Some mixed progress with SD14, now resident with us for 3 and a half weeks and making efforts to get back on the rails following recent destructive activities. DH and BM have embarked on an ill planned effort to transfer SD to our local school, DH motivated by the desire to separate her from negative influences and give her a fresh start, BM clearly motivated by the desire to have an excuse to tell her family and friends about why SD has decided to live with her father. If SD changes school BM will be able to pretend SD had to move in with us in order to change school, rather than admit her own parental failings.

This effort is ill planned in the sense that they informed SD of this option prior to actually making an application to the school, which it transpires is over-subscribed and may not be able to offer her a place. SD has latched onto this option and now does not wish to return to her previous school, where I suspect her bad behaviour has burned some bridges with her previously close friends, so instead of starting the new term at her current school and waiting to find out about a place at the new school, she has not started the new term and has instead been withdrawn from her school while we wait 2 weeks for a decision from the new school. Guess who is now supervising her home schooling? Yes I had just acclimatised to the idea that she would be living here but at school 5 days a week and now she is at home ALL DAY, leaving me very tense about her impending boredom, and struggling to understand her curriculum sufficiently to set and monitor the work she's doing.

Then there is my anxiety over her raft of Issues. To anybody exasperated about why SKids merit any extra attention or tolerance over bio's, all I can say is that in my experience, a bad divorce really screws children up. Children's aren't born with problems and annoying behaviour, they're raised that way. There was a lot of honesty from SD in the conversations we had before she decided to move in. SD is still being perfectly lovely, but having attempted to address a couple of other concerns with her this week, notably whether she has been sexually active, and whether she has anorexic tendencies, she has reverted to her failsafe of denial and not admitted to either of these, confirming my fear that although she wants to change and wants to be more open, her learned behaviour of 7 years is too strong to be easily overcome. We have a first meeting with a counsellor in a week and a half. Right now I am feeling that we all need help.

On top of this I am in a knot of anxiety, torn between relief when she is at BMs and I have a break, and anxiety that our careful parenting approach is going to be undermined by BMs slack parenting. At our house bedtimes are enforced, she has chores to do, she eats well and she's expected to do some study every day, at BM's she still appears to be allowed to stay up till midnight, it's lucky if there's any food in and BM is more concerned with winning SD back than monitoring study. I have raided SD's room and found some diary notes (I am no respecter of privacy when I suspect problems) indicating that at some point SD has tried to eat as little as possible and that this is 'hard' at Dad's house, and 'easy' at Mum's. Despite the fact that I generally work really hard to see things from other people's perspective I am having a hard time not just despising BM for her poor parenting. Meanwhile BM seems to be most concerned with manipulating the access arrangements so SD spends more time at her house and she can convince herself that SD is happy with her and she has not failed.

SD is supposed to spend one night a week with her but she is trying to extend the stay by taking the next day off work so she can keep her for 2 days, although last week it turned out that after telling us she would be taking a day off to spend with SD she in fact went to work and left SD with her friend all day! I am deeply unsettled by the lack of predictability - I told DH it's like taking on a job with set hours and a job spec and then finding the hours and responsibilities are constantly changing. DH is trying to avoid provoking BM for fear she will pull some masterpiece of manipulation out of the bag and do something to interfere with SD's removal to our house. But he has called her tonight and outlined the rules we have in place and asked BM to confirm she is on board and monitor SD's eating, time will tell whether she actually steps up and manages this consistently. Now all I have to do is figure out how to confront SD about sex and diet. God I need a holiday. Oh and BTW BM has just been on her 3rd holiday in 3 months, this time a minibreak to Barcelona. This has at least pursuaded DH to adjust the CS we pay starting next month, instead of postponing changing it until things had 'settled down'! HIs new fear is that BM will quit work to focus on SD! I fear that the last thing SD needs is more time with her mother.