Every day seems more difficult than the last. I need to vent
I found this site by searching, "I hate my stepson" first thing getting into work after another rough morning. I don't really hate him, I just really dislike him almost all the time.(I hope there's a difference) The BF is an EOW parent who owes us over 12,000$ in back child support. He forces my SS to sleep in the same bed with him (he's almost 11) and has been unemployed for years (at least 4). He's 40 and still lives at home with his mother. White southern guy who's a Bob Marley wanna-be who smokes pot all day and illegally downloads video games. For the record, rural South Carolina sides HEAVILY with BF rights. It's very "good ole boys" around here. He also has a heavily involved, and influential lawyer in his family who does all of his child custody work for free. A perfect storm of frustration.
My SS takes after his biological father in so many ways. He's a manipulative mama's boy who's about as tough as a wet piece of tissue. He's also lazy, dirty and REALLY socially awkward. He's also very physically weak. He struggles to open a twist off soda. He makes no attempt to do anything that might be a little uncomfortable. I try to make him help around the house to help build some strength, but he just claims he's thirsty after 5 minutes of work and just sits and watches me continue to work. After that he switches to either moving at the speed of a slug or intentionally does such a bad job (sweeping... for example) that I have to go behind him and redo the work (he'll keep doing a bad job until my patience gives out.... I've waited hours before). He's only into video games and has no interest in hanging out with other kids. He want's to be around his mother ALL THE TIME. I dread when he walks in a room when I'm talking with her. The conversation inevitably turns to shit. He tries to inject himself into the conversation and it always ends with both of us yelling at him for the millionth time to not interrupt. I look forward to the weekends he's gone. It's so peaceful.
It's not just me. My wife (His BM) has openly told me that she struggles with being around him. He makes her uncomfortable sometimes. A couple of months ago he (MY SS) told her(his BM) that she was a "hot mom". Just really strange stuff. We explained the difference between calling his mother beautiful and hot, but it didn't seem to click for him. He is just really socially awkward. She tries, but she struggles because he's so easily emotionally destroyed by any correction that we make. She doesn't want to hurt him, but we can't NOT parent him because he get's wounded so easily.
His new form of torture is to get his sister riled up (not hard to do... She's a 3 year old bottle rocket anyway) and sits close to where my wife and I are (within 4 feet)and lets her crawl all over him while he screech's like an injured eagle. I tell him to be quiet, but now the 3 year old has begun to mimic the noise and another conversation is ruined while my wife and I have to settle my BD down and separate them. He then hides behind the "I just wanted to be close to you guys defense". He wanted to be the center of my wife's attention, not be close to us. Then my wife feels like shit the rest of the day because we have to tell him to go away and she feels like a bad mom for having to "shun" her son. It's emotional manipulation and it drives me nuts. He gets it honestly though. His BF is the same way.
I don't know what to do. I feel trapped. My wife and I are madly in love and almost NEVER fight about anything other than him. All of our disagreements revolve him. We parent in a very similar fashion and are very like minded. The only difference is that she has the biological connection with him, and I don't. I really don't like be angry or irritated all the time. Every time I try to make an emotional connection with him it blows up in my face. I just hope I can hold it all together until he's a teenager and out of the house more.
It's important to know that my wife teaches college night classes M-T and isn't home until 5 minutes before bedtime (about 8:30). I take him to school, check his homework, cook dinners almost every night (including when my wife is home) and get them ready for bed on top of working full time and picking up my daughter from pre school every day at noon on my lunch break. I don't get much time by myself, much less with my wife. My hectic schedule only adds to my frustration. I'm looking forward to this summer. I need some down time. The school year is very hard on me.
I could go on for hours, but your attention can only be had for so long. sidenote.. I can't stand how dismissive people are when they find out I'm "just a step parent" to him. It is much more difficult to be an effective step parent.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to the reading comments. I'm glad to know I'm not alone in feeling this way.
All I can say to you -
All I can say to you - disengage from the kid, focus on your marriage, do not get involved in parenting, disciplining or anything, it's up to his 2 parents to deal with it.
If SS does not like the co-sleeping he should complain at school councilor... that should sort it out quickly
I'm going to have to. I had
I'm going to have to. I had gotten really good at staying out of it last summer, but I tend to get sucked back in during the school year. It's tough to disengage when I'm running the house alone at night 4 days a week.
Thanks for the counselor advice. That's a really good idea...
print this out and have it
print this out and have it with you for the next month, read it 3 times a day... it saved me lol..
http://www.steptogether.org/disengaging.html
Printed. It'll take some
Printed. It'll take some work for me to get there. I'm very much hung up on the "I agreed to be a parent whenever I decided to marry my wife" frame of mind. I feel like I would be breaking a promise to her. She genuinely helps as much as she can, but it doesn't feel like enough during the school year.
I told her this morning while venting, after I had dropped my SS off at school, that I needed to take a step back for a bit (from parenting him). If that look she gave me could have killed me, it would have. I usually back off in very subtle ways and nobody really notices until the house is destroyed, we're eating nothing but frozen pizza and his grades have dropped.
I will begin reading it and applying some of the advice. Thanks again for the advice. I'm feeling better already.
Sir you agreed to be a parent
Sir you agreed to be a parent but you did not agree to be treated like a doormat and disrespected....
Why should you do for SS what not even his mother wants to do? e.g Helping with homework? If mum does it every night and one night she can't, by all means help one night, currently you have to do it all every night ans she does not help allot,
If mum does not tell her little brat - what ever Bowen is saying, listen to him.... then why should you be doing anything.
That's the whole point of disengagement, you are there to help... not to take over the parental roll, and you help on your terms only...
SS respectful to you and asking you to help him with science project - then you can help him, but again it's HELP, that's giving advice to SS not doing it for him.....
as step parents we tend to forget that helping does not mean do everything.
Ok so your wife needs to get
Ok so your wife needs to get over the thought that she's "shunning" her son when she is actually "parenting" him. He needs firm boundaries and discipline before she turns out another useless slug on the world similar to her ex husband. Example" EVERY time he interrupts, every time: "son, don't interrupt. One more time and your in your room for fifteen minutes". Then, follow through. She would greatly benefit from a parenting class. She is raising an emotionally manipulative future welfare recipient if she doesn't get on the ball yesterday.
I agree completely.... I see
I agree completely.... I see him heading in the same direction as his waste of space father. I tell her that there's a difference and we're simply correcting bad behavior. I tell her almost weekly to "take off her guilt blanket". She absolutely wears her guilt like a piece of clothing.
It sounds to me that you and
It sounds to me that you and your DW are very well aligned. All I can see that is missing is for the two of you to sit down and develop your household standards of reasonable behavior and hold the kids to that standard in an age appropriate manner for each child.
If the Eagle screeching, interrupting, and failing to perform his chores to a minimum standard are the main issues with him then make those key behavioral standards that you and DW will enforce. Not the only ones mind you .... but ones that get focus until he corrects those behaviors in a durable manner.
All standards should be consistently enforced. Since his stated motivator is to be close to you and his mom then removing him from your presence will likely be an effective consequence for any deviations he makes from the behavioral standards you and your bride set.
If he interrupts put him a corner out of site from the rest of the family with his nose firmly in contact with both interesting walls. He stays there silently until you and DW get tired or an effevtive time has passed. If he whines and cries about it..... he stays there. The same for Eagle screeching. When he fails to effectively complete his chores he redoes them over, and over, and over again until they are done correctly.
Do not tolerate anything less than full compliance. If he chooses to not comply... apply the consequence.
He is also at an effective age for sentences. Tens of thousands of them if necessary. My Skid wrote countless sentences from age ~8 to ~13-ish. The key to sentences is he writes them alone in an isolated space with nothing to distract him. In our case it was an unused bedroom upstairs. All the room had was an antique wooden school writing desk, a ream of lined writing paper, and a box of pens. We assigned sentences that were relevant to his behavioral infraction so that his mind would at least have to engage on the message while writing. His quota was 120-180 sentences per hour (depending on length) and he had to write them all in perfect handwriting, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Any missed hourly quota or handwriting, grammar, or punctuation errors doubled the assignment.
e.g. "I will not interrupt adults when they are speaking unless they recognize my presence and specifically request that I participate in the conversation."
To this day my SS-stb25 cringes when his mom or I recount stories about his writing sentences. We all three get a good laugh out of the stories now but they were very effective when he was in the boy brain fart years. The primary long term benefit of sentences is that he has the most beautiful handwriting as an adult.
Sentences work well though you do need to be mindful not to punish yourself and the rest of the family to invoke any punishment. We learned this through experience. When SS was writing sentences we all pretty much were stuck in the house... so.... we started taking him with us on outings, etc... but when we walked in the door to the house .... he was to the room writing sentences. This also gives the rest of the family a break from a PITA kid.
Basically our philosophy was that if he was misbehaving when he should be behaving... he could do mindless drudgery while he was supposed to be having a good time. Sentences work particularly well for school related behavior or performance issues. If kids are screwing around in school they can work while they are away from school.
Be consistent, stay the course, take care of you and your marriage.
Good luck.
I like the sentences idea A
I like the sentences idea A LOT! His handwriting is awful and he dreads having to write sentences for school. I'll have to get my wife on board, but she's usually good about helping me out when the school year is over.
Not to be too alarmist, but
Not to be too alarmist, but it seems to me that there are some serious red flags about this kid's interaction with his father. Co-sleeping at 11? Comments about his mom being "hot"? That's just nuts.
I would hazard a guess that there is a lot more going on at his BF's house than video gaming. A 40-year old father still living with his own mother is bad enough - now he is turning his son into his clone.
As was suggested, I think that someone from the school should have a conversation with your SS about sleeping habits, things he does while at his father's, etc.
Some of these infantile behaviors can be stemming from a bad situation at BF's house that no one knows anything about - yet.
I completely agree with
I completely agree with you... I'll gently ask questions about what it's like to sleep over there and he voices his dislike of the arrangement. He says there's "no other place to sleep". It's a 2 bedroom condo and they have dogs (SS has awful allergies, We have to send Claritin with him) that sleep down stairs on the couch. His Grand mother sleeps in the other room. I suggested that he make a cot on the floor, I've even offered to send over a single mattress. Apparently a friend sleeps over a lot on the weekends(video gaming buddy I suppose) and he sleeps on the floor... so that space is occupied.
Not a healthy environment. AT ALL. But as I've previously stated, he's plugged into the local "good ole boy" network with his family and has infinite legal representation. My wife works for a state college and I work for the city, so we're comfortable but not well off enough to throw 10 grand into a guardian ad litem. We've probably spent 8 grand in the last 5 years on custody battles. The child support was adjusted and so was visitation, but he only sends $38 a month. Just enough to claim he's doing all he can as an unemployed person. He works under the table designing T shirts online. He makes just enough for weed, TVS and new video gaming systems. Just an all around jack ass.
UPDATE-- I took the
UPDATE-- I took the disengagement advice... and it's going much better. I had a blowout with her about a week after I started this thread and told her I was done taking him to school and being so involved with him. She was initially pissed, but got over it very quickly. I rarely draw a line in the sand, but when I do it sticks since I do so much around the house.. (cooking, cleaning, yard work, home improvements ETC...) My DW is home for the summer(no summer classes) and I've stopped being involved with my SS(now 11) in any way. She's been taking him to school, cooking for him and checking his homework. She's about ready to rip his head off out of frustration.
Last night she said, "I can't believe he lied to my face all day, he's so ungrateful and disrespectful". He was supposed to be cleaning his disgusting room ALL day and never started. SS told her on 3 different occasions that it was "all done". She's finally seeing his stripes, and no longer thinks I'm jaded or too hard on him. Her words, not mine. He has an hour after school today to clean up, whatever is on the floor or not properly put away is going in the trash. She's been threatening for years to do that, but never followed through. I told her she HAS follow through to gain any respect from him. For now he just endures the yelling and continues doing his thing. No real consequences.
I'm going to continue separating myself emotionally with him. I'm feeling much better and it's a relief my DW is finally seeing the same thing that I am.
Thanks again for listening and for the advice. I check in daily. I find it very cathartic to see other people having the same frustrations as me.
I'm not crazy... Just a step parent!
Applause!!!! Thanks for the
Applause!!!!
Thanks for the update!
i was thinking this after
i was thinking this after reading. maybe the boy needs an evaluation.