LOL -- have to love them.

I don't know what kind of special needs child this poster has. But I volunteered to work with special needs children in public school and I saw how much extra time some of the special needs students must have needed from their parents. The special needs children I volunteered with could not wait at the driveway or a bus stop for the school bus. Someone had to wait there with them. They had to be fed, dressed, changed, bathed, propped up, massaged, cleaned up after every meal and snack. The teachers at school only handle lunch, not breakfast and dinner. Just their doctors' and therapists' appointments, keeping track of their medicines and therapies alone was time consuming. Some of the therapies had to be done at home by the parents every day. Running any kind of errand or taking other children to activities would have to be twice as hard for the parents of the children I volunteered with. Juggling a toddler and a child with special needs, along with 3 other kids after school hours would be a big task. When I was a SAHM, I had at best 5 and a half hours without my kids when they were in the same school. That may sound like a lot, but if the original poster has a special needs child, during those hours she probably has to get all her cleaning, cooking, errands run, yard work, paperwork, doctor, dentist, hair appointments done, all scheduling for her kids, if she has any kind of project like painting done, any teacher conferences. Plus get her schoolwork done. If her husband doesn't help her, she probably has all kinds of things she has to do, like get on the roof and clean the gutters, pressure wash the house, get on ladders and clean the windows, assemble shelving, go get the maintenance on her car, etc. It's quite possible in my opinion that the original poster is working as hard as she can.

TOS before defining my post "rants" and writing that i intentionally confuse your answers to scaruso with the answers to my las posts, please read it: my last post begins with : "Finally you answered to MY very simple question: "Would you like somebody collecting porn OF YOUR OWN CHILDREN and his father or stepmother not reporting him ? " Reread my last post and show me where I misquoted you, otherwise I will report you to the boards'adminstrator as somebody advocating not reporting sexual offenders (CHILD PORN COLLECTORS, even of just 2 images of prepubescent girls ARE SEXUAL OFFENDERS). It is time you came out from your moral and legal ambiguity on this point To get this matter absolutely clear, as it concerns the moral position and action to take in view of even the possibility of such an heinous crime like the sexual exploitation of minors, i will cite INTEGRALLY your next to last post. YOU wrote: "She did not say he had a huge collection of CHILD porn. She said he had a large collection of porn, which made her uncomfortable. She did not specify whether she was certain the girls (I assume they were female) were definitely children, whether the pictures were definitely pornographic or were pictures that were just inappropriate or creepy when in the possession of a teenage boy, or whether the pictures were taken by an adult or something that a girl took herself and stupidly posted on myspace. We weren't there so we don't know what was going on. My daughter who is in her mid-twenties was once mistaken for a middle schooler, and that was in person, not just from a photograph. How do we know that the "preteen" she referred to wasn't really 17? For that matter, how does one know that the "18+" pornographic pictures readily available on the Internet are not really of girls younger than that? Obviously no reasonable person wants anyone to take or possess pornographic pictures of their children. I wouldn't want anyone to take or possess any pictures of my children, period, unless there was a good, logical reason for doing so. No, I wouldn't expect his parents to report him to the police, especially if he were a teenager. I would want them to get him help from a mental health professional." This is your original next to last post. About its first statementI i must remind you and the board'administrators that EVEN THE SUSPICION of sexual exploitation of minors must be reported and investigated: if the said photoes are 2 or 100, of 17 year old or a prepubescent-looking 25 year old, according to the law against sexual exploitation of minors, can not and should be left to the judgement of the families and friends of the possible offenders... About the second statement , I see that you don't like the idea of somebody's having any kind of photoes of YOUR OWN children without good reason. So I will ask you for the SECOND TIME (the first was in my last "raving" post) why you find acceptable for somebody to collect naked photoes of somebody's else children, I would like a clear answer from such a moral, quick to judge person like you, always so certain about other people's and particularly step parents'behaviours. About the third statement of your next to last post: finding mental help for a kiddie porn collector is not acceptable in the eyes of the law for the simple reason that, provided that the sexual offender agree to get treated, while his family or friends find the right help, he is free to continue the sexual exploitation of minors. So the choice of reporting this kind of crimes is not given to parents, mates, spouse and not even to maids, cleaners, employees or even to anonymous web users etc..: if you stumble upon even of a dubious (even if it could be of a young 18+ and not a real 14) picture you must report it and if during an investigation comes out that somebody saw such a picture or site and did not report he can be charged with aiding and abetting and rightly so. BTW, if , as you say in your last post: "I have received spam with those words in the subject a couple of times, along with all the spam for enlarging body parts I don't have. Neither you nor I have actually seen the pictures." please report the sites you are receiving such a spam from so the relevant authorities can investigate them and you will not incur in the risk to being possibly aiding and abetting criminals. I don't see how a person like you, so invested in protecting children from any real and perceived ills and from a child-hostile culture , can be so carefree about this and condone even the possibility to be compliciting with children's sexual exploitation. I would expect somebody like you to be up in arms at the first whiff of child porn.. But maybe I am a 44 year old moralistic prude and you are a middle age tolerant and think-the-best-about-anybody-especially-if-a-stepkid lady.... Now, about your last post : - about your precisation in your next -to-last post on the difference between B&D and S&M: as in numerous threeads on this forum you expressed yourself vehemently agaist plain, vanilla dating for divorced and even widowed parents I was just curious about your open attitude on this particular activities, so I wrote (in my last post) : "And you are open and knowledgeable to bondage too, as I see from your last post: "I think "Men dressed in leather having sex with women in bondage" is B&D, not S&M, which involves pain": again would be okay for YOUR OWN ADULT CHILDREN to be involved in BONDAGE & DOMINATION as long it is not SADISM & MASOCHISM, involving pain ? Just let us know with a yes or no please, so we can know where you stand on this ... Maybe you feel that B&D (but maybe not S&M ?) is okay as long it is not adulterous" Really, I was just curious and I see that you answered me right on in your last post: "And why would I care if consenting single/married-to-each-other partners were into B&D, just because I have no interest in it?" So I understood correctly that you are okay with B&D for consenting adults (does this include your adult children ? for them you would approve B&D but not engaging in adultery ? and what about somebody collecting photoes of your adult children engaging in such acts? would it be okay for you once your children are old enough to give their consent ?) but NOT with plain vanilla dating for divorced/widowed parents ? Just let us know CLEARLY your moral opinion on this, you are always so quick to express yourself on any other matter regarding marriage, families and stepfamilies.... About the second statement of your last post: "Scaruso and her husband are in a much better position to judge whether the SS was actually committing a crime than either you or I. " Interesting . If according to you (but not the laws on Minors'Sexual Exploitation) scaruso and her soon to be ex husband are in a much better position than you and me to judge their stepson's porn collection, they are also in a much better position to judge if this young man is mentally ill or not so you had no business in writing in your next to last post (to scaruso) : "Since your H was adopted, he will probably never know the medical history of his parents, which could be relevant to your stepson's behavior. I know you disagree, but there is such a wide range of mental illnesses and behavioral disorders your stepson could be afflicted with. At a minimum, I am relatively certain he could be diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and executive function disorder." So the "incoherency" you accusing me of in your last angry post (you don't like it when somebody does not back off to your prepotence, isn'it) is all yours. Again, as in my last "ranting" post, I must ask you : "are you a trained psychiatrist ? are you licensed to diagnose online ?" Yes or not, please. If not, you are not more qualified than me on discussing this stepson'mental state and anyway, once again scaruso and her soon to be ex husband think he is not mentally ill (as according to you they are the most competent ones). So if scaruso and her soon to be ex are the most competent in ascertaining if this 26 year old is mentally ill and they think he is not, ALL your previous posts on mental illnesses in convicted offenders, serial killers, collectors of child porn -that according to your second to last post, should not be reported but helped by mental health practictioners- DO NOT APPLY HERE: if THIS 26 year old guy is not mentally ill, he can find himself a job, if he is collecting child porn (2 or 1000 photoes makes no difference) he should be in jail and not in a mental hospital... Lastly, i think the majority of posters on this forum see very well that you are ready to embrace any outrageous statement or position just to go against stepparents. I expect your apologies on the "intentional misquoting" (there was no misquoting, intentional or not) and "ranting" otherwise it will be clear to everybody as you are here in bad faith, just to badger and bully people coming on this forum to look for support and advice, kind and polite people that mostly try to ignore you (as I usually do at least when you are not advocating anything illegal, like not reporting the possible sexual exploitation of minors, or dangerous, like getting 8 year old girls sitting on the front seat) or even to be gracious and charitable about your bitterness and scorn.

Sylviatexas, thank you so much for replying. That story is perfect, fits the situation to a T. Yes, my husband can be a very good authority figure, but is worn out by all of this crap. He really can't/won't be on this little brat's case all the time; but this is a recurring theme on this forum isn't it. Typically the husband will make a 3/4 commitment to what the step-mother wants, and then the other 1/4 is sort of a "guilt over the divorce" type of giving in to the problem child. Trying to keep both parties happy. And, taking him in went against my gut, and I should have listened to my gut. But I was swayed by sentimentality that when my father was a baby his father abandoned him and his mother. And then, when he was about 11 years old his mother became ill and he almost ended up in an orphanage. But his paternal Aunt took him in and he had stayed with her growing up. This 16, almost 17 year old has been a problem for a long time. My husband also gets a little soft and says that the boy needs to be able to have some fun, etc. Having him it earn it back probably won't work because he says he doesn't care, etc. I took away stuff before and it doesn't work, he won't "give in" and change his ways. The 1st summer he was here my husband was ready to put him in foster care. But you can't do that just because you can't handle your kid. We can't afford the brat camps, but that is where he belongs. The little creep is going to be gone from our house for a week, and it will be the best week I've had for a long time. And we actually had him go through an evaluation at a local mental health care facility, but he wasn't "bad enough" they said. I think they and the ins. company were more bothered by the fact that we had only gone to 2-3 counseling sessions at that point. Well, in this part of Pennsylvania there are very few adolescent mental health practioners. So, they are booked up. And, without going into details, I went through this type of hell before with an sibling who acted out, and made an unhappy family even unhappier. Blame the parents?? Or are people just born a certain way??? On top of all of this: I have my own health issues to work on; my mother is in a nursing home and I am the power of attorney dealing with her banking, selling her house, et al from 4 hours away; my job has some stress but at least I have one (and actually I feel competent there); some financial issues here in my own house; etc. So, maybe the "Money is her Guiding Star" bio-mom will let her pocketbook rule her decisions. For the 1.5 years when she had one boy and we had the other, neither bio-parent paid child support. When the older one finished high school, she said she didn't think she'd have to pay us child support. Well, that was part of the deal for taking the younger boy off her hands. Ok, soon after that, the older gets a job and has to pay room and board to her, the $ amount basically same as the child support she was paying us. Now she won't have that $ coming in, so might decide it is worth it to take her younger son back. Can't happen soon enough!!!! So, I am thinking the best way for me to live my life is to have more fun with my friends. The weekends when he is here I will be out at museums, movies, lunch, etc. Well, silver lining: any winsome feelings I had about not having children of my own, ARE GONE BYE BYE. Thanks again to anyone who made to the end of this long vent.