If you leave your husband, are you aware that the court will order you to share custody of your little girl with your husband. Once divorced, your daughter will be with her father on his visitation days, "without you present", but his 12 year old daughter may very well be there on her visitation with him as well. You would not be there to "look out" for your little girl, and you have already said that your husband is able to ignore or "tune out" to all of this going on around him. I actually think many men do this. Women often seem to be much more aware of all of this going on around them, even if it is subtle, they pick up on it. In my own experience, men seem to be totally unaware of all of this, or just don't want to deal with it.

Can you imagine if you were married before, and your ex had custody of your beautiful little girl. Can you understand that the little time you had with her (envision his summer and Christmas visit) say they live in another state, and she comes to see you at Christmas. Can you now begin to grasp that when you finally get to see your little girl, you want everything "perfect" so that when she goes back to your ex (in theory) that she will have good memories of her time with you? That you will bond, and love each other, and understand how sacred this time together is, because you will not see your little girl until next summer. Now envision, during this sacred time with your child, that your new husband resents her, and he is so angry with you, because you are not disciplining her for all the things he says she does wrong. But the real issue is that he does not want your daughter intruding on his new life.

From that point of view, can you look at things from his point of view and grasp why it is so difficult to discipline his daughter that he gets so little time with???????? could you if you walked in his shoes, allowing your ex to be the good guy, and you have to be the bad guy when you see her for such a short, and sacred time?

Would you want to have your new husband furious with you every time your little girl came to your house?

Of course not.

Any yet this is so often the problem in remarriage. Divorce happens, or in his case, they never married, but a child came into the world deserving to be loved and nurtured. Husband remarries, and he and his new wife start a new family of their own. And she resents his previous child(ren) who come into her home and mess up her vision of her perfect little family coming into her nest. And soon, his time with his children dwindles down to lunch at McDonalds. How sad.

I understand that you are dealing with a young girl whose mother may be spewing hate, and a girl who is threatened by the nice little family she never had in the first place. And she knows it. And she comes with a lot of resentment towards you (and maybe it is honest resentment that is earned due to the way you feel about her, and maybe it is not, just the garbage she hears from her mothers mouth). It doesn't matter, because she is very aware of how you feel about her.

I also want to mention that should you leave your husband, you should be aware that again he may remarry because he is lonely, and again, his new wife may go on and start a new little family of her own, and feel the same way about your little girl, that you feel towards his 12 year old.

Since you love your husband, find a way to work this out with him. If he has visitation, perhaps as you said, he can arrange it so that he is always present when it is her time with him, even if visitation is just one day a week. And perhaps he could take this older daughter "out" for a good part of the day, to give you space from her, and yet at the same time, give the two of them special time together to form a good relationship. Perhaps the two of them can go out to lunch and then bowling every Saturday, or he could teach her to play tennis and they could begin playing together once a week, or golf. And you and your little girl could go to the park with a friend or something.

Think about how you can make your marriage work, and this situation. It can be done, just come up with a game plan.

I imagine that her life with her mom is not easy, and therefore, that may be where the anger and resentment comes in. Perhaps it is hard with the life she lives at home, and to then see your happy family is painful.

I wish you peace as you find your way as a family.

You have to start protecting your little one;
she's being abused.

Her sister's behavior isn't just normal teen-aged sulking & resentment, it's abuse, & it's escalating.

I can understand why you feel the way you do. SD sounds like a handful, and I would probably feel the same way if I were you.

I don't think divorce or separation will solve the problem. It will be even worse when H has both his girls on the same visitation days and you are not there to supervise.

SD needs some counselling to help her sort out and control her emotions. You won't be able to do much about what SD picks up from BM, but you can equip her with the right tools on how to deal with her feelings. Her actions are most likely a result from being shuttled around like a bag of potatos most of her life, wanting a stable and loving family, wanting attention, being spoon fed bad feelings by BM, and feeling jealous that little sister has all the love, stability and support that she never had.

Husband needs a good parenting class, or at least some objective advice from a third party on how deal with behaviour issues in children. I work with children, and lectures aren't very effective. Actions work much better. On top of that, children feel much more safe and loved when there are boundaries, rules and expectations for them to follow.

Your husband needs to step up to the plate and put a stop to his daughter hitting the little one. Theres no excuse for him allowing her to physically abuse your daughter. If he doesn't I would tell S.D and husband the next time she hits your daughter you will call the police and have her charged with asault!

Your DH and you need couseling. I've said how it made a difference in my marriage after only a few weeks - I was also ready to leave after ten years of marriage.

Your SD is damaged. Whatever the reason, and I suspect the BM is doing a lot of poisoning of you and DH to her, she is severely damaged and needs professional help.

First take DH to a couselor - say you need some direction in dealing w/ this arrangement, then lay it on the line to the couselor. A good one will be worth her/his weight in gold and should tell DH how to proceed and also make him see the light.

Don't divorce, but don't ever leave your SD alone w/ your DD. I agree that this is WAY above normal jealousy and sibling rivalry. It sounds like you tried to make a difference (have a girl's day out before the baby? Take her to the movies, school shopping?) and it hasn't worked. She needs counseling, too, but start w/ DH. Also, does he know how serious you are about leaving? Is he willing to lose you and your DD over the SD's inappropriate behavior?

You're right about the room - no way allow them to share a thing besides their dad.

Blessings and luck headed your way,
Dana

First wanted to thank everyone that has responded.

I agree that I should at least try the counseling before breaking up the marriage. I had asked my husband earlier this year to add SD to his health insurance so we can take her to a therapist, he finally agreed it was necessary (this was prior to the incident with my daughter). My husband briefly mentioned to BM that he wanted to take her to talk to someone and she was VERY against it. She said that if that was the case she wanted to be involved in every step, so we became sort of hesitant. However, I have come to realize that we both have to stop making concessions for the BM when she is at the root of most of my SD aggressions toward my family. I found a therapist that is experienced in handling both our marital problems & adolescent aggression and she works weekend hours which is perfect because she is in school and we could take her when she visits her father.

Just to clarify I have made many efforts to form a relationship with my SD. However, I also believe that my husband is neither doing my SD or our family any good by ignoring the situation and not dealing with it head-on. Our role as parents is to guide our children to be good, loving human beings with a solid moral center and by not addressing the behavior we are giving her proper direction. I also think I need to take charge of my house and be more proactive when it comes to my SD's behavior. I hope therapy will facilitate this process and the BM will not make a huge issue of it and for once see that this would be cathartic for her. In addition, it would give my husband the opportunity to explain why he was not present for her birth, which her mother "kindly" told her version, in a controlled environment with the direction of a therapist.

So, of course, I am hoping for the best and also know that this by no means will be a quick fix but instead a committment which my husband and I are willing to participate in (I have to start somewhere).

Thank you again for your words of support.

The biological mother has the legal right to be involved in every medical decision. You can not take her to the therapist without her permission, or the order of a court. Which therapist the child goes to must be a mutual decision of her mother and father.

Depends on the decree, TOS.

My decree stipulates that *either* bio parent has full legal rights to consent to medical treatment. So I could take my DS to a therapist over the objections of his father -- though in practice, it would backfire.

Frankly, while I am not assertive to anyone outside of my nuclear family, I would be pretty darned fed up and terrified at what this girl has done to my dd, and I would have NO problem saying to the BM, "This is what's going on in MY home to MY dd by YOUR dd. We need to start somewhere to get to the bottom of it so we're doing A,B, and C to get a professional's take on why this is happening. You are free to join us at any point, but THIS WILL BE addressed!"

If another parent told me that one of my sons hit, hurt, insulted or mistreated their child, I'd be livid and I'D want to get to the bottom of it. I'll bet BM is not eager to be involved - Lord knows if she's encouraging bad behavior, telling the girl her father has no time/love left for since the baby was born, or not.

Just be careful, some kids can be master manipulators and turn on the tears, act the way they are supposed to act to get everyone to back off, etc. I have no idea if she's calculating, cold-hearted or what, but her behavior goes way beyond normal.

Dana

sweeby,

That is not the case in my state. Either parent can get emergency medical treatment if the child injures herself/himself, and routine well child checks or dentist visits are not usually an issue, but anything else requires agreement.

I don't know if it's the same where y'all are, but where I am, there are 3 main types of custodial agreements: sole, joint, and shared.

If mom has sole custody, she must be consulted before treatment.

If mom and dad have joint custody, both parents must agree before treatment can begin.

If mom and dad have shared custody, either one of them can make the decision to take the child for treatment without prior consultation with the other party.

Where I live, unless one party has sole custody, parents must agree on any treatment. While my X and I technically have joint custody (Ha Ha Ha), no doctor has ever questioned my bringing in DD for any treatment. But our of courtesy, I always email him first.