This is really hard for me to put out in a public forum, but I feel as if I need to go somewhere anonymous so it doesn't cycle back to to my bonus kids mother's and have it get twisted. But, here goes.. My boyfriend and I have been in a relationship for over a year now, we have been friends for almost 2 years. We started talking while he was going through his second divorce and I was in a low point in my life as well. Shortly after we officially started daiting, we got our kids together for the first time. We went to our local zoo and spent the day there. It was fun, HOT, but a ton of fun! Between my SO and I we have 6 kids, my daughter is 14, his oldest son is 13, his oldest daughter is 12, my son is 10, his youngest son is 9, and his youngest daughter is 5. At first, I feel like his kids didn't want to listen to me or take me seriously because I was new. So, I blew it off. It wasn't until a few months into our relationship that we discovered the 12 yr old (just turned 11 around this time) was having inappropriate conversations with males on a private chat/messages through instagram. We attempted to discuss it with her about why it made us upset and concerned. She immediately shut us out, and made heart wrenching comments like "no one loves me" "im always wrong" "i should just go live with my grandpa in heaven"...etc... That's when my daughter stepped in and kinda took over in trying to get through to her about the severity of the situation. Several months pass, things seem to be getting better. 

Due to my SO demanding job and having to work an insane amount of hours a week, we only had 1 day a week to spend together as a family. So we would frequent the zoo, or play games, try to go to different free events, just try to have a good ol' fashioned family time that didn't involve sitting around with electronics and not interacting with each other. It seems as if my oldest Bonus Son has kinda came down to earth so to speak and has opened up and really started to listen to me. He as bonded with my kids, he tries to help us reason with the other kids when meltdowns happen. He's really starting to show some major maturity. Every other weekend it seems like either my oldest bonus daughter or the youngest bonus son, has some kind of "power trip" and ruins what would have been a great day. My youngest bonus son suffers from severe ADHD with anger issues. He is medicated, we try some self help techniques, but when he's short circuted, blown that fuse, gets angry (whatever you want to call it) its really hard to reason with him until i get so frustrated i start crying. He has his moments of anger, but he's starting to come around. My youngest bonus daughter, well she's too young to fully understand what's going on, but she LOVES my daughter and they have bonded so much that it's incredible! The youngest BD, the only hurdle really is mom (my SO second wife). She had a hard time accepting me, i couldn't take pictures of her, my daughter couldn't be alone with her, like taking her to the park or whatever. Mom has slowly stopped with that, and is slowly coming around. 

Back to my older bonus kids, my oldest bonus daughter. She's difficult. She really makes things hard when she doesn't get her way. She immediately wants to go back to her mom's, shuts us out and pretends to hear us, mainly me, when we speak to her. A few weeks maybe a month ago, we noticed a sore on her hand, she immediately lied about it. She said she fell, no additional road rash to help prove that story. I told her, its okay to be honest with me, i wouldn't be mad, but that it wasn't from falling on a rock. She spun the story to where a family member had purposefully hurt her. My SO and i didn't want to just throw it under the rug, we took it upon ourselves to report it. After listening to her tell the story to the officer, i had my doubts to the truthfulness of her tales... come to find out she lied, big time, and that it was a self inflicted wound by picking at dry skin. I sat her down and discussed why it wasn't okay to lie about something like that. I kept telling her I wasn't mad at her, as she was trying to shut us out. Other days where she's just mouthy and disrespectful and refuses to listen or take direction. Tonight was extremely difficult. She just had a birthday and decided to have her mom take her to get acrylic nails for her birthday using the money she got for her birthday. I personally am against that at her age as it damages your nails, but her mom has been allowing her to dye her hair for SEVERAL years, so when it comes to things like that, we know it doesn't matter what we say. She tried to tell us that her friends mom was going to take her to get her nose pierced last week. My SO made sure mom knew we were not okay with that and made sure mom truly was not on board with that idea. We've noticed that daughter has stories from mom's house that don't match brother's stories. But the one story that does match is that oldest boy has to take authority and correct brother and sister when they are naughty or don't follow the rules or are fighting with the other sibling, also that daughter has to make dinner almost every night because mom or other care giver in the home refuses to, would rather sleep than be the adult. 

Now, I know that a pre-pubescent teen will have mood swings, and try to fight authority. But, tonight was extremely disrespectful. I asked her if she spoke like that to her mom, she said no, i asked her why she felt it was okay to do it here, she said IDK, i'm too tired to talk about this now. So i asked the oldest, I asked him if she's like that at home, he said "yes, only worse until mom gives in and lets her have her way. She always gets her way". 

My kids have been abandoned by their Bio-dad's. My daughter hasn't seen her dad since she was 2, my son since he was 1. My daughter has had difficulties accepting my SO as a male influence in her life but has slowly came around to where now she wants to spend time with him or give him a hug at the end of the night. My daughter has had conversations with the 12 year old on her attitudes and why she should be grateful that he's around. I just feel like I'm fighting a loosing battle and I don't know if I'm doing the right thing by voicing how she makes me feel when she's disrespectful. I always tell her how much i love her and truly care about her and that i would move MOUNTAINS for her! I feel that there is more going on when she's not in our care than we are lead to believe. I feel that she doesn't know what to do with positive attention. I just don't know where else to turn.