You hit the nail on the head, evillesbian. I get the "you're picking on her" or "nitpicking". Uggh. She didn't forget that I told her I'd give her a dollar for helping me clean the house 6 months ago, you're right about that. But she "forgets" to brush her teeth. DH clams up when I get onto her. I have done everything from being the main one to correct to deciding I've had enough and not doing anything. When I did that, nothing got done. She actually went 4 days with no shower (which by the way, she was being given a bath at 5 1/2 by Grandma)and at 6 p.m. was still in her pj's. He gives me full reign to do whatever, but overcompensates as "Good Guy" when I do. He'll baby her. He has lately begun to realize that she will lie just to get attention but seems to ignore it a good bit because he doesn't know what to do with her. He did say he wished he had seen her around other children earlier so he could have seen how different she is. He doesn't get mad at me for the way I correct, but it's often not worth it because his babying "un-do's" everything!! We've wanted a "label" for her for a quick fix. I now know that's not the right thing. It's a minute by minute case with this child.

she quit because they wanted her to work the day after Thanksgiving". Naw! No way! In *retail*??? She quit so she could move into her father's new beachfront home. and your husband knows it. There's no way to live a happy, normal life with a passive/aggressive person. Every time you get happy because you think you've *finally* gotten things on track, he'll sabotage the whole structure. & open his eyes wide & say in an injured tone that he doesn't know *why* you're mad at him, he didn't do anything. He'll keep you so busy putting out brush fires that you won't be able to take the long view, to get some perspective on what's actually going on & what the future is likely to be like. sound familiar? Fathers often do over-indulge manipulative 'children' out of guilt ("I moved out on my family, I'm the reason she's unhappy"); a halfway skillful 'child' can leverage that for a lifetime! But since even his young son's problems don't make any difference in this father's behavior, there must be more in it than guilt. Like the fact that, although the two of you have the same level of education & the same earning capacity, he's in control & you're frazzled, stressed out, & miserable. & you're a domestic servant, cleaning the stairs & keeping food warm for his rude daughter. so I don't think that the problem is "her" so much as it is "him & her". The two of them are working as partners to get what they want, & it's working very well. They have no reason to accomodate you; doing so would, in fact, reduce their satisfaction with life. I think it's time for one or the other to move out of the 'dream (nightmare) home' & let life calm down. Just in case you're not ready to take that step, & I do know that we have to be 'ready', you might change some things to reduce your stress while you give him one more opportunity to shape up: Stop enabling her! no holding food in the warming drawer, no "bending over backwards", no talking to her like you're too dumb to realize that she's your rival & that she enjoys making a fool of you. This is your territory, you're the alpha female, your cubs are suffering, you need to assert yourself (stop cleaning those stairs, for crying out loud, & never ever act like you're "trying to work with her"). Tell hubs that he's treading on thin ice for lying to you, that he well knows that you never would have agreed to have his grown daughter move in forever, that she's outstayed her welcome not only by length of "visit" but by behavior & attitude, & that he's to get her out of there at once. Then give *her* a date (do *not* expect him to actually follow through; he doesn't believe you'll take any action if he does nothing), & if she isn't out, put her belongings in storage & change the locks. He'll likely become indignant & proclaim that "it's his house too", *& he may have her move back in*. You need to be prepared for that to happen. If this "girl" moves back in, *she'll* have absolute free rein to treat you like dirt, & *he'll* enjoy it. If she moves back in, it means that your husband is so sure of his control that he believes that he has nullified your power, that you are completely powerless. (This is what abusers of all sorts do to their victims: physical/emotional/sexual abusers, p!mps, drug dealers, all of them, because it really works) At that point, you must move on & get a real life, one in which you are not property but an independent young professional woman raising her family, or maybe at some point, a valued partner to a loving person who feels grateful to have you. You can do this; You are a healthy young woman, you can manage your own life & your own home, & you can raise your children to be happy, well-adjusted human beings without getting ensnarled in disfunction & co-dependence. I wish you the best.

Hi all, I'm new. I just want to say that many of the issues you mention really aren't YOUR issues. Things like her fraudulant lawsuits for example. I have an ex who's always frauding someone...but it's not my problem. The system will catch up and when it does, they'll have to pay somehow. You need to focus on dealing with the children when they're in your care, and disregard what they do in her care, unless they're in danger. You seem to have stopped the spanking but maybe you should make their Dad handle all the discipline. You could even try a "wait until your father gets home" stance when they are in your care and your husband is away. Once you stop engaging with them, they will stop engaging with you. You've only been married two years, so you have a long road ahead. Your nit-picky issues are just that, little nit-picky issues. I'd blow them off and laugh it off as a jealous bio-mom...those do exists sometimes. You know YOU and those around you know YOU...don't waste your time focusing on what she says or does. Keep documenting everything and always anticipate the worst, but hope for the best. If the relationship with the girls is broken, I'd really try mending it. If you're interested in some ways, let me know, maybe we can get creative. If you plan to stay married, you really need to get along with his kids, they don't go away after they turn 18, only the CS.

No promises that it will work 100%, but another thing you could try is something along the lines of what cops are trained to do in disarming hostage-takers, etc. They do a series of things to basically calm the hostile party down, defuse the situationand prevent it from escalating. It doesn't always work, but soemtimes it does. And if it can work on some grown violent men with worldly experience, it surely seems possible that it can work on this little girl. What that often comes down to is asking the person what their goals are with all the crap they're pulling. This is often a major first step b/c a lot of times being listened to is a major part of what they wanted in the first place, and the lack of which has driven them to the extreme behavior in the first place. Or at the very least, it's often a chance to reality-check their goals out loud to soemone to realize how unrealistic the goals are, or at least how faulty their methods are for achieving those goals. Then it's a back-and-forth negotiation to see if there's any reasonable way the party can get any of their goals met with minimum damage to others. i.e. "No, you can't have 10 million dollars, but we won't shoot you if you let the hostages go." Or in your case: "No, we can't just send SM to pasture, but we can figure out ways for us all to get along and be happy and get special time, etc. without you usng your little dial fingers to call DFCS." Along these lines, I have found that people who resort to extreme negative behavior based on a sense of competition ---whether it's members of a stepfamily, or women in the office--- do so mainly for one or both of two reasons: 1. They believe that the party they are hostile to has the power to take away someone or something important to them, and that this is a real and present risk. (In the workplace: a coveted promotion or raise; in the stepfamily: relationship with the bio-parent/new spouse in common.) 2. They believe that their hostile action has the power to prevent the dreaded loss from occuring. If the hostile party (or parties) can be convinced that neither is true or possible, the negative behavior will usually cease. Because there will be seen to be no payoff from it, nor any need for it in the first place. This is why a punishment wherein SD is denied a relationship with her father would backfire big time: because it proves #1 to be actually true, thus upping the ante and making #2 more of a tempting and likely possibility. The goal is to make it crystal-clear that there is nothing SD risks losing by having SM in the picture, that SM is not a hostile party, and that there is nothing SD has to gain from being a hostile party herself. The more insight can be gleaned about what SD's goals are, the better. because stepfamilies are very complex, especially for the children in the middle of them, it's likely more than one goal, or even conflicted goals. Obviously she wants more attention from Dad, but she may also want approval from Mom (especially if Mom is in any way encouraging or rewarding her when she does the negative behaviors). She may also be testing the stepfamily situation out to see how stable it is, and comparing which of her two households wants her most. She may be feeling a profound sense of having no control over anything in her life, or being outnumbered, so she seeks to feel in control over her brother's feelings and by calling DFCS. In this case, she needs activities which are healthy little "domains" for her to feel some control over. She may simply be bored and in need of other outlets for her imagination and energy. Any and all of these things are strong possibilites... the more you know what they are, the more discussions you have with her, the more constructive things she's given to do with her energy and the more the positive things are rewarded and the negative things are discouraged, the better are the chances of getting her to give up the negative behaviors.