You are being setup for failure with these children by this entire family, in particular by BF. This is not a future I would wish on anyone. It is bad enough that BM and grandma are lessening your value, but your own BF is undermining it too. Manipulative, controlling relatives and weak, enabling BF = step hell. Other relatives will do what they may. You do not have any control over them, but your BF is not even backing you up. They all seem perfectly fine letting you flounder.

This is not a good set-up at all for you. Your BF seems to have no incentive to change and it seems like he doesn’t even want to change. He seems perfectly fine letting his children be in charge. The end result for you will be forever being thought of as the family’s lackey. This would be even if you and your BF marry, because he has already made it clear to his children that you are not to be minded.

Also, I know you see the home as both yours and your BF’s, but your BF really needs to take the lead on disciplining his own children. Him giving you permission doesn’t matter. They will see anything directed negative at them from you, as coming solely from you. This is not all that usual, for dad to have different parenting ideas than SM, but this is something you need to work out with your BF, decide what you both can tolerate, and then your BF has to enforce it. If not, step hell will forever be pounding at your door.

Also, it is not uncommon for step-dads to fare better. BMs, of course, do a much better job of promoting their own husband than SM or bio-dad even, and also, too, I think women are just better at having their SO’s back than the other way around. The kids here are not seeing a united front from you and DH at all. They are seeing dad act like you are the enforcer and your actions are to be dismissed. I know you say you love your BF, but he is setting you up for failure. Guilty parenting is not all that uncommon after a divorce, but it is still inexcusable and damaging, to the children most of all.

Best of luck to you, but it may come down to finding a better match for yourself. It is an awful lot to ask a single woman to take on all of that fallout from another family’s divorce. And, it will not be worth the pain and hit it will take on your own self-worth, if your SO, at least, can’t work with you and can’t stop minimizing you. There is nothing worse than feeling like an entire family, including your SO, is going after you.

Tough situation you are in. If you and your BF could find an experienced counselor and afford the expense and time for the sessions, that would likely be very helpful. There are also good books available to advise stepmothers. I wish I could remember the one I read, but I no longer have it. there are also forums (on other sites, too) for stepparents that may be helpful. The best outcome will be if you and your BF agree and work together. One strong recommendation that I recall reading is that stepparents should not discipline. Also, may I suggest that some of the behaviors you cited may be pretty normal stuff. Siblings often fight and blame each other and many kids don't like to clean their room and they push back on attempts to encourage them to do so. Tantrums are common, too and much worse when they occur in public! I wish you the best.

"One strong recommendation that I recall reading is that stepparents should not discipline."

That's maybe the silliest thing I have read online in a long time!! Of course step parents need to discipline!! Discipline is not punishment....the word “discipline” comes from the same Latin root as the word “disciple.” It means “education.” To discipline a child is to educate him in good manners and good behavior. But all parental units need to be on board with the same goals and methods to achieve this successfully. At the very least, you and your BF must be on the same page and consistent!

I helped raise three step kids. Two were boys from my ex's first marriage (5 and 7 when we first got together) and stayed with us in summer and every other Christmas, as mom lived out of state. There was never any issue with them not minding me and dad never over-indulged due to 'divorce guilt'. They were a piece of cake :-)

My stepdaughter lived with us mostly from the time she was 6 months old and moved in permanently once in grade school. Mom had major emotional issues and was pretty unstable so parenting from that end was sketchy at best. Even though she was getting some mixed messages from mom and maternal GM, I treated her as if she was my own child, with appropriate discipline and punishments as needed, as did dad. Today, she is 27 years old, intelligent, polite, independent, successfully employed and the light of my life. We are much closer than she and her biological mom, even though her dad and I have been divorced for more than 12 years.

It is absolutely essential that you and the BF be on the same page and support each other. Kids can be extremely manipulative and if they intuit differences in attitudes, they will exploit them to their benefit. I too would suggest family counseling as the first step. If that doesn't work, then making some changes in living arrangements may be the next :-( The situation cannot continue as-is - it will drive you crazy and is of NO help to the kids involved, who are really the most important factors in this issue.

I will be blunt

you are not a stepparent. You are a caregiver and only for two years. I totally understand your want and need to establish your status in the household. But again, your status is not what you think it is.

Additionally, you are trying to reason with little kids. If they could reason, they could take care of themselves and parents wouldnt haphazardly look for BF or GF to help them care for these children. People get used this way, unfortunately.

You are lucky in that there appears to be civil dialogue between you and mom. It could be much worse.

grands are horrid at overindulging children. It is not a conspiracy against steps and the best well adapted kids have a history of loving relationships with grands. Make them your allies.

i think there is hope with counseling but you are burdening your life sooner than you need to do so. You are a GF. Good luck.

Signed: a stepparent who could have used a blunt talking like this one

I know that I am not a stepparent, unfortunately there are no "caregiver" forums for advice that match what I need, and both parents are throwing me in the water expecting me to act as a parent. And no, the dialogue between their mother and myself is not great, it's the stepfather who does all the talking and dropping off as of late, the mother prefers not to speak with us unless it is to establish how to be consistent between households. There was a time when I didn't live in the same household as my boyfriend and her youngest peed his pants, and I was the one who was yelled at (while not even being there and knowing what was going on) and expected to fix it by the mother. And, as much as I would love to say the oldests grandma is our ally, that is far from the case. It is her son that is the biological father of that child, not my boyfriend. She has, many times, screamed at my boyfriend in front of that child all because he didn't respond to a text within five minutes. She often tells my boyfriend that he is not the child's father and that she will never respect his position in the child's life, and I feel that it rubs off on the child because after a visit, he will randomly refer to my boyfriend as his first name instead of daddy.

I know fighting between siblings and not wanting to clean up is normal, my point of bringing that up was that the arguing that the oldest does with me is not something he does with his dad. If he's caught by his dad hitting his sibling, he immediately owns up to it. If he's caught following his dad around instead of cleaning, and is reminded, his response "oh yeah! I forgot", not an argument like with me. It's only with me that he argues. The point of the tantrum is that it had never happened before and happened as suddenly as his behavior changed.

I'm not trying to call myself a stepparent, nor did I even refer to the kids as being my stepchildren. Again, a stepparent forum was the only place with advice to my situation. If I offend anyone by utilizing this forum to ask others who have been in my position, I apologize. Any punishments that have been implemented were discussed beforehand between my boyfriend and I (he just later decided it wasn't okay when the punishment happened). I only implement a punishment if my boyfriend is not around to see the issue occur. I honestly have told him that I don't feel like I should be the one implementing punishments, but he claims that if I'm the one who saw or heard what happened then I'm the one who should, he thinks it'll earn me respect when I think the opposite is happening. There has been a time when I told him that I had asked the youngest to clean up his candy wrapper and he responded with "whatever" and refused to, then later demanded that I "make lunch right now" with a tone full of attitude. BF wouldn't do anything because he didn't hear it so I should have been the one to do so. It feels like a lose lose situation.

My reasoning for posting is that their behavior wasn't like this until six months ago, which was over six months after I moved in. It took a drastic change (even to the point where their mother and stepfather noticed), but I'm the only one experiencing the poor treatment that no one will do anything about, that's why I'm asking for advice. Counseling sounds like great advice, and I appreciate everyone who has given advice thus far. It's just not something we can financially handle at this moment.

Oh, I also forgot to add in my original post that my boyfriend and the birth mother were never married. They were engaged, and broke up almost immediately after the youngest child was born. The oldest doesn't seem to remember when they lived together, so living in two separate households is, unfortunately, all these two children know. I don't think it really affects what is currently going on, but some of you have mentioned divorce and I don't want to be giving the wrong assumption and leaving out information.

Hello. Well, for one thing, whether you call it a separation or a divorce, either way the effect is often the same. Blood is blood. Kids fully know who BM is and who dad's GF is, regardless of how long or in what manner bio-dad and BM were hooked up. Again, a lot of what I see above is you being expected to take on all of this family's angst, however it came about, and your big reward is being the family scapegoat vs. given any appreciation.

And, sorry, but this how many (not all, but many) SMs, who are married to their husbands and may have been for years can be treated: "I'm the only one experiencing the poor treatment that no one will do anything about." Society tolerates this and even encourages it. They actually think that you are supposed to give up your soul for this other family. Yes, it is actually true! All I know is when I found this out via my own experiences and reading similar on other forums, I was just as shocked as you were. Good SM reading material: Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do [Wednesday Martin Ph.D.].

bossyvossy, alluded to this, but it really is risky for a single woman to take up with a man with children and just live together. I wanted to give you the shadow of a doubt and refer to you as SM vs. caregiver. But, even SMs who are married to their husbands and have been for years, are treated similar to what you are seeing now. It has to do with the way SMs are valued (or I should say undervalued) in our society. And, unfortunately, the only argument some see for SM being treated even remotely like a family member is as dad's wife, and even then, the "wife" part is often forgotten at family events, and without any foreknowledge, dad's wife of 10 years, for example, can go to an event and find out that her husband has been hooked up with BM for the event. Again, without SM's permission nor even her husband's.

I used to feel that way too, that GFs or BFs really have little rights at all when it comes to SKs, because they can come and go at a moment's notice, and kids really don't want to deal with all of this, one day dad's GF is in and the next day she's out. BUT, I came to realize that dad's GF of three months is usually treated little differently than a SM of 25 years. So, this has led me to at least somewhat back up GFs living with a man with children, because a) it is becoming more prevalent, and b) I hate to see women get set up for failure by their own man and society, regardless of the living arrangements.

But, bossyvossy is still right in the sense that here you are giving up quite a bit for this man and his children, and getting nothing in return, including not even a real commitment. Again, I know you love him, but backup and look at the facts, or at least ask yourself: What am I really getting out of this relationship? I am a SM and have a friend who was much like you, a single woman with no children who went on to marry a man with children. She had no clue what she was getting into. She gave her time, love, heart, and own hard-earned money to these children, and thought, like most, that she'd get some sort of acknowledgement in return. Years later, she's still waiting for it. She told me from her perspective being a SM is like having all of the bad parts (such as cooking, cleaning, disciplining) of being a mom, but with little to nil of the good parts (such as hugs, kisses, eyes filled with love, cards, acknowledgement). Something for all of us to think about.

I’m with Kim on this one. I don’t think you have to be married to effectively be pitched into the stepparent role, which clearly you have been.

I think if I was your Mom, I’d be saying, “Come on home, honey, you’ve been trying to fix this train wreck for long enough and it ain’t fixable.”

You are the _only_ person in this ménage who thinks that the children should be accountable for their behaviour and taught to behave properly. So you are outnumbered five to one- kids, parents and grandma- and since the other adults in this are the ones with the ultimate power, you _cannot_ win.

Things can _only_ change if your BF wants them to and is strong willed enough to stand up to his ex and the grandma to counteract their influence. It sure doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon, and meanwhile the kids’ poor and defiant behaviour becomes more and more entrenched and more and more difficult to turn around.

Ask yourself, Is this the life I deserve? Is this how I want to live for the rest of my life? (Because it won’t change once the kids turn 18.) Personally I think the youngest was onto something when he suggested you move out. Grant his wish and free yourself for a better and happier life. And pick a less spineless BF next time, but don’t be in a rush, be more selective.

If you don't see the counseling recommended here being feasible then maybe there really will be no improvement unless and until you move on to a better situation, with somebody else.

Thank you everyone for the advice. I do see counseling as being feasible, it's just hard to find something we can afford, but I am trying to look. I'm also saving a rainy day fund if counseling doesn't help to approve our situation so that I have something to fall back on.

But before you go to counselling, make it clear to your BF that things have to change, and that _he_ has to make a genuine effort to change as well. If he’s not on board with fixing the situation, you’re wasting your money and your time.