Hi all,

Just need to vent a little anxiety. I have a SD(10) who is a really good kid, and who I like a lot. We get along well and as I'm working from home I've been keeping an eye on her about 50% of the time (which I'm completely fine with and volunteered to do). BM works shift work so SD comes to our house when her mom is working, instead of going to BM's sister's places etc. (thank god). My SO does not expect me to watch her and is very respectful of when I have things going on and can't. 

Today wouldn't be an issue if she was my child, but it's got me feeling anxious because of the *evil SM* stereotype. As schools have been closed because of covid, she hasn't been doing school work with any regularity since February. She's a good kid but she does struggle with reading/math (as many kids do) and so we've started having her read for an hour each day when she's with us, and do two sheets of math problems. Overall this takes her about 1.5hrs each day. My SO had set out the expectation of the reading hour and I just kind of make sure it happens when he's at work. She and I have chatted about it and she understands why we're asking her to do it. 

Today, I set her timer for an hour and she started reading. 20 minutes later the timer rang. No sleuthing needed here, she tried to pull a fast one and cut the time down. I just said "nice try kiddo, you still have 40 minutes". She re-set the timer and finished reading no-problem. When she was done, I told her she wasn't in trouble, and asked her why she did it. She gave the classic 10-year old "I don't know" deer in the headlights look, and I reminded her that this is something her dad has asked her to do, and we're sticking to it for her own good. She's a kid that doesn't like confrontation if she can avoid it so she gets anxious fairly easily, and I could tell that she was agitated. 

I will mention it to my partner tonight so that he's aware, even though I don't think anything really needs to be done about it at the moment (this is pretty standard for me to do). If she was my kid I'd have 0% anxiety about it, and nothing bad really happenned, but I'm scared that this will go back as "I do homework all day" or "SM was mean and said I lied (not that I used that word)". I'm not even sure if she's like this with BM, but I don't want it to be "I don't want to go to dad's house because I have to do school work". We're both in agreement that she can't sit in front of the TV for 8hrs/day without doing anything productive, and her staying with us is extra time that he gets with her in the evenings and afternoons when he's home from work (normally it's just every other weekend). Just feeling nervous because I don't know if this *seemingly minor* moment will end up being a problem or not, and I don't want him to lose this extra time with her because she doesn't want to be here over something minor. At the same time, she's a kid and needs to be corrected in these moments (nicely). 

Thanks for listening <3