I think that your best option is the family counseling. I would be tempted to ask my SD if she is familiar with the saying.."Biting the hand that feeds you." BM shouldn't be doing what she is doing and she is really harming her daughter more than anyone.

It sounds to me like SD is being made to feel guilty if she loves you or treats you with respect. It's pretty hard for most kids to admit that their own bio parent is a loser or mean or wrong or whatever. SD may feel like she had to fall into step with BM where you are concerned so that she can remain close to her mom or she might get a bunch of grief from her if she doesn't.

I would tell SD that as long as she is going to treat you with such disrespect then she can go to her father and mother when she needs some thing. I had to do that with my 1st SD33 when I saw that all I was to her was a check book. It took a lot of stress off me and helped her to see just what the reality was. Her mom still played games with her and of course for a while I was the "evil" step mother and she would tell SD that if she lived with her she would never make her do things that I did. She finally did go and live with her mom and what an eye opener that was.

I agree with believer. My SD is 9 & her mom will be nice to my face & bad mouth me to her daughter (and apparently anyone else that listens). It's hard to not get upset with the child when the child knows what they are doing is hurtful to you but they do it anyways.

What I tell my SD is, 'I don't know if your mom likes me or not but it's okay if she doesn't. What I do care about is my relationship with you and how we get along with each other." That way, I'm not blaming BM and SD gets that I know she's stuck in a hard place and she usually changes her tune. There's always a period of adjustment when she comes back from her mom. How I react to it can either soften it or make it worse. Unfortunately, I'm guilty of making it worse occasionally. It does take constant effort & the few times I've blown it, usually after BM does something to set me off & I let her get to me or I am frustrated beyond belief. It helps to take time for myself/yourself.

Counseling is a great idea and another idea my dad gave me that might work is behavioral modification.

It seems that my post spoke more of my SD, and not so much about my SS. The situation at hand has a great affect on him as well. My SD never really bonded with BM like my SS did. He was always her favorite, and BM often pays much more attention to him. When she calls, BM will spend hours (literally) talking to him. But when SD asks to talk, as BM rarely asks to speak with her, BM comes up with some reason that she can't stay on the phone. In fact, SD birthday was`last week. BM didn't send a gift, or even a card. Worse yet, she didn't even call. Finally in the evening, SD called her. Once again, she could not talk to her. Once again, SD made up an excuse for BM's actions as to justify it (maybe the reality hurts too much). So I think that she is trying to gain Mom's approval by treating me as BM would want her to. As far as SS goes, I have never really been able to develop a relationship with him as he always "pushes me away". Perhaps he feels that even liking me would be in some way deserting his BM. However, lately we've noticed that he seems depressed. BM has not followed through on a few things (not that this is out of character for her), and my thought is that he is beginning to see the situation for what it really is. I think the pedestal he has her on is starting to crumble so to say.

Unfortunately, I do have a tendency to let BM get me worked up when the kids act like brats and I know it's due to her influence. I try very hard not to take it out on the kids as I know they are stuck in a hard place too. It's so infuriating that someone 1000 miles away can have such an impact on the dynamic of our home.

Oh, and what makes things all the more ironic is the fact that she and her BF just got married so that they can persue custody of his 2 kids from what she claims is a neglectful mother! She has even gone as far as to ask my husband to write a letter of reference for her as a parent. I could do nothing but chuckle and shake my head on that one! BM has even told SS that she could not put more minutes on the cell phone she got him because all of their money was going to the lawyer to try to get new husband's kids. Our counselor was disgusted when she heard this, as she said...What a slap in the face to that child.
BM has told SS that when he is old enough to decide, that he can come live with her. So she will keep stringing him along I guess. Meanwhile it is tearing these children apart in the hardest time of a child's life.

It's a sad, sad situation, and far from uncommon, I'm afraid. (My Ex also set out to destroy my husband's relationship with my son when he saw they were getting 'too close'.) There's jealousy, guilt, possessiveness, selfishness -- all sorts of negative emotions at play, and when a bio parent forces the children to choose between a step and a bio, the children and step parents always seem to lose.

Hopefully, the counselor can make the children realize that they don't have to choose between you and BioMom, and that their relationship with you is totally separate from their relationship with her. They're old enough to understand that distinction, if they're willing to accept it.

What do you imagine would happen if you were to ask the SKids - in the counselors office - what type of relationship they wanted to have with you? That for the past X years, you have been raising them 'like a mother' - cooking, cleaning, helping with homework, loving them like your own (whatever is true - don't exaggerate) - but that now their real mother has come back into their lives, you all have a major readjustment and some decisions to make. That it appears to you that they have some inner conflict with you continuing in a 'mother role' - and that this only makes sense. But that you all need to come to some sort of agreement about what your role will be. That it's not fair to ask you to do all of the 'mother' work without being treated with the same love and respect.

Just a thought...

OP doesnt say how long she has been with/been married to the stepkids father.

I guess my experiences in this have been pretty well the opposite of the OP. My ex, when he saw how attached my kids were becoming to my husband, tried to badmouth and alienate the kids from him. It backfired because the kids had already developed a strong loving relationship with their stepdad, and they didnt take kindly to their father saying bad things about him. They stopped being willing to visit their birth father because of his attitude toward their stepfather.

My stepchildrens mother tried badmouthing me and their father, but the same thing happened. Because we didnt overreact or take offense, and because we had already worked at developing a strong loving relationship with the kids, my stepchildren have become less attached to their bm, and refuse to listen when she says bad things. They are now beginning not to want to go to her house on her days. If BM cant get a grip on her nastiness, I can see down the road the kids wont want to go at all as teens.

If I were OP , I would work on the relationship and not worry about what the BM is saying. If its a fairly new marriage and the kids have been without a mom for a long time, they may naturally lean toward what the mom says for a while, but consistent love, and a policy of not retaliating, will eventually overwin them.

If the marriage is long term, and the kids have just now begun to act this way, then I would ask OP if she REALLY has developed the trusting loving relationship she thought she had, since that would have been hard to break simply by mom coming back into the picture.