Life In a Blended Family

My step-daughter has been back with her mother for a little over four months now. She is not any happier now than when she first left, in fact things are not going well at all.

I can no longer say we are a blended family.

I am no longer the “wicked stepmom”. That title was removed a few months ago, about the time my daughter figured out her dad had been lying to her about things. And her older step siblings spent some time with her explaining why I was concerned about things she was doing. But mostly I believe her resentment towards me had to do with the lies her dad had been telling her.

He had told her that the reason we were having problems was because I was always accusing him of using drugs and it wasn’t true. I was just telling stories and making things up. So that fueled her anger towards me any time I tried to have anything to do with discipline.

Now that she has seen over the last few months that her dad has indeed been using, but lying not just to her, but everyone else about it, she and I have actually gotten back to the relationship we once had.

It took her a little while to logically look at her dad’s behavior over the last year or so, his drug use escalated over the last six or seven months so it became obvious to her he was using. When he began to not come home after work until three and four in the morning or not at all and then refusing to take a drug test, there were no longer any doubts and his lying became evident.

Once he was given a leave from work he began using six out of seven days. He would take off for days at a time and when he did come home, it was only to sleep for 12 hours then get up and start it all over again.

He would call her and say he was on his way home, and then hours later not show up, he began ignoring our phone calls and breaking his promises to stop left and right.You can read my other post in my

So it's been over a month since my last post on being demoted to Step-mom and I would like to say things have improved.

Being a parent can be frustrating in and of itself and anyone with children already knows this. And if you  have a teenager in the house it can be even more frustrating, add to this one parent who has a problem with being consistent with discipline, well you can double that frustration. If you are part of a blended family and are a step-parent be prepared to multiply that by 10. 

I never really felt like I was just a step-parent with Carie, she has called me mom since she could talk, but that changed yesterday, I have now been lowered to the rank of step-mother, or step-monster as one of Pastors at my church called it. 

I was telling him of a concern I had with some inappropriate pictures being posted of Carie on her Facebook page. Because she is only 13 and I was/am concerned with not only predators that prey on young girls, but the message it sends to males when young girls feel the need to put pictures of themselves posing as if they are posing for Playboy or something.

I told my husband we really needed to have a talk with her about her profile picture and some pictures that she was tagged in. The picture on her profile was a collage of pictures of her and her friend, she was wearing what my sons call Daisy Duke shorts, shorts she had been told in the past she was not allowed to wear outside of the house. In a couple of the other pictures her and her friend were posed with their tongues seductively hanging out of their mouths. Across the pictures were things like, "sexy and hot mama".

I told her to take the pictures down and remove the tags from the pictures her friend posted. Her had a talk with her. She told him she did not intend the pictures to draw attention from males and wasn’t trying to be sexy or anything. To my dismay he said he believed her, and said she really didn't intend to portray herself in any inappropriate manner. Really? 

When I told the Pastor this he laughed and said, yeah right, she knew exactly what she was doing and especially since she had put the words sexy and hot mama across the top of the pictures she was well aware of what she was doing. I told him I agreed and was concerned that her dad was so willing to believe she was completely "innocent" in her intentions. That is when he told me I was now going to be in the