards to SD5 he follows through very little. She does this thing where if he gets on to her and gives her a consequence she crosses her arms, pouts and says “I don’t like you” then runs off to the bedroom and slams the door. It absolutely grates my nerves. He gives lots of rewards when she is here, which is different from when she isn’t. He thinks up fun things to do or gets out board games but rarely does it when she isn’t here. My kids see this difference, they aren’t dense. I see this difference. She is not number 1, she shouldn’t be for him and she definitely isn’t for me. 

My 8 year old will get a consequence from SO and he doesn’t let it go, but if little miss SD5 suffers at all I think he may burst from discomfort. I see where he is coming from because she only gets to come to his (our) house around 6-9x a year...he wants her to enjoy her time. But that doesn’t mean he gets to just disregard her behavior while she is here. 

SO is a good stepfather to my three children, and a great dad in general. He doesn’t treat our daughter we share differently from the other three. But with SD5 my only saving grace is she isn’t here that often. 

I don’t know how to be like “your daughter annoys me, I literally can’t stand her sometimes” and it not completely change our relationship.