Punishing the Kid Thats Not "Mine"

I am in a "blended" family. My son is from a previous marriage, and I have two daughters. I have been married to my current husband for 15 years, and my son is now 19. My husband never wanted to discipline my son, even though I wanted him to. He felt that it wasn't his place. During this time, I didn't know that his instincts were good. His relationship with my son has always been good.

Then, last year I was watching Dr. Phil on TV, that you can NOT discipline the child of a previous marriage. That's your HUSBAND's job. He has to be willing to step in on your behalf. You can be a friend to your daughter. You have no history with her is how Dr. Phil put it. Once you establish a few years together, that will probably be different. These kinds of problems are the major reason that 80% of second marriages fall apart, so you have to make sure that your husband teaches his daughter to respect and listen to you. My ex-husband attempted to discipline (punish) 3 children of the new marriage he had after me and is now divorced. They hate him. The marriage couldn't survive that. You have to tell her, "Yea, I'm not your mom, but in this house we have rules and I'm concerned about your welfare". Tell her you love her if you do. And have your fiance enforce the rules. This is a good time to test and see if the marriage between the two of you will work. If he teaches his daughter to respect you and follow the rules you both agreed to behind closed doors (without her present), and tells her what they are, then this relationship will flourish. Love and respect has to be all the way around. You to the children, him to you, you to him, the children to both of you.

When she comes back all defiant from the ex-wife, then talk to her and find out why she became angry. She is probably feeling safe enough with you to "vent" her frustration and anger with her mother, so that's why you're seeing bad behaviour when she comes back. Realize that it's not your fault, and that if you get her to talk about it, and tell her you will try to help her through it, but realize, since she's only 6, she may not have the ability to express her sadness and frustration with her mother. If you're right and her mother doesn't really care about her, that is VERY devastating to a child. They feel unlovable, rejected and abandoned if their own MOTHER doesn't love them. All you can do is love and support. Realize also that her mother may be telling her bad things about her dad, and that's also causing her bad behaviour because she got a dose of lack of respect when she was there, but she may not want to tell you that. These are not things you can punish. You can only love them away, and your husband has to deal with the discipline.

My mother LOVED to rant about my dad. I had to keep telling her for YEARS to stop.

God bless you for loving your stepdaughter the way you do, and I hope that your daughters "adopted" and otherwise (my husband NEVER called my son Stepson - just son) will become healthy and happy adults, and that you have a happy marriage.

I realize it may be hard, but you have no right to have hurt feelings and you need to get over it. I'd suggest that you put yourself into the shoes of this poor little girl. She has a pitiful excuse for a biological mother and a father who is dividing his attention of HER between you and YOUR daughter. She is understandably jealous and afraid. She is too young for you to be her friend or mentor and she's too old for you to be her mother. Step-parents are very rarely able to discipline step-children unless they come into the relationship when the child is a toddler or younger. I've worked on a number of divorces that involve custody issues - and the children in these types of situations generally don't feel safe because they don't feel as though they have a home. They are visitors, and they resent this fact. Usually, the target of their resentment is the step-parent and it often gets worse when little girls begin entering puberty, so it's pretty likely that Marissa's behavior is going to continue to deteriorate. My advice to you is to think long and hard if the man of your dreams is going to be the husband of your dreams - because he's coming into the relationship with a lot of baggage and the divorce rate in situations like this one is absolutely through the roof. If you think you can (and want to) make this relationship work, I'll give you the advice that I give to some of my clients: Go through pre-marital AND family counseling (that includes Marissa) before you walk down the aisle and get some tools to deal with this difficult family dynamic. Just because the odds are stacked firmly against you, doesn't mean that there is no hope for success. If you and your fiance want it badly enough and are willing to do a whole lot of work, you CAN do it.

I have to disagree with the previous poster who said that step-parents are rarely able to discipline the step-children at that age. I started living with my husband (moved from Texas to WA to be with him...we met online) when his twin daughters were 5 years old. Their mother was constantly telling them that I wasn't their mother, and that they didn't have to listen to me. My husband nipped that in the bud real quick. First of all, I think your fiance is the one who needs to step up to the plate and talk to her. If she's allowed to get away with being blatantly disrespectful to you NOW, do you really think things are going to get better as she gets older? My husband sat down with the twins (who are 11 now) and told them that when they are at OUR house, they are to follow the rules and guidelines that WE as a family have set up, and that if they are disrespectful to me, it's just like being disrespectful to him, and therefore, they'll be punished. I DO punish the girls when they have done something that warrants being punished for. At that age, it was usually time out, or losing privileges. As they've gotten older, discipline has become different. Now they get grounded or get privileges taken away, or have to do something they don't like, like clean the toilets or litter boxes. I do not think that just because you are not her biological mother that she should not have to treat you with the respect you deserve...as long as you also respect her space, and respect that she may have a difficult time dealing with what is going on. I also suggest that you get her into some counseling to work through her feelings she's having about the situation, and in addition, I am positive that she probably feels abandoned and neglected by her mother, so naturally, she would try to push away another mother figure, in fear of getting hurt again. Best of luck to you...it can be a tough situation, but really, I think the concentration right now should be put on helping her work through all of this emotionally.

She may not be "yours" but while she is with you, you will act as if she were. And you can confirm to here that you are not her "mother" but that she still needs to follow the rules, regardless of where she is at. And you and the dad need to sit down and set some rules. I recommend writing the rules out so everyone is clear. Then you and dad need to make a joint effort in enforcing them. She has to see that you two are on the same page, always. Or else she will devour the lack of a joint effort.

A counselor told me a long time ago before I got married and became a step parent to say the following: "Your right, I am not your mother, but I do love you, and I am responsible for you. Now I would like for you to ....." You get the idea. Hope that helps.

A.

All you can do is ride it out. There is so much hurt that goes in to a kid while visiting a parent that does not really want them. If she is worse when she comes home from her mom's it is cause she is hurting. And the fact that she is willing to act upset and angry in front of you is actually a good sign. It means that she trusts you to love her anyway. She is acting out her hurt, and while it is unfair that you are the one it gets spilled on to, at least you know that she loves you. I am going to bet that she is all happy smiles at her mom's and tries to do everything possible so she is a GOOD daughter so maybe her mom will love her more, and that is exhausting and heartbreaking to her. I went through that growing up, though it was with my dad... I can imagine that it must be worse with a mom.

Just don't let her see you hurt, or don't get angry and after she calms down tell her how much it hurts you when she says things like that and treats you that way. You will never be her mother but you are the woman in her life.

Keep up the good work mom =)

You know, I really like what Allison said. It makes sense.

The little girl is six right? I think, that you need to have a talk with your husband about backing you up. You don't even need to disipline her if he does that. It sounds like the little girl is acting out because of the lack of her real mother in her life.

I think, that if you approach this situation with a positive additude, you will be more successful at getting her to mind. I also think, that you are allowed to have feelings in this. Your feelings being hurt really show that you care about this child. But the backup from the husband is vital, it will get worse if he doesn't. My father was like that with my stepmom and things got really bad.

I would tend to believe that she is hurting, too. I undersand the idea of the situation you're in, and if her mom really isn't there for her, even when they're together, I'm sure this little 6 year old girl is very hurt. In a way, even though she's probably saying it accusingly, she may be glad you're not her mom in a good way, in other words, you are more reliable, caring, etc. I would just discipline her fairly and consistently, the way you would hope your biological child would be taught to behave if someone besides you was involved.

You may not have given birth to her but she is yours and you have to remember that your daughter is her sister tell her that just because she wasn't in your belly doesn't mean that you don't love her as much as Hailey and that the things you say and do are out of love for her and you need to remember that you do have control. also I remember going through a phase as a kid were I told my mom that I thought I was adopted so I didn't need to listen to her so no matter what she would probably find something to rationalize not listening to you. and her dad is right it is a phase but you need to be firm with her all the same.

I'm going to provide the counter to what the last poster said: I REALLY agree with what Karen said below. I saw in her profile that she's a lawyer, so I'm guessing she sees a whole lot more than the rest of us. I only have my own life and the life of my friends and family to go off of, but what she said seems right on the money to me. I had a couple of step-parents growing up. My Mom married when I was 7. My Dad remarried when I was 8 and it was just like Karen said. I got to visit my parents. I never felt like I was really at home, especially when they started having more kids. It sucked. My stepmother was real big on the whole hurt feelings things, too. Some days she'd be all about playing Mommy to me and other days she wanted to focus on her own kids. It was hard and I wish someone had told HER the deal. She was supposed to be the adult. I was just a kid. Looking back, I understand that my parents did love me and even my stepparents cared about me and my brother but at that time I totally didn't believe it. Ya know how kids are so into worrying about who the "favorite" is? I never, ever felt like the favorite. Even though I understand now that I was exaggerating how I was treated, I totally KNEW that my steps liked their kids better than me and I totally KNEW that my parents liked the kids they made with my steps better. (My brother thought the same kind of things.) It's hard to feel like you're second best all the time, and that was how I felt growing up. It didn't matter who told me different. I was angry and resentful and lonely and thought that if only the stepparents would go away I could have my family back.

I read something the other day that the divorce rate for FIRST marriages is like 40%. When you throw in a second marriage the rate increases. When you throw in "his, hers and ours" kids in it goes up even more. The only thing that would make divorce more likely would be if one of them is a cop - because they have sky high divorce rates! The only thing I disagreed with Karen on was where she said that with counseling it can work. I'm not gonna say it never can work because I think anything can happen, but I've seen friends and family do the whole counseling-thing and it didn't fix the problem. I think that when it does work it is totally wonderful, but I think those cases are a lot more rare than most people think.

I REALLY don't agree with what Karen is saying. My dad remarried when I was 10 and my brothers were 8, 6, and 4. We had problems with our biological mother and eventually my dad got full custody. We ALL got punished by our stepmom and were absolutely fine. It is you and your b/f's house so your rules. You do, however, need your b/f backing you up. He needs to start with the rules and punishments and you back up his rules and punishments. Oh, and we did do the family counseling and individual counseling and that didn't help at all. In fact it made a lot of issues a lot worse. It was probably mostly that the shrinks we saw were quacks, but either way I do not trust them now. If that is what you feel will help then try it.

Perhaps Karen's "statistics" are true because people going into these kind of relationships have the same additudes of "it's not going to work out". I have overcome all the statistics against me and my husband and I have overcome the statistics against us and will continue to.

OH, and you do have a right to have hurt feelings.

what I would suggest doing would be to (a) maybe step back a little emotionally and physically from the girl, give her some space. she may be hearing something negative about you and your situation from her mother, in which case there is nothing you can do about that other than don't do the same, that won't help anything, and (b) try to get your husband more involved in the situation. it kind of sounds like he basically lets you be a kind of fill-mom and really, he should be more involved with your step-daughter. she was his daughter before you and him were together, and he needs to remember that and give her some one-on-one time to make sure she doesn't feel left out. don't let your feelings get hurt. this is not about you personally. I definately agree with the idea to get some family counseling before you get married, it kind of sounds like your step-daughter may need counseling on her own, too. Good luck!