so he keeps doing stuff you don't like, & you're worn out & frazzled, & it makes no difference to him?

He isn't really arguing, he isn't even really paying attention to you, he's just whining around in circles to wear you down, changing a few words to fit the problem.

He's in control:

He blames other people for stuff he does,
he hits first & says it's the other person's fault,
he's focused on his own wants & desires to the exclusion of everything else, no one else is important except as relates to him,
he does whatever he wants (or doesn't do whatever he doesn't want), & if he gets caught, he goes on the offensive, taking control of the situation & accusing the other person of victimizing him, putting the other person on the defensive,
& if you keep pushing, he 'promises' it 'won't happen again' ...

If he were an adult, what would you call that?

& he's learning to be an adult right now, every day.

"After almost 2 years of therapy, you'd think he would know better by now?"

I don't think therapists are any more savvy or less naive than anyone else, but I do think it sounds like he's learned a lot from therapy;
he's probably honed his skills on the therapist!

When you're dealing with anybody who can talk in circles & wear you down, *you* have to control the situation, & one way of doing it is to halt these long conversations/arguments:

As long as he's talking, he hasn't lost:
Once he wears you down, he's won.

Every time he gets away with it, his manipulative behavior is reinforced;
he's being *trained* to blame others, whine, complain about his "victimhood".

I once had a significant-other type guy (don't know what to call him, more than boyfriend but less than ex) who would say to his son
"this isn't a dialog, be quiet."

Then he would gaze at Jason, not responding to anything Jason said, until it got quiet.

Only then would he give instructions, & if the instructions weren't followed, there were consequences.

With Jason, most things that we considered punishment were nothing to him;
time-outs in his room gave him more time to read or draw or design games, & he was so independent that taking away, say, a play day with other children, was something he didn't relate to at all...

The most devastating, & therefore effective, thing his dad did was to put Jason's computer time on a merit basis, complete with a chart & gold, silver, & blue stars & one black marker.

Jason had to earn computer time via stars, & a black mark neutralized, I forget, one silver star or something.

Since Jason was a computer geek at the age of 7, that got his attention!

Stars were earned by certain behaviors that were charted on a poster taped to Jason's bedroom door;
he had to get up the first time his mother called in the morning to get a blue star,
getting through a school day without altercation was a silver star,
getting through a school week was a gold star,
etc.

Whining was 1 black mark, fighting was 2 black marks.
(or something like that)

& whining & complaining didn't get him anywhere, in fact it earned him a black mark.

Every silver star was equal to 2 blue stars, if he had 3 silver stars (or 6 blue or whatever), that was a gold star.

Each blue star was 15 minutes computer time,
silver was a half hour,
a gold star was 90 minutes, "payable" on the week-end only.

One interesting thing about this is that Jason & his father got along great with this system, but his mother hated it, cried about it, said poor Jason was just being creative & brilliant & so forth (he really was brilliant & creative), & that he should be treated differently from other children because he *was* different from them.

So he kept doing to his mother the things that he no longer did to his father.

Whatever you do, this boy's father needs to be right there, right with you, talking-to-her-is-the-same-as-talking-to-me, hands-on, absolutely committed to bring up his son to become a strong & decent grown man.

I wish you the best.

"Spoiled children never accept that they are responsible for their own misfortune, should something unpleasant occur they will invariably find someone else to blame..."

"They usually try to avoid responsibility, endlessly complain, blame others, tell lies and avoid the consequences of their actions and demand or manipulate other people to do for them what they will not do for themselves. By remaining locked into their victimized "explanations", they becomes helpless to change a situation or attitude, while they pour their energy into complaining and anger, and other misdirected activities that can't resolve their issues."

AMEN & WELL SAID, dcubana! You just described my SS!

Sylviatexas makes a good point on therapists... While I do believe they help in many cases, for the case of the "victim" child it is my experience that the child actually learns exactly what to say and when to say it to the therapist. Therefore no problems are really addressed due to the child never being open with the therapist. My 19yr old SD has this mastered.. She is always in the role of victim no matter what the situation. Failing in college.. "The professor didn't like me." or "The professor didn't explain the project" Caught drinking "My friends made me go, I wanted to stay in" Stealing "It is because I never had that much stuff as a kid." Always someone else's fault in a never ending cycle. Stop it early on... Do not tolerate it. If you do you will be in the same situation I am with my SD. She will probably always play the victim.

dcubana, if you find an effective solution, let me know what it is, please. I am seeing it with my youngest and I don't know what to do. We had him do extra work (when he lied about having done his homework), we had him write apology letters to people he lied to, we had him eat the food he hid but said that he had eaten, I even had what I thought to be a heart to heart about the lying... But it still goes on!
Coming to think about it, I am going to post on the parenting site as well. I think this goes beyond the step-issue...

Let me know if you find a solution, too. I also think this type of behavior is more than just a "step" issue. I'm inclined to believe it is a biological parenting or familial issue more so than a stepfamily one. These darlings come in to our homes already demonstrating these intolerable behaviors so they had to be learned and then reinforced somewhere and by someone before they entered our new blended families.

The internet has been a godsend for me in my stepfamily experience (and overall parenting of my own children). There is so much information out there to help you. The websites that I found very helpful are:

http://www.crisiscounseling.com/. Go to the bottom of the page look under "(Newspaper & Magazine Articles by Dr. Conner(available on-line)". For a full list click on "More Parenting Articles".

http://parentingbythebook.com/index.php. Click on John's Essays. John Rosemond's other website is www.rosemond.com.

Honeyblue

So I have a suggestion on the the following that worked for us:

He lies about practically everything, its like he doesn't know the meaning of honesty! His excuse for lying is that he is "afraid he'll get in trouble" if he tells the truth. Yet he continually gets "in trouble" for lying!!!

So, this approach is not easy, but my SS had the same problem, and believe it or not, it fixed it. It will take some time (maybe a couple of months) but it really did work for us. Of course, every child is different...but I don't think it can hurt.
When you catch him lying, instead of a "tangable" punishment such as "timeout" removal of a posession, or a talking to, you can ask him why he lied.
His response will be: He was a afraid
Then, ask him what he is afraid of, and listen. Then, let him know that we all make mistakes, and that you love him no matter what, and that moving forward, you'd prefer to hear the truth, and that the truth is better than a lie. Don't yell at him, don't put him in a time out. Just relax. You could let him know that you're disappointed in his decision to lie. But lecturing and yelling, and timeout, and removing posessions really only touch the surface of the actual problem. You will need to repeat this over and over. You will get frustrated too. But, after some time, he will get it.
I know, corny sounding? But it worked really well with us. My SS would lie, I'd catch him, give him a reminder, and also let him know that the lie is disappointing. Then he'd back up and correct himself. I'd reinforce the positive of him coming clean, thanking him for being honest, and not scolding him. After a while, he didn't have to even lie and back up. He just stopped the lying. The reason children lie is becuase they are afraid of something. Usually a reaction that they are going to get. If you reinforce the positive of telling the truth, over time, they will be reconditioned to just stay honest.
It's not an easy path if your patience is drained, but it may be worth a try.

Thank you all for all your input, I have been able to find some good articles!! Thanks for those links, there is a wealth of information there.

jessegirl- "let him know that we all make mistakes, and that you love him no matter what, and that moving forward, you'd prefer to hear the truth, and that the truth is better than a lie. Don't yell at him, don't put him in a time out. Just relax. You could let him know that you're disappointed in his decision to lie. But lecturing and yelling"

This is exactly what I have been doing with him, but now he ends up telling me "everyone makes mistakes Mom" when he gets caught in a lie. The problem is, when he gets caught, he has usually done something he "knows" was wrong- so he just denies having done it.

Other times he lies about things that never even happened...(makes up stories) Earlier today we were talking about the science fair coming up. He told me he wanted to try out an experiment and i told him we would have to go to the library and get a book on experiments in order to do it correctly. Well he tells me he already knows what we need to get for the experiment because he had "found a book" on experiments and memorized how to do it, but he didn't bring it home because he had returned it to the lost and found. So i said, maybe we can go see if its still there on Monday, and if it is-we can ask the principal to borrow it. He turned around and says: no it was already returned to the kid because they made an announcement over the loudspeaker.....

Then when i went out earlier today, he was messing with it and knocked over a bag of cement that was in the basement. First he said he had tripped over it, which was a lie because it wasn't in the way. His father asked him to pick up the mess and made him mop the basement floor. When i went in the backyard to take out the trash i noticed a big pile of dry cement that had water poured over it....When i confronted him about it, he said that he "thought that it would be easier to clean up if it was hard"...so he added water.