Hello all.

Today I have hit the point where I ask myself; would anyone else deal with this?

Here is the backstory:

I met their father 4 years ago. In his situation his children’s Mom was not an 'active' parent. What I mean by 'active' is that she was disengaged and did not pay much attention to them. They basically ran around like feral children while their dad worked two jobs to make ends meet. She had an affair and they ended up getting a divorce. She did not want custody of their children. She "wanted to live her life" and fought back and forth with him over their children for about 2 years. I came into the picture while this process was still ongoing. She never fought for her children and actively told her lawyers and my husband’s lawyers, and the judge she did not want them that, she just did not want to pay child support. You can imagine how that went. My husband has full custody and the judge even told her that she needed to take the children and "he didn't care if she had to live in a tent on the side of the road and eat lentil beans that her obligation was to the children and not to go out and party." (love that judge by the way!) For over a year she did not take the kids once. Seeing how they were treated I naturally felt sympathy and compassion for them. I would buy them little things here and there. I would take them on mini adventures, play games with them. I did all the things any person would do if they saw and felt another child not being loved. I made sure their holidays were ones they would never forget. My children and I showed them kindness and wanted to include them on anything and everything we did and welcomed them with open arms.

Around 6 months into the relationship I started to notice that things of mine would go missing from my home. I was missing jewelry, money, and other various items. I was starting to think I was going crazy. That maybe somehow, I misplaced these things, or I spent the money and did not remember it. It was not until after I moved in that we started to find my things, my children’s things and my wallet in the youngest child’s book bag and she would say she didn’t know how it got there. (She was 7 at the time this started). So naturally we now have trust issues in the house. His son was starting to do the same thing as well. He started to act out aggressively towards my son. He kicked him in the stomach over Legos and hot wheels. His daughter always seems like she was the one who could do no wrong. She was responsible and was always helping around the house. Good grades. Never in any trouble.  

As time goes on, their Mom comes back around. She was evicted from her apartment, car repossessed, and drowning in debt. The only thing stable in her life was her job. To help her get on her feet I sold her my car for $500 and took her to the store and bought her clothing to hold her over. We stored her personal belongings in storage and assisted her with getting into a shelter that would help get her back on track. Probably more than what most people would do but I wanted to show the kids that she is their Mother, and we have respect for her. She may not make the best decisions, but we can still show some compassion. She gets an apartment. Starts taking the kids for a couple hours after school 1 day a week. The children behavior starts to rapidly deteriorate. We are having issues with them stealing stuff from myself and my children, they are always doing things they are not supposed to. Getting in trouble constantly.

Fast forward a little bit. Their mom was evicted from her apartment and her new boyfriend offered to move her into his place. After a few weeks, she started to take the kids once a week again. We knew she had two days off during the week but those were reserved for her “personal time.” We would ask if she had planned on taking vacation time with them and she has consistently said she does not get vacation time. (I called HR to ask about vacation time and they are offered two weeks). The kids started to act out again. The youngest one (now 9) threatened another child in school with scissors and lied and said it never happened. We started to try to get their mother involved thinking they were acting out because they don’t spend time with her enough. The little one finally fessed up and said she stole my jewelry to give it to kids at school. She stole money from my wallet and covered it up by saying she stole it from another kid at school. Just a whole mess of a situation. Their Mom claimed she has a talk with the youngest and blamed the behavior on being picked on in class. We notified the school, and it turns out She never gets picked on. She is one of the kids in her class that’s friends with everyone. There have never been any reported issues.  We thought maybe someone was doing something to her and that wasn’t the case. The bad behavior from her continued. His son was equally down the same path. Bad behavior in school to get what he wants. He screamed on the bus that her left his bookbag in his class until another student said she would get it if he would stop. Which he did. Things like this have been going on constantly for well over a year. They are always in trouble. They are always grounded.

Fast forward to this year. Their Mom has told the kids that she has no idea why she was kicked out of the house after she separated from their father. That she has bought various things around the house for them. That she has fought for them for years and the judge will not let her have them. Just utter crap. Now I see where the learned lying comes from. The learned deceit. I figured it was time for a family meeting between the 4 adults. I point blank told her not to tell the kids she does not know why she was kicked out of the house. She made the decision to have an affair and to not be telling the kids nonsense. She is 46 years old and needs to start acting like a grown adult. The things that she told the kids she bought in the house were things I bought. So, I made sure to let her know of that too. That she cannot be telling the kids things like this. It is confusing and it is wrong. We all made an agreement that punishments would carry from on house to the next and we would have open communication and the nonsense would stop.

Well here we are, 4 months later. The boy has since done a complete 360 and is amazing! (This week) I cannot sing his praises enough. I kind of emotionally checked out on him due to everything going on with him. So, over the past few weeks my children and I have began opening ourselves back up to him because we became so guarded and hurt by his behavior that we were always on guard. We still included him on games and trips and things we did as a family, but we always had that arm out ready to stop him if need be. We started having conversations with him where his Mom was telling him that I was a bad Mom. Letting him play on devices even if they were taken away and if we asked if he was playing on them to lie to us and it was ok to lie to us. It has become clear their Mom is the source of their poor behavior. My husband and I are fighting a battle we cannot win. We try to correct a behavior and she tells them it’s ok and justifies their behavior.

Last week the “good child” was in trouble. I cannot exactly recall what she did, but she lost her devices. We dropped them off at their Mother’s house and told her that the two girls lost all devices, and they would talk with her about what the did to lose them. Last Monday the youngest was talking about their time at their Mom’s house and mentioned her sister was playing on the iPad and watching movies. The “good one” said her sister was lying, her brother was lying and even went as far as calling her Mother a liar. You would’ve thought something horrific happened to this child with the way she sobbed and carried on and called her Mother a lair. She even got on the phone and called her Mother a liar. Turns out the “good one” was the liar. Mom’s boyfriend asked if he was lying and she replied “no.” Now, any person would expect that maybe, just maybe you would get an apology. Nope. Not from this kid. One week later, her Father is crushed, and she cannot apologize. She won’t apologize. Well, last night. Here come the text messages from their Mother. The “good one” apologized immediately to them and claimed she apologized to us, but we just would not accept it.  The kids told them they do not respect us and that’s why they act out. That we owe the children apologies and she told them not to apologize until we apologize. Apologize for what? Whacko!

So here we are this morning, kids are dropped off and they come in the house and you can see that they are going through the motions. We decide we are going to talk to them and ask them what their conversation was like with their Mom. They had no clue what we were talking about. So, we asked the “good one” if she apologized to her Mom and she said no. We asked the kids if they said they didn’t respect us and they replied with never having a conversation like that. They did inform us that their mom told them I was a bad mother and my husband, and I have anger issues and that’s why they are in trouble all the time. That it is ok to lie to us and they said that they didn’t feel that was right. She prompted the kids to tell their school counselors that we were horrible parents, and they were visibly upset by it. They wanted the boy to tell his counselors at school today that we were mean and he told us that he thought it was wrong and not true. That he didn’t feel comfortable telling the counselors a lie. If you are like me you are probably wondering where this child has been all this time. He has finally realized what has been going on this entire time and said that what his Mom was doing was wrong. She told the kids she was going to report us to Child Protective Services and wanted them to “lie about us so they can live with her.” That’s not how this works. The kids counselors are going to start going over mixed messages with them and how they can

Now we have documentation of garbage spanning over four years. She never takes them to doctors appointment, never shows up for conferences, repeated text messages on how they ruined her life, how she doesn’t want to take them. So we knew what we were dealing with but for the kids to finally have that wake up call and realize their Mom is not doing something right has them finally wanting to take a stand. All their bad behavior has been learned and endorsed by Mom. So, here we are calling counselors and calling our CPS contact to let them know what’s going on and calling lawyers.

My therapy in all this if writing this message and hoping there is someone else out there that is dealing with a similar situation with their stepchild’s biological parent and hoping they have some guidance. Any insight. Anything to offer. What have you done? What other resources are we not thinking of? How are you coping and handling it? Does it get better?