Hi everyone!

To start, I’m so glad I found this forum because I really thought I was alone in my thoughts and situation!

To give some background - I’m a married mother of 5 children, 3 biological boys, one SS, and one SD. They all have the same father (my husband). My two SC have the same mother. I came into their lives when they were 3 and 18 months old. There bio mom was given supervised visitations when my husband and she divorced, which she participated in for about a year and then stopped all contact without explanation. I have raised my SS and SD. They are now 14 (SS) and 12 (SD).

Now, to get to the problem. I have reached a point where I think my SS was going to ruin our family. My SS has some horrible characteristics and they have come to a boiling point. He constantly “stirred the pot” at home and at school, mostly putting kids against each other, then sitting back and watching. The last straw was when he broke my 8 year old son’s femur (his half-brother) which required emergency surgery. The younger boys were playing outside when my SS, who had been told numerous times before not to play with them when they were playing contact sports (because he was too rough) snuck outside and pulled my 8 year old son’s leg out from under him then fell on his thigh, crushing his femur. The 8 year old is a very accomplished athlete, something my SS was not but wanted to be (but lacked the drive to practice). Part of me thinks this may have been done out of spite, but he didn’t mean to go as far as he did (does that make sense)? He did not express any remorse and actually tried to blame the 8 year old for the break. At that point, I was fed up and really started to wonder about his mental stability. This was after years of him lying, stealing, and trying to manipulate. Even after this accident, my husband and I tried to redirect him and tried to get him to accept responsibility, but to no avail.

Last week, we found out that he used my debt card to buy a cellphone from the local dollar store and had been buying minutes each time he ran an errand. I honestly don’t check my account every day and I had him give me the receipts from the store, so I didn’t look for any oddities. Thinking back he probably made 2 separate transactions and I was too stupid to catch it! I really wanted to truss he was trying to do better. We don’t allow any of our children to have cell phones as they do not need them, one of us is always with them. We live one block from the dollar store and I thought I could trust him to go buy a few items. I was wrong. After trying everything we could to redirect, my husband decided to get in contact with his biological mother, who lives two hours away, and we decided he would go and live with her and her girlfriend for a while. When my husband offered to forgo all her back owed child support she happily agreed. We thought maybe him living a different life he might appreciate the fact that we worked so hard to give them all good lives. My husband also thought maybe he was lashing out because he didn’t know her, so maybe letting him spend time with her would change him, even though he never asked us anything about her or to spend time with her. However, since about age 8 he has always been very aloof with his feelings and really very stoic. We took him one week ago to stay with his bio mother.

Our house has been so different! There is no fighting or yelling amongst the kids, I do not have to lock up the valuables, and the tension in the house is gone. However, I still feel a hole in my heart. I found out that he started a Facebook acct the day he got to his bio mom’s house. He put her as his mother and her girlfriend as his stepmother. I was crushed. I don’t know why I have such mixed feelings. I guess I feel like I raised him for 12 years with no sign of her, but he felt that he could so easily forget me. However, on the same hand I think I’m happy he is gone because the other children “feel safe now.”

I honestly feel he has sociopathic tendencies, because he only cared about himself, never took responsibility, and was a compulsive liar, even over trivial matters. My husband said it was all choices he made and I shouldn’t try to convince myself he had “a reason to act that way,” but I can’t come to terms with that, not yet. Why do I feel so sad and upset when he was so quick to replace not only me, but his father, and siblings he grew up with (she has 2 younger children who he happily displayed were his brother and sister with no mention of his half brothers here or is sister here). Has anyone experienced this before? I don’t know how to stop racking my brain about it.

Honestly, our household is so much better now. I am not afraid for my other children’s safety, no one is lying or stealing, and the kids have expressed that they feel safe. Yet, I still am afraid for him and his future. I still wonder what we should have done different. Has anyone been in the same situation? Please feel free to ask any questions! I tried to add 12 years of life in a few paragraphs, so I’m sure I didn’t paint a whole picture or maybe even make sense! My brain and heart are honestly so tired at this point!

Thank you all for taking time to read this! I appreciate any and all feedback!