Okay, so here it goes.... I am a 28 year old mother of a beautiful 2 year old little girl and I love her to pieces and have no problems with bonding with her, I purposefully waited till I was older to have children because I did not ant to have an 8 yr old when I was 28! But I love my fiance and want this to work! When my daughter was about 5 months old I met my now soon to be husband (we are getting married next month). My fiance has a now 8 yr old daughter (she was 6 when we met). Now, the thing is my fiance and I met in October and he had only been home from the service since August, before that he was in the service for 8 yrs and moved around alot, his daughter was with his exwife (her real mother) until she was 3 yrs old, when she was 3 her mother left her with my fiances mother and took off. So from the time she was 3 till the time she was 6 she was with her grandmother. My fiance would see her on the weekends when he wasn't over seas and tried to talk to her every night. Before she was 3, while my fiance was over seas and she was with her real mother, while nothing physically bad ever happened to her she was exposed to alot of things that no child should ever be exposed to. Her real mother was a stripper and into drugs. This woman did drugs in front of her child and practice stripping in front of her as well as having men in and out all of the time. When my fiances mother got her she would pretend to sniff stuff off of the table and swing around a stand up lamp like a stripper pole, she also has always been overly affectionate with both males and females. Since she has begun living with my fiance and I we have worked very hard to turn her around and help her to realize what a real family is like and how an 8 yr old should and should not act, but before being with us, when she was with her grandmother nothing was ever done to correct the behavior, when she was with her grandmother she basically ran the roost, I think mostly because her grandmother felt bad for her. Because of all of this our job as parents has been extremely difficult... this child lies, sneaks and acts like she is 16 yrs old it has been an up hill battle but we have slowly been able to get her to behave a little bit better but every day is still a struggle, she used to try and compete with me for her dads affection and would look at me like haha every time she was hugging him and things of that nature which we eventually sat down and spoke with her about. She also used to try and start problems between us and her grandmother by making things up about us beign mean to her and things of that nature. While things have gotten some what better we are still working on some of her issues. Now that you have the back story... LOL!... (sorry)... The issue I am having is that I am the only real mother she has ever known, her mother is no longer in the picture and never has been since I have met her, my daughters father also is not in the picture and since my fiance has been with her since she was 5 months old the bond for the 2 of them has come very easy, he is the only father she knows and he thinks of her as his own daughter, my fiance actually has a better bond with my (our) daughter than his own real daughter. I feel bad because I have tried not to have these feelings of dislike towards her and I really want to feel that mother daughter bond with her but I just can't bring myself to do it, when we first started out I was very close to her and it was nice but since all of these problems have arose it seems like I have distanced myself and I have no idea how to fix this, I just do not like the person that she is and I do not think that we will ever be able to fix all of the damage that has been done no matter what we do, she is 8 yrs old and talks about having a boyfriend and a baby all of the time! I am so scared and do not know what to do! I mean don't get me wrong, we are very good to her and we treat both of our children the same, we take her lots of fun places and do alot of fun things with her, I show her love and affection and all of the stuff a mother should do, however I will say that I really notice that both my fiance and I do not show her the same level of affection that we show our younger daughter. She does call me mom and think of me as her mom and I think of her as my daughter, but at this point I feel like I am just faking it, I do not feel comfortable showing her affection and both my fiance and I have trouble doing too much with her or paying too much attention to her because when we do she doesn't know when enough is enough and becomes very clingy to the point where we eventually have to tell her to let us breath, she often copys things that our younger daughter does just to get attention, she always has to be the center of attention ands expects everyone to be there to do what ever she says and to entertain her... I am just at a loss! She is constantly ignoring the rules, lieing, sneaking, and mouthing back, I just can't bring myself to like her and know matter how much I fake it, I think she can sense this, the other thing is that I don't know what to do because I don't want our younger daughter or any other children we might have picking these things up from her! Any feed back would be GREATLY appriciated!