BellaOnline Forums Family Step Parenting This is putting tension on my family please help!

I have a little problem I could use some help with! I have a five year old step daughter who has been in my life for two years. When her dad and I got together her parents had been apart for a year but had been working on things. During this time her mom slept with her dads best friend (my step daughter referred to him as her uncle)and this abolished any chance of them reconciling. Shortly after her dad and I began to see each other and her mom flipped her lid. She sent me degrading messages where one minute she would be calling me names like "home wrecker" and "f$&*ing Wh$%&" and the next she'd be sending me messages about how I am so beautiful and I could have anyone I want and why would I want to break her family up (although she had done the breaking by leaving my dh a year prior and sleeping with his best friend -which we found out from her friends had actually been going on for years while her and my dh were together). She sent messages to my dh stating that she knew where I lived and was going to kill me and she begged him to sleep with her when she knew I wasn't around because, according to her, it wouldn't be cheating. Eventually things died down somewhat. There was no custody arrangement at the time so she would use their daughter as a pawn and when we'd go pick her up she'd yell at my dh about how he is a loser and a drunk etc. anything she could think of that might make me reconsider my relationship with him really. Last summer when my dh went to go pick my dsd up from her moms house she attacked him in front of my dsd. She was charged with assault for this episode two months ago. After the assault last summer (and before she was charged) there was a no contact order put into place and she was/is not allowed to contact my dh in any form besides email and only on the topic of their daughter. This definitely helped the situation. My step daughter started calling me "momma dolphin" last summer after the assault. I think this was her way to call me mom without making it too formal. However, a short time later she began calling me mom. At the time I took it that she could see some instability with her mom (because she has watched her mom lash out and her mom talks badly about her dad and myself in front of her) and that she maybe had some comfort with me that she didn't have with her mom. When her mom found out it drove her crazy and it didn't help that my dsd would go to her moms house and say things like "my other mom bought me this shirt" etc. So then around winter of last year she started calling me by my name again. I didn't say anything to her about this. I just thought maybe she wasn't comfortable with calling me mom. When I finally did bring it up she told me that her grandma and her mom said she is not allowed to call me mom anymore. I said to my dsd "you can call me whatever you feel comfortable calling me whether it's mom or my name" and she said "I want to call you mommy". It's been roughly a year now since she's consistently been calling me mom. Recently she told me her mom is ok with her calling me mom but is pushing her to call her moms boyfriend (her former "uncle") "dad". My step daughter says "I don't want to call him dad though because I don't want people thinking he is my dad". So here is my issue: For a while now my step daughter has been saying negative things about us at her moms house and negative things about her mom at our house. We have found this out through "mud slinging" emails. Her moms bf stated that he believes we are trying to make my dsd hate her mom and him. Honestly, we keep the opinion we have of them to ourselves. I have even told my dsd that every time I hear her saying something mean about her mommy that we are going to think and say positive things about her mommy instead. She has told her mom that I say I am a better mom then her and that I hate her mom(this got back to us in an email and these are things I never said in front of my dsd). Anyways, my point is that this has all hurt me a lot to the extent where I feel betrayed and am contemplating asking my dsd to call me by my name. She also tells me she loves me every five minutes (almost) and always wants to be around me and cuddling me and sometimes I just need my own space but it's hard for me to tell her this. Can anyone help me to analyze this and let me know what I should do in this situation? I know it will hurt her deeply if I ask her not to call me mom although I feel like she only is doing it to make me happy. I know that her mom is not the most stable person but I know that she really loves her daughter a lot and she does a lot for her. It's gotten to the point where I am really short with my dsd and I don't want even want to be at home when we have her in our care which is half the time. What do you think? * I also have a six year old son from a former relationship and my dh and I have a five month old son. Thanks for listening :)

The best thing you can do is avoid any mudslinging on your own and ignore anything the mother does. Don't allow the child to talk bad about her mother at your house, and don't respond to any of it. See, kids do what they feel they need to do in order to survive at each house. It's completely natural. Just make each visit as good as possible and the future will take care of itself. I'm a step mom twice and I promise you, it gets better, they all grow up. My kids are now 26, 21, 20, and 18... the last two being step kids. My youngest told me not that long ago how much she appreciated that we don't talk bad about her mother, or allow her to. So it does work.

Thank-you for your input Stephanie! We really try to talk her mom and mom's bf up at our house rather than put them down. If she tells us about fun things she's done with them we'll say "that is so nice of them. They must really love you a lot". We had her until 8:00pm on Halloween and her mom had planned on taking her to see the fireworks after she picked her up. They ended up not going and my step daughter told me that her mom told her she can lie to us and tell us she went. I was really upset about her encouraging my step daughter to lie to us so I told my step daughter that I didn't agree with what her mom telling her to lie and that she should never lie to anyone let alone her parents. This is about the "meanest" thing I've said to her in regards to her mom. This past weekend she told us that her mom says that her dad owes her money and that he doesn't actually have his drivers licenses (which he just got back after not having for a five years). When situations like this occur we just tell her that we would never lie to her and that she doesn't need to hear about these "adult" things. I guess my main concern is that she hears so much negativity at her moms house about us and she is trying so hard to please us all that she is making negative things up that we are saying about her mom at our house in order to make her mom happy. I asked her the other day if she tells her mom that we say mean things about her at our house and she said "I think so sometimes" and I said "well is that true?" and she says "no". It's just really frustrating and it makes me not want to have a relationship with her but I know this is so small of me because she is only 5 after all and she is more confused in this situation than any of the rest of us. She is also beginning to act out in school. The other week she was sent to the principles office for kicking a little boy because he sat on a swing she was saving for her friend.