"Oh, yeah she still carries a blankie!! Actually it's her "blankie string." It is like a piece of long rope from a blankie that she had when she was a baby. She carries it around everywhere she goes and smells it!!! She misplaced it once and you would have thought the world had ended!!! She screamed and cried!! I ask my husband if he thinks she will take it on her honeymoon when she gets married. LOL. Really, it disgusts me! "

I actually have a friend who does this!!!!! It is disgusting, he's 24 and the only reason he gave it up was because he joined up.

Yikes.

My SD does the singing out loud while listening to her ipod too, also singing in general as if everyone in the world wants to hear her sing all the time. Even when people are trying to watch tv, have a conversation, you name it.

I have tried to teach my kids that it's rude to subject everyone around them to an activity that is very obviously a private activity (ear buds listening to ipod can't be anything but).

The outloud singing about drives me over a cliff. My SD12 will sing in the car like she is on American Idol - the tryout stuff, not the good peeps - and it is loud. I finally have to be like, "Please, I can't hear the song." and she insists on singing all the time and I don't get it. It's when we are watching TV, in the car, everywhere. DH has to tell her to stop multiple times...annoying. ANNOYING!

I slept with a teddy bear until I was 29. I still do when DH is on business trips.

As for the other stuff, kids are products of the people who are taking care of them. In this case, SD is a product of DH and BM and its apparent that they are letting her get away with too much. This child won't change her behavior unless DH changes his parenting style. You need to have chats with DH about his lack of parenting and how it'll harm SD. You need to talk with him about how it's damaging your relationship with him. And maybe SD needs counseling too.

Okay, I'm not trying to be critical, but you say your SD is 5'4" and 160 lbs? Okay, I'm 5'7" and 160 lbs and pretty chubby. This girl sounds seriously overweight. That might be why she doesn't have friends, doesn't do much, etc, and you've got to put a stop to it now. When I first got married, my SIL was just finishing her BA in college and was home for the summer. She made a complete nuisance of herself, and is also heavy and shy/lazy. So everytime I had her shoved up my ass, I would take her hiking, swimming, walking, to play racquetball, to the gym, or on a 5 mile jog (this was 2 kids ago, before I was a fatty). She lost weight and started feeling better about herself, and met people while she was at it.

Do you live near a YMCA? She's old enough to get dropped there a few times a week for some much needed exercise.

I would not encourage this kind of slovenly behavior. It'll just get worse and you'll have a college aged fat brat wedged so far up your ass you won't be able to sit ccmfortably. Just intervene, and do it now.

As for the string/blankie...I must confess that for the first 7 years of marriage I slept with a koala and an orangutan on my bed...I don't carry them around all the time, and I certainly don't smell them (how wierd) but I liked to have them on the bed...mostly so I could keep chapstick in the koala's pouch for midnight chapstick application..it's very dry in my room. Now that my fam has grown, I have agreed to let them be taken off the bed, but they are by the bed within arm's reach. I just can't sleep otherwise. Silly habit, but not really dangerous or destructive, right?

Get that kid out of your bedroom ! She's way too old for that. Yuck.I went through that one too. Those girls just walked in whenever they felt like it. No knocking or anything. I made BF make them stop!

i think step kids are the devil's way of taking my happy ass life and sticking a wrench in it. i used to try to be great to them, now I just scatter when they "threaten" to visit.

send her ass back to her BM. BM is having her cake and eating it too. nobody wants to raise a teenager, especially one with a blankie string smellingy habit like activity. ew.

she's stalking you and dh is letting her do it.

yea, my ss17 lived with us, and i slept with one eye open so he didn't slit my throat.

by the way, even if you aren't wicked when you start out, you will be when it's over....the little bastards kinda turn you into it, even if it's only in their minds.