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Having issues with 8yr old Step Daughter

young and restless's picture

Submitted by young and restless on Thu, 07/07/2011 - 4:04pm

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Parenting Issues

I am having the hardest time accepting and building a relationship with my husbands daughter. I have been with him and have helped him raise his daughter for the past three years. Her mother has some contact with her or lets say enough to get her by. I have had issues with my stepdaughter when I started taking care of her. She is demanding, needy, selfish, attention seeking and just down right rotten. She is disrespectful to me, even worse when her dad is not around, and she is rude to my son from a previous relationship. I have issues with how she had been overly babied for years and when I stepped in the picture to address it it some how becomes my problem to fix now. I just feel angry at the situation I have myself in and I am having the hardest time now wanting to take care of her because of she has just been awful to deal and work with. I was hoping that over time things would get better but it hasn't it has stayed the same. I also have a hard time even trying to have alone time with my husband due to the fact she always trying to have his attention. There are times that she will make up stories that she is sick or scared or whatever to prevent him from being alone with me when its the kids bed time. I feel like I am fighting for an Alpha female position in my household and its just not right and it shouldnt have to be that way. I just dont know what to do and am having thoughts ending my relationship. I am constantly having a hard time every day trying be happy with my living situation but its just not working. When she leaves on weekends sometimes to stay with her grandmother I am instantly relieved and happy that shes gone. And at time I wish she would never come back to live with us. Sometimes I find myslef day dreaming wishing her mom would step up to plate and just raise her and us have her on the weekends. I guess what Im getting at is I just need some suggestions on how I should deal with my emotions towards her.

purpledaisies's picture

Submitted by purpledaisies on Thu, 07/07/2011 - 4:19pm

First stop doing ANYTHING for this child! Make her dad deal with her 100%. Second you need a set of household rules and consequences next to each rule if it is disobeyed. Then you and dh need to know that if they are broken she needs to have that punishment and he can not let her get away with it. Your dh HAS to back you up period.

mndblwn's picture

Submitted by mndblwn on Thu, 07/07/2011 - 4:20pm

I have the same issue with my ss6. He recently made up that his teeth hurt, needs water and wants DH to help him fall asleep. That obviously leads to DH sleeping in ss room. Kid is always around and mother just recently came back into picture and takes him more. I find that letting the kid have sleepovers with friends help to get a little alone time with hubby. Also sticking the kid with a videogame and then hubby and i watch movies in our room.

ss6 is getting to be like that since BM uses him to break the two of us up.

Jsmom's picture

Submitted by Jsmom on Thu, 07/07/2011 - 5:08pm

You sound so stressed. I was where you are about 2 years ago. Now SD15 doesn't live with us and lives with her mom. We still have SS12 50/50 and it is great. I have disengaged completely from her and from SS about 85%. I still do some things for him and only if I want to. DH does everything. I was doing too much and had no say in how they were being raised and it was driving me insane. So now, I don't get involved. I will talk about it with DH, but I don't punish and I don't do homework, I don't tell him to do his chores. Pretty much nothing. I do his laundry and cook dinner, but that is because I do that for everyone. This helped my relationship with him tremendously. I am kind of more like a nice aunt. I didn't give birth to him, why should I be more than that to him?

If you disengage here, it gets better actually really quick. Surprised me how much better I had felt once I made the decision to no longer do anything. For SD15 it was too late. For SS it is great...Read my blogs and you can see how SD no longer lives with us, too long of a story...

georgia4's picture

Submitted by georgia4 on Sat, 07/09/2011 - 11:00am

I have step daughter 8 that sounds exactly the same. Bio mom is not in the picture. At bed time she won't stop whining and fakes stomach aches or even tooth aches, you name it. She even shrieks "no fair, I want to snuggle with my dad" if me and her dad are laying next to each other. She wants to fall asleep in our bed. For the past 2-3 weeks she wakes up and comes to our bed before midnight. Both sd8 and ss7 cannot leave us alone for 3 minutes. They pretend they cannot even go to the cabinet and get some crackers. They make him do everything. When he is not home, they do things for themselves. I take care of them along with my own 2 kids. When SO is at work I feel like a stressed out unhappy babysitter, and when he comes home things aren't feeling much better. No bed times for his kids. He could spend all his time after work with his kids and I would be understanding, but... they may stay up until 11:00pm(irregardless of school the next day). If they went to sleep at 9pm and we had an hour alone after they went to bed every night I would be happy. I find myself going to sleep at 9 or 9:30 just so his kids will stay out of our bedroom and I can have some personal space and peace and quiet. I stopped trying to complain about the fact that they never go to bed. I gave up. I try to stay out of it as much as possible. I try to let him deal with their behavior. But when step daughter 8 fakes all this illness for attention, I think it is horrible that he pretends to believe her. We are expecting a baby together soon, and I'm scared how sd8 will react.I'm scared. Unfortunately, I am expecting the worse and I am scared that sd8 won't be able to handle her dad having to give his attention to a baby. It may be enough for me to leave.