I have teens and they sound a lot like your teenage skids, esp. my daughter. I think it's just part of being a teen. My kids are good kids but teens are almost like preschoolers...they think it is all about them, are frequently negative (well, my daughter is), and constantly want things. I have to constantly say no, etc, but talking to my friends and other parents, it seems this is normal developmentally, although it is annoying and exhausting at times.

I am wondering if you feel differently toward the kids you work with and your nieces/nephews because your skids are connected to BM. Not judging because I have had way less tolerance for my exbf's daughter than my own kids...that being said, his daughter and the drama with her mom was WAY worse than anything I go through with my kids...my kids just get on my nerves with teenage angst.

I am a teacher and love my students and have quite a bond with them. Have 3 bios and 2 steps that I raised and while I felt the steps were mine and raised them as so, there definately has been hardship there that we cannot over comes where that deos not exist with bios and my students so don't feel it is only you or something is wrong.

You've hit the nail on the head already. Having children 2 days out of 14 makes it impossible to make any lasting impression.

Accept the fact that they are what they are and that nothing you can do will change that fact. Release your feeling of responsibility for them because you are not. Further accept that you will gain no credit for how they turn out - but neither will there be any blame directed at you. Unless of course you continue to interfere in which case you may get all of the blame.

Being step-children they are predisposed to assume you are the enemy even more so than a normal parent. Accept this and let them go.

I have struggled with this too and come to the conclusion that you can't force it if it isn't there naturally. I have always loved kids and babies and grew up in a large family and have worked with kids a lot for my work. I adore my bio-nephew, my step-nieces, my friends kids etc... but it has been very difficult to enjoy my own step-kids. I spent a lot of time (over a year) wishing they were different and being miserable because they just brought difficulty and emotional trauma into my life and home, but over time I got to the point where I accepted that I will never have an easy, warm relationship with them in the same way I do with my nephew, for example. When I see my nephew, my heart lights up and I just want to scoop him up and kiss his fat little cheeks. He is a total sweetheart and I get a huge kick out of the hilarious stuff he says and I am bursting with pride at his sweetness, humor, intelligence, talent and general adorableness. I used to compare him and my skids and the result was incredibly depressing. They come out unfavorably in comparison with most kids so it was emotionally disastrous to compare them to my nephew. I could spend months comparing and cataloging all their problems and deficiencies, but it wouldn't help anything and would just make me incredibly depressed.

After I finally got to an acceptance stage (which I still struggle with sometimes on bad days), I was able to view them separately without comparison. I accept that I will never feel for them the way I do for the other kids in my life that I have a natural and strong bond with. Talking to my mom (a counselor) has helped quite a bit and she was the one who suggested that I view them in context of their background and history and see them separately from other kids I know. Their mom is one of the craziest, most messed up people I have ever known, and is a horrific mother. Short of outright abusing them, she has made every single mistake a mother can make and H and I have come to the conclusion that she doesn't love them for who they are, but instead for the identity and self-esteem they give her. She has a bizarre and delusional attitude of entitlement because she gave birth to two kids and "being a mom" is the most important part of her identity, although you can't tell by the way she treats her kids. As they get older and have been starting to express themselves as individuals and break away from her, she has been falling apart and being even more nasty than usual with them. SS12 is in the middle of a huge transitional stage where he is going from kid to teen and has been pushing BM away and trying to launch out on his own in a lot of ways. She is reacting with anger and by losing her temper and yelling at him and is pulling all kinds of messed up, passive aggressive, mind-trip BS with him, all with the result that he is almost constantly angry with her and wanting to get away from her. I would trust a random chimpanzee to mother a baby over BM and I see clearly that she didn't have the mothering skills necessary to emotionally take care of the boys when they were babies. Instead they had a mentally ill, young and inept mother who didn't know how to take care of herself, let alone babies. She kept them alive, but they didn't get any of the true affection and intellectual stimulation that babies need at critical developmental checkpoints in infancy. As a result, they are both special needs kids (autism and OCD) and are far behind their peers developmentally, socially and intellectually. My seventh grader has the verbal skills of a fourth grader and comes across like one rather than a junior high school kid. He is extremely physically and socially awkward and to top it all off, inherited BMs crooked, bucked teeth and bulging eyes, lisp and poor motor control. This does not help him socially and he is at a difficult age anyway. My first grader is the only kid in his class who can't read and can't even write his own name. He is behind in all academic areas and has social problems as well. They are both struggling and this is after two years of astronomical improvements! I have had so many people make comments to me about their drastic improvement since H and I have been together and we work on it constantly. It's completely exhausting but they have actually come a long way since I first became their SM. I can't even imagine how bad things would be if they had continued down the same path they were on before! It caused H a lot of grief and guilt and he wasn't sure what to do to get them on the right path. He literally had BM sabotage every good parenting move he made and she actively contradicted him in front of the skids anytime he tried to create structure or enforce discipline. It was a huge disaster and they couldn't even take the kids in public. H felt like he was a prisoner in his own home and he and BM traded escape passes while the other stayed with the kids. Every time he left BM with the kids back then, he would come home to find that one of the kids would have destroyed a tv or game system or punched or kicked a hole in the wall or closet (when I went in to help H repair his place with BM-in a vain attempt at a security deposit return, we had to patch over six holes that SS12 and BM had punched or kicked in the walls and closet doors while H was out of the house!). When H left BM, she also apparently had a meltdown and broke and destroyed, in front of the kids, a large majority of the framed pictures they had up, a bookshelf and a computer. The skids are still breaking things at BMs, but we don't allow anything of the sort at our house and the skids follow our rules pretty well. They have strict consequences for breaking things, especially out of carelessness or temper and so they have figured out that it's worth it to be careful. When they have broken things, they have to replace them with their own savings and if they break their own stuff, we don't replace it like BM does (SS12 has gone through four DS's and three Playstations at BMs house and she keeps buying him new ones, or rather having her mom buy him new ones).
Anyway, being their SM is a huge struggle and sometimes it goes really well and they make a lot of progress and sometimes I want to scream with frustration and start filling out adoption paperwork on the side (kidding!).
It helps that I can see clearly how and why they are the way they are. Genetics are not on their side and even though they have inherited a lot of H's great qualities, they have also inherited a lot from BM, especially in the looks department, which is extremely unfortunate for them. They are really low I.Q. and it takes a lot of effort to communicate with them. My family is shocked when they talk to them because it's so hard to even get across basic concepts and neither of them can get out an articulate sentence. They don't understand anything and you have to explain things to them as if they were two, rather than a first grader and a junior high kid! My BFF's one year old understands things before they do! It's really shocking and upsetting and I spent a lot of time being depressed and stressed about it and feeling like throwing in the towel with them. Out of pure stubbornness, I have stuck through it and I continue to struggle with them and help them grow and progress the way they should be.
If I keep in mind their genetic, emotional, social and intellectual limitations and the reasons for them, it helps a lot to not get frustrated. I don't compare them to other kids anymore (at least not on a day to day basis, I do on here, but not in every day life) and I don't expect myself to have feelings for them like I do for the kids in my life that I love and care about effortlessly. The other kids in my life bring me delight, pure joy, laughter and wonder and I appreciate that so much and understand that they are amazing kids because they come from loving parents and families that have nourished their spirits and imagination and given them all the love and affection that kids and babies need to develop properly. My friends that are parents spend so much time talking about their kids and debating the best schools, toys, friends, activities for them and even though no one is a perfect parent, all my friends are amazing, loving parents in their own way and the result is that their kids are amazing, loving kids. My BFF also has an autistic child and it is really comforting to have her as a resource, but the big difference is that although her daughter is classically autistic, like my SS12, she is extremely well behaved, loving and intelligent and communicates, in her own way, on a very advanced level for her age. We have the same challenges with our kids, but in my situation, I have to send off my skid to a mentally ill and destructive BM, who fights against our parenting and tries to challenge or ruin what we do for SS12 because her anger and bitterness towards H and I is stronger than her love for her child. She would rather "hurt" us than do what is right for her son and has proven this in a consistent pattern over the years. This makes me sick, but is also a huge tip-off to her parenting and why my skids are so troubled and difficult. I love them in my own way and absolutely have their best interests at heart and will always do everything I can to normalize them and help them achieve scholastic success, good friends and a happy and fulfilling home life. I don't have the bursting pride and love that I do for my darling nephew, but if I don't try to pigeon-hole them as normal kids and do what I can to help them overcome their unfortunate background and BM, I would feel like a failure as a SM. The only way to do that is to take the pressure off myself to have feelings for them that I just don't have and to accept that our relationship will always be different than it is with other kids in my life. Nothing really changes outwardly, but if you can accept it in your mind, it really helps to reduce or eliminate all that stress and worry and definitely helps to improve the quality of the time spent with and for troubled skids.

The most important thing to remember is that parenting other people's kids is freaking hard and doesn't come naturally to everyone and all combinations of people. Even if you love and are great with kids, doesn't mean that you will have a great, automatic relationship with your skid. Think about how much selection goes into picking your spouse? You don't live with and marry just anybody! We choose our partners, but we don't choose the kids that come with the people we love. They didn't choose us and we didn't choose them, it's a crapshoot. We just have to make the best of it and not have overly high expectations out of them or ourselves to bond tightly and have a happy go lucky relationship. Some people luck out with their skids and it comes naturally and some of use are not so lucky and we are thrown curveballs and challenges that we would never actively choose or wish to have. We do it because we love our husbands or wives and we are committed to our families, but it sure isn't easy and it's okay when it's not.