Hi all,

I just found this forum while trying to find resources online to deal with the issues my boyfriend's kids bring to my life. So, let me introduce myself and my issues and see what comes of this.

I'm a 47 year old woman with a wonderful 24 year old daughter of my own who just completed a doctorate. I have a full time job which I've had over 25 years. I raised my daughter almost completely on my own after my ex-husband died when she was 6. We had been divorced a little less than a year then.

My boyfriend is 52 and extremely successful at his job. Fully divorced, joint custody of his kids with the primary being with their Mom because he travels about a week to two a month for his job. He and I live together.

His kids... 15 year old son, 13 year old son and 13 year old daughter.

Their mother decided several years ago that she needed a more exciting life so she wanted an open marriage or divorce. I met him about a year after she made that announcement to him.

Here's some factors:

She got her masters degree and her teachers certification a few weeks before she decided she wanted to be free
She cheated both before her request for a single life and after before my boyfriend moved out.
She was and still is addicted to an online game called Second Life and has been caught by my ex and the kids participating in webcam sex with various men.
She doesn't want to work despite her degrees, but has a part time job tutoring which does not provide health benefits so she's paying over 700 per month for COBRA and, no, the part time job doesn't cover that.
She met a man 15 years younger than her and asked him to move to our State and move in with her and the kids without ever meeting him face to face.
He did move here and move in but nearly 2 years later he still hasn't gotten a job so he's collecting food stamps illegally and living off the child support my boyfriend pays.
Mom's parents moved to another state (supposedly for her father's job) when she was in her early teens for a number of years and left her and her brothers home alone so she had little parenting herself. They visited on weekends once or twice a month.

Now, the problems with the kids. The ex has been called in to child protective services several times over the years because the younger kids are dirty. This started when they were toddlers in day care while she went to school. This hasn't changed. There was even a meeting at school recently about the 13 year old son and it turned into a meeting about how both 13 year old kids smell and are dirty. She doesn't think it's a problem. Fact is, they do smell and it can be pretty rancid. We've done everything we can including buying new deodorants, doctor visits, talks, lectures, sent new antibacterial soap to the house, but nothing seems to be working. The twins go to school in dirty clothes, dirty fingernails, smelling and greasy messy hair. The mom and her boyfriend usually smell too. What did CPS do all these times? She got indicated once when they were toddlers and got my ex to get a lawyer and the lawyer managed to get the results "sealed" whatever that means. The other times she gave them quite the pity party, even once claiming my boyfriend left her and she's bereft over it.

The girl is worse than the boy. She has now taken to sleeping in her clothes. Mom is ok with it and my boyfriend and I have told her no as well as the school counselor. My boyfriend went in to the house recently to help one of the kids with something and noticed her bed had no sheets, was full of clothes, food and junk. He pitched a fit and it got cleaned up, but she was still sleeping in her clothes. She comes here when she has her period and changes her pad ONCE all weekend.... which means she probably only changed her underwear once, something we've addressed before. She has little to no table manners. When I met her she was 9 and never actually used a knife and fork, she ate with her hands. Mom didn't have a problem with this either and my boyfriend had given up trying to correct anything by then because his ex always pitched a fight for hours or days if he attempted to tell her she was wrong. Mom thinks she will fix herself when she's interested in a boy. You have to have been taught something to know you're not doing what you should be doing. So now here I am trying to teach her to sit up straight, eat with utensils, chew with her mouth closed, dress properly in clothes that fit and are clean, etc. and all it seems to her that I'm doing is picking on her. She never sits up straight, always slouches despite the conversations about curvature of the spine that can happen from that. The boys tell me she's taken up cursing now too. We have them every other weekend so we don't have a lot of time to address all these issues.

The younger boy is in special ed.... for what you ask? We don't really know what is wrong with him. Mom refuses to get him diagnosed. She bounced all the kids around schools when they wanted to "label" him and was proud that she managed to avoid him being labeled. Disruptive is a kind word for it. He created hell in the classroom and has been expelled from the private schools and camps he went to. When there was no alternative (including a year of "home schooling" that was never done, they played video games all year) she had no choice but to put them back in public school for 5th grade. After a huge argument one night 6 weeks after school started with one home suspension and two in-school suspensions under his belt,she finally agreed to let the school test him and they classified him with an emotional disability and moved him to a special school. He did much better there, but even three years later he's still got issues at school. He's better with us because from the start as he and I do get along really well and we had a discussion about his behavior in my home and what is and isn't allowed. I rarely get flare-ups from him, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need help for his issues and Mom refuses to get him diagnosed. We tried, but she always sabotaged it and one psychologist even terminated the sessions because of her sabotage and how it was conflicting the child. My boyfriend told me that every counselor that they took the child to when he was younger told him that his wife had mental problems either before they terminated the sessions or she decided they were a quack and "against" her so she stopped taking the child.

The older one, he has turned around. He "woke up" one day last year and sees things for what they are, and a little too clearly which is hard for me to see. It breaks my heart. He now has friends, participates in school activities, dresses in clean clothes and never smells anymore and even asked me to teach him how to iron his shirts so he's not wrinkly. Not his mother...me. He has told his mother what he finds distressing like her dressing in little short skirts (she is over 300 lbs, no kidding or exaggerating, she told us that) the house is a mess and he's embarrassed to bring friends over, etc. Her response was that he doesn't know what he is talking about. He is in therapy despite her objections (objections being code word for yelling and screaming.) We take him to the appointments.

Lately Mom tells the younger two, who spend nearly every day in their rooms, unsupervised, on the computers, even eating in their rooms, that they don't have to come here for visitation. Dad doesn't give them computers in their rooms so she understands they don't want to come here, she knows he wants them to spend time with the family and go do things, but she understands they want to stay home. Basically she's alienating them from their father and insists she isn't doing anything wrong. We know it's because we challenge her lack of parenting, but at this point the twins usually only come over for one night which makes things worse as my boyfriend is so hurt by this. I've suggested taking her to court for guardianship neglect, but he doesn't want to go through courts. They had an uncontested divorce where they agreed on everything before they went to the lawyers so he's loathe to start court now. These two have no friends, literally no friends. The boy's emotional issues alienate him from kids he has made friends with in special ed. The girl is thought of as gross and weird by the other kids at school. Mom doesn't think this is a problem either, stating she only had one or two friends when she was a kid so it's ok.

I don't know how to deal with this anymore. I don't want to pick on the kids, but I don't want them to have lonely lives forever because they're so isolated and live like they're homeless children. I'm wrong for "picking" on them but I'm wrong if I let them be and do nothing. I love this man to death, he's really a wonderful guy who married a bossy shrew and gave up fighting her all the time when he should have continued to fight. He swears she used to be different and we both agree there may be a mental problem but she totally freaks out any time he's ever suggested maybe she's got a problem.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Could it be possible that someone else has had these problems? That doesn't seem likely. lol

Happy Memorial Day Weekend everyone!