And you know.. it's just frustrating. If my child would have done the same thing she would have gotten the same reaction from me - "what the heck? why are you throwing this away? That's like what, a 3 dollar lunch? Would you throw away 3 dollars because you just did."

To the bio parent of the skid.. this is mean, evil, picking on them, blah blah blah. I am not mean. I am not evil. I live in the land of common sense and calling things as I see them.. not making excuses and ignoring.

Step kid, bio kid, neighbor kid, does something stupid or breaks a rule more than once... you call it out, say what you need to say and do what you need to do. It's called parenting.

Quote: >It happened again today after I wrote this post. I found a whole sandwich in the garbage, an unopened fruit rollup, an unopened pudding. I asked SD about it and she said "Well I'm not going to eat any of it." She's 13. So I ask dear wife about it..she says "Well, I'll talk to her she doesn't understand. Don't get an attitude."<

Sometimes I think I am the one born on another planet. Had I done that to my folks at that age, my Dad would have thrown me into the electric chair and my Mom would have thrown the switch! Throw away food!?!?!? Holy mother of god that was *THE* sin of sins!

My SS used to waste food all the time and DW would defend it. I nipped that in the bud real fast so fortunately for me, that problem didn't spiral out of control like it seems to have with your SD. And your wife says "I'll talk to her"??? What is she going to say?...Screw that! When it comes time to prepare lunch for the brat, I'd take out a $5 bill and burn it in front of her. "There! That was your lunch! Hope it was satisfying. Have a nice day in school!"

Well said ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

We try like hell.. and get hell in return.

We are a joke. To the stepkids we are just someone to help bio do shit for them.. to the bio we aren't a partner, we aren't the stepkids parent, we are the person that helps them fuck, finance and feed. I have another "F" to add as the step parent.. FED UP!

^^^THIS. This isn't poor parenting - this is ANIMAL ABUSE and a seriously disturbed teenage kid who has a mother who defends his criminal actions.

OP needs to get out of this horrible situation and if he chooses to stay for whatever reason, at least give any pet a decent home away from this abusive kid.

Good deal Jay. No animal deserves to go through what your SS is putting him through. And with him being a "dangerous" (I don't label them that way as I've had many very sweet Shepherds) breed, if he bites someone, guess who is liable for that?

The dog may eventually start retaliating against such abuse and if he does, the aftermath won't be pretty for anyone involved. I've been in animal rescue, dog training and vet assisting for many years and have seen a lot of cases of abuse.

If you can't sell the dog quickly to a good home, you may consider giving him up to a rescue group.

I'm SO proud of you JAY!!! Good deal. Even if your marriage doesn't survive and you end up leaving to never see SS again, at least YOU will be the one to teach him that his horrible actions won't go unpunished. I hope the cops scare the living SHIT outta him and if he ever touches an animal in a harmful way again, he gets severely punished for it.

Good for you. You're putting your money where your mouth is, so to speak. Now your wife and SS will know you mean what you say and it's not just empty threats.

I'm glad you're doing what you need to do to protect your puppy as well as making steps to show wife and SS you mean business.

It's too bad you had to lose your puppy over this, but it's what you had to do. When I was married, we had a cat. My then DH would tease the cat. Then our daughter, who was three years old at the time, would try to pet the cat, and it would bite and scratch her. When I told my DH he needed to stop teasing the cat, he said that our daughter should stop trying to pet the cat. :jawdrop: A grown man said a THREE year old should show the restraint he obviously could not do himself!!

DH kept on teasing the cat, and our three old was not old enough to understand she had to leave the cat alone, so I had to give the cat to the SPCA. I hate that I had to give away my daughter's pet (she was my older daughter's pet) but I had to protect my three year old from my husband's stupidity. Some people are so stupid when it comes to animals, SMH.

Keep us posted on what happens.

Again, Jay, good for you for finally doing something serious to address this kid's serious issues.

I wish you the best of luck and I'm sorry to hear you're going through this very tough time.

Well hopefully this will be a wake-up call for her as well. She strikes me as someone who really doesn't know how to deal with situations like this which unfortunately lands her in the group pf permissive/negligent parents.

For what it is worth, you are definetly doing the right thing. Sometimes, being a vigilant parent forces us to take extreme measures.

Our parents knew how to handle things like this. With a trip to the woodshed.

I know you aren't happy to have to do this, but it's what you have to do. Who knows, you actions might be what saves this SS from becoming a Norman Bates for real. If he's stopped now he might actually learn a lesson and turn around.

At any rate, you have to protect your little daughter from this boy. I can't believe she didn't do anything when her son hurt her own daughter! :O

I agree with almost everything Cheri just said, with the exception that if Jay can prove his wife's son is a danger to their daughter, a judge won't place her primarily in the mother's care as long as son is residing with mother.

Just because she's the mother, doesn't grant her primary custody automatically. I know this for a fact.

I don't see much of a solution for him either unless he can prove SS is a danger to them and have him removed for psychiatric evaluation/care and then leave DW and file for primary custody of his daughter. If I were in his shoes, I'd be well documenting all of SS's horrific behavior, contacting whatever authority I could and then moving my ass out with my daughter and filing for temporary emergency custody of her.