He confiscated her phone once she arrived. Both her mom and her dad warned her to behave and cooperate at our house. She does NOT like it when mom and dad are on the same page. So that was it. grrrrrrrr!

Yes, I would have done a whole lot more than that. I would have had her begging for mercy. But then, a child of mine would have never had either the nerve or the desire to speak to me like that in the first place.

SD from the ages of about 13 to 14 did try to speak to me like that but I have personal boundaries no matter what her parents' rules are and DH backed me up. He knew I wouldn't stay in a house where I was treated like that. So, voila!, SD now 15 no longer aims those insults and aggressive tactics directly at me. Magical what personal boundaries can do.

So DH has been inspired by me and learned a lot about females from me. BM had him convinced of a lot of crazy shit. Now he knows better.

I agree that is a big part of this. I hope that the therapist takes a look at those texts and tells BM that if she really wants her daughter to hate her father, keep up with the victim talk.

Our BM is far from the craziest BM on this site. She is not spiteful or vicious. So there's the teeniest tiniest chance if the therapist says that to her she might try to comply. I think all she really wants is to keep up her own story to herself that her life is not happy because of all these external things, mainly DH. She's not really aware of the consequences it has for her daughter. BM may want to "win" the popularity contest between herself and DH with SD15, but the last thing she wants is to be stuck with the girl endlessly and be unable to pawn her off on us. So if the consequence of her badmouthing DH all the time is that the kid is glued to her full time, she will prefer to make an effort to back off. How successful she will be at this self-discipline is a different variable.

There were consequences. They were far from ideal in my humble opinion, but it did happen. See reply upthread.

See, it's not so much me enforcing limits that the father never had before. It was me enforcing my OWN limits for things that directly affected me and DH being inspired by the success I was having. DH is allowed to grow and change like every other human.

You're right. She has very little respect for him. She learned that from BOTH her parents. DH is learning he doesn't have to live that way. He is inspired by more and more of the families he has been exposed to since we married, not just by me.

Yup, mean old dad. BM likes it that way. Too bad, but we don't want a dropout. Myself? I would have sicced the truant officer on both BM and kid. But not my kid. Oddly enough, SD15 did say "thank you" to him at the end of that ride! That is because she has picked up the habit from me. As stubborn as she is, she is still a kid and I do notice her emulating me in various ways. She would never admit it but kids to pick up stuff from people around them and she can't stop being a kid in that way.

The "assertive" command spoke volumes to me, too. That's why I had to come here and vent. I wanted to throttle that kid and let her taste some real assertiveness and get her un-confused about who actually is in charge. It was nauseating to me, that language, and all the rest he showed me.

She did stay at BM's for about 4 weekends in a row. Too funny, BM couldn't stand her by the end of that, just like you said! Sd did no complaining last weekend, either, when she did come here so we have an idea the bloom was growing a bit frayed on the rose of her mother in her eyes, too. But I guess SD15 felt she did her time the one weekend and now was ready to cling to mom again. BM, btw, did no lobbying to have SD15 stay at her house this weekend!

Frankly, I have always felt that a part of her problem is that her BM is so detached. SD lashes out trying to process her emotions and at all costs she protects that very thin connection to her mother. Not the way to handle things, kid. Sorry you've got hurts, but they do not give you a free license to inflict pain on others.

And I'm so glad DH saw it for himself and called it out. I didn't have to say a word. And don't say very much any more anyway, he is really getting it on his own. So glad about the appt, too.

SD has a lot of people convinced she's "shy" and "quiet" and (I can barely type this, may need medical support) "sweet." Don't know where the therapist falls on that scale of perception, but she will get a taste of the real girl when she reads those texts.

We did let her stay with BM for about 4 weekends in a row. We did love it. Yes, DH has even verbalized that now. But she's failing school, she needs his supervision, and she is his daughter and he's not ready to give up on her. If he's not ready, then neither am I.

But, yes, Ljcapp1, we do love it when she's not here and even DH has even begun to admit that on his own initiative. We do both have an eye to the future, though, and do not want to be dealing with a dropout.

A. She has no friends.

B. It's been one of our goals ever since DH and I met (and him alone way before me--turns out single middle aged men are not in that great of a position to be asking people to hand over their pubescent daughters. There's some parentin you really need a woman for).

C. The only hope for her to have any authentic friendships is to spend time at our house where we will facilitate it. Her dad will drive her anywhere if she has an invitation or bend himself into a pretzel for her to issue an invitation. If it's up to BM, the party will never be attended, the invitation will never even become a twinkle in anyone's eye. DH has taken off in the middle of the work day to go pick her up at BM's house, go rifling with great distaste through BM's laundry at BM's instructions to find the kid's TWO hotshot expensive bathing suits he bought her LAST WEEK, in order to get the kid to one freakin' swim party she's ever been invited to cuz BM can't be bothered and doesn't care. (btw, she was never invited back to that house. hmmmm)

D. BM lives about 15-20 miles away. I was rounding down for the roundtrip to 30. In any case, she doesn't live the full 30 away. DH deliberately bought a house some distance from BM otherwise he knew she'd be in his life constantly. If it's inconvenient for her to drag him into things, she just might solve her damn problems herself once in awhile.

Thanks for your input. It's a natural question about her hanging out with her friends and one that's been driving me insane since I met her. Your asking it here reminds me that, yes, it IS odd and I'm not crazy or have "too high" expectations!

I couldn't imagine it either and I never could foresee myself living in a house where such words were spoken.

Her "social" life is a big part of this. Her adjustment to my living here has a lot to do with her being unable to cope with people she can't bully. Those she can bully consisted of lil bro, mom, and dad. Mom and dad just laughed it off and their son was squealing and fighting her off. Yes, both parents failed to teach her how to interact in an equal, give and take, respectful manner. So she's withdrawn at school and a monster at home.

End result, no real friends. She's pretty, though, so she now has a boyfriend following her like a puppy. HE has some friends and they reach out to her now but unless he's going, too, she almost always doesn't bother to show up.

I've been worried about it since I met her.

Justanotherday2, I thought about blocking her last night, too! She's a minor and he wouldn't but I do fear for the days of her adulthood. You do describe my SD quite well. I desperately do hope he gets it fixed now before it's too late and we've got what you've got. When she was 12 I warned him of what was to come, he poo poo-ed me. I warned him again at 13. At 14 it started coming true but he couldn't face it. But now that she's fifteen and flunking yet another year of high school for no apparent reason other than her own bad behavior, he has finally caught on.