This is my first time posting but I'm at my wits end and don't know where to turn. All my problems stems from the BM. She is not a very nice person and is so destructive to my 2 step-kids (SD11, SS20). She does things behind my husbands back and tells the kids not to tell him because he will be mad at them. She brought them to therapy without my husband's knowledge to have them work through their fear of him and his anger issues. If you met my husband you would laugh at either of those descriptions. When we first got together she called all the shots and he took it. Since then we have gone back to court and evened the playing field. The quack therapist put in her notes that my husband has anger issues and the guardian was going to take away all of our visitation until he came to our house and met us.

The best thing we won out of court was the right to take my SD to Kids in the Middle, but her mother refused to attend and constantly told her it was stupid that we made her go. My SD was really a mess though. When she was in first grade she was "suffering from panic attacks" and was afraid that everything would kill her. She would be spending the day at our house and her mom would call several times and pressure her into saying she was sick or upset until she was crying. If she was having fun and forgot to call her mom she would freak out. We took her on vacation and she cried the whole time because her mom was upset and she was the only one who could take care of her. It took some time, and the court rulings, to work through those issues and she has spent the last couple years somewhat crazy-free. Although her mom still tries to play her against us, (even texting her while she was at our house and telling her that her dad would be mad and yell at her if he knew she was talking to her mom and how to delete the messages when they were done), my SD learned in therapy that she needs to be stronger than to let her mom manipulate her all the time.

There have been an inncident here and there, we are hard on her about grades and following through on committments and her mom is her "friend" and enforces no rules. The latest issue has been severe stomach problems, normally occuring after spending the weekend at our house. She apparently doubles over in pain and is up all night crying because of the severe pain. However, we have never seen these so called stomach problems. Last night BM calls to tell my husband that she is sick with the stomach pains and wanted to know why we didn't do anything about them because she said she was sick all weekend. When my husband called to talk to her daughter she said she was sick but afraid to tell him. I can't tell you how fine she was all weekend. She was happy and healthy and having fun the whole time she was with us.

So, obviously it isn't going to end. Do I just ignore it? Have no expectations from the kids or BM? Know that we are just going to be lied to all the time? I love my SD like I love my own daughter, but it's so hard to fight crazy.