Background: This is my second marriage and DHs third. XH and I divorced in 1999 when DS was 8 and DD was 7. He and I had a good relationship, he paid his support, we had open visitation, we worked around his work schedule and he was welcome to stop by to see them whenever he wanted or to call and see if they were free if he was. I met (forever) Hubby in summer 2004 and XH died in the fall of 2004.

Hubby has 5 children: SS31, SS30, SS26 and SD22 with XW1 and SS10 with XW2. XW1 died in 2005. SS26 and SD22 lived with Hubby while they were growing up, nothing against their mom, they just wanted to. SS26 did not get along with XW2 so he moved back home with his mom his freshman year. Hubby's divorce from XW2 (from now on known as "Demented")was final in 2002, when SS10 was about 21 months old. SS10 lived with Demented for less than a year. She had no clue how to raise a child and when ss10 was 2 1/2, Hubby suggested that to her that maybe ss10 should live with him for a while. Hubby potty trained him and gradually broke him of all of the bad behavior habits that she had taught him. (have you ever actually seen a child drop to the floor of a store screaming and literally kicking his feet and pounding his fists? A FIVE YEAR OLD child???? I hadn't until I met ss10.) The original agreement was that SS live with Hubby until he started school.

In 2005, Hubby and SS moved in with me in my hometown. (5 hours away from Demented) By this time, she was on stress leave from her job and "couldn't keep any food down." I'm not sure if that meant she was refusing to eat or throwing it back up. Judging from SS actions when he came home from visits - I would go with refusing to eat, since he would make up excuses to avoid eating also. So, it was decided that SS would stay with Hubby. She ended up in the hospital shortly after.

Hubby and I got married in March 2007. After her visit with SS over spring break that year, Demented was taken to the hospital again for a month, for the same "not able to keep anything down." She had by that time lost her job and was diagnosed as being bipolar. (Really? What a surprise!)She was approved for Social Security Disability. (So we receive a check from SSDI instead of child support.) Her visits with SS were every 3rd weekend, plus any long weekends off of school, spring break, Thanksgiving, Christmas vacation and 3 weeks in the summer. Each time he came back, we had to "deprogram" him from disobeying us, attitude, etc. Somewhere in there, she divorced her third husband, who was an ass.

At the end of SS third grade year, SS teacher suggested that he showed signs of ADHD, which I had also thought but kept to myself. The school gave us the Conners test to fill out - one for Hubby and I and one for Demented. Demented accused Hubby of wanting to "label" SS and refused to fill it out. She then called DH and whined, cried, threatened, cajoled, bribed, etc. because she thought that she should have custody of SS again. She did finally give the assessment back, all of her answers were "0" except for three "1"s. Our assessment was all over the place. There were things that he did a lot, didn't do at all or did sometimes. If you've seen the assessment, you know what I mean. The three "1"s were for things that we had marked "0" for never on: out of control in stores, cries easily, clings to adults. The school disregarded her answers completely and they agreed with Hubby to wait and see how fourth grade went. She wasn't at the meeting.

That summer, SS stayed with Demented all of June and July and the first week in August, except for Father's Day weekend and one week that we took a family trip to Texas to see SS31, SS26, and SD22. He came home in August to play PeeWee football, that he's played since third grade.

In 2010, we moved closer to her (not by choice) so we are only 2 hours away now. Her visits are every other weekend, plus the additional stuff. When we moved for Hubby's job, I had to give up MY job. I started college that summer. My kids did not move with us. DS lives in the town we left and when DD is not at college, she stays in our hometown too. Hubby works second shift and does not have regular weekends off, so I am the one that is home with SS. Last summer, Demented and Hubby worked out the summer schedule without consulting me at all (I purposely did not ask just to see if anyone would think of me. No one did.) My college classes were two nights a week for June and July. They set it up so that SS came home every two weeks for a week. (Never mind that we don't have any babysitters in this town and I had class 2 nights a week.) Without going into all of the details and making this longer than it already is, Hubby ended up making all of the arrangements for someone to stay with SS. I threw a fit and Hubby does not make plans without consulting me anymore.