alora
04-20-2011, 06:56 PM
I have been a step mother to a now 15 year old girl for 2.5 years. She has lived full time with my partner for 4 years and prior to that she lived with her mother full time. She tends to have me at breaking point. She absolutely refuses to do anything for herself and ignores all requests of anyone. Her room is filled with damp, dirty washing, food scraps, used sanitary pads, dirty dishes etc and any attempts to get her to tidy (by her father) are met with simply hiding everything deeper in her drawers, under her bed, under her covers etc. The smell is horrendous. She has recently taken to only showering 2 - 3 times a week, although spends HOURS doing her hair and makeup. She often refuses to eat family meals but instead eats junk food in huge volumes and sugar drinks (bought with money her grandparents give her) and gets up in the night for sugary snacks (she'll make icing if nothing else is available). She has a tendency to lies, eg fake stalkers and fake tuummy bugs for attention and goes through cell phones, ipods, wallets etc like they are worthless. Someone (either her grandmother, mother or father) buys her new ones. She has in the past 1.5 years joined a pentecostal church group and spends many, many hours at social church functions and in her room praying and bible reading, very removed from family life. She is VERY jealous of her father's and my relationship and of my four year old and spends all her time in passive aggressive defiance of anything asked of her but demanding non stop of her wants and needs. She paints me very much the evil witch who abuses her - her school health books talk of how I abuse her and argue constantly with her about religion, which is all entirely untrue and she also spends hours with her church groups in meetings about my cruelty of her and my rejection of religion. Again, all untrue. My struggle is actually her aggression, her lack of hygiene and her complete and utter lack of respect for anyone but herself and believe it or not I spend hours worrying about her. I don't know how to address this with her father as there are never any consequences for her behaviour and he seems to think "it's just her". Sometimes the only way out I see is leaving, except aside from this issue, we have none and would be very happy together. Which is all just part of an evil circle on all our counts. I just don't think "leaving her to it and she'll grow up and leave home" is the way to go about it... please help.