O. M. G.

[Shari]

easy child 2/difficult child got money for her birthday and was carrying it to school. She was packing around close to $100.

We saw it twice and husband took it and put it up at our house. We know she got into it then the next time she was there, so he locked it up. Told her it was there whenever she wanted it. She just had to ask, cause it wasn't to go to school to be flaunted around.

I just got a nasty message from her mom because "we took her money".

Uh, no, we didn't. We kept her 13 year old immature hiney from packing $100 to school because YOU weren't.

That just eliminated my guilt from not going to her concert tonight.

 

[Lothlorien]

Mom is just clueless. I guess it would have been better for her to come home to tell her that she lost it or someone stole it. Gosh, she is just so irritating

 

[Shari]

Not an hour later, GRANDMA called me and hollered at me, too! easy child 2/difficult child had told her it was just gone. She even told grandma that I was supposed to have left it in the mailbox the previous week!

I explained why we took it and she said "well, I told her not to take it to school, but she didn't listen, like usual". Uh...I wonder why??? MAYBE cause you are yelling AT ME about it, and she should be the one getting a but chewing...since it wasn't supposed to go to school andd she defied EVERYONE!?!?!

 

[witzend]

You witch!

Good for you!

 

[gcvmom]

Boneheads, one and all. Sigh.

 

[Shari]

I think I am officially changing easy child 2/difficult child's title.


I believe that with some direction and boundaries, she would not be without problems, but I think they would be a lot fewer and much less difficult child-ish. So, just like an oyster farmer "creates" pearls, I am going to dub her...a cultured difficult child.

 

[busywend]

I am not sure it is possible for 2 households to communicate enough for everyone to be on the same page. Especially when you have a child that is going to embellish everything they say (like my difficult child did). To this day difficult children dad and step-mom think I am an awful mom because of the picture they created in their mind. It was difficult child. All difficult child. They way she would say something to them about me or what I did. They just assumed.

For her mom to assume that you 'took' her money is just silly. But, I do not think it can be helped. So, I think you should figure that anything and everything that is said.....is not exactly accurate. Don't let it take up space in your brain.

 

[KTMom91]

My mom still believes everything Miss KT says about me. Frustrating as heck, but oh well...

 

[Shari]

I agree...even with the best of communication, stuff happens. But there is NO communication with this woman most of the time. I'm not allowedd to the door to pick her up, and I not allowed to the door to drop her off.

And I know "Cultured difficult child" plays it. She also tells us that mom doesn't let her eat fruit or drink milk. ANd I don't beleive that koi a bit. However, remember, I spent 12 years with this woman before she was my husband's ex. She was that way then. Very insecure. Very mean. VERY unhappy. NO friends. It hasn't changed.

I had a decent conversation with her yesterday about the tales going back and forth. I asked her to communicate more about this kinda stuff or its not going to stop and a 15 year old girl telling these kinda tales is NOT goinig to be fun to deal with. She "will try, but its hard in some situations".

She will talk to me if I can get her started. She told me a couple of years ago that her husband is very controlling and does not like for her to talk to husband or me about anything. He also will not allow ex-family (husband's sister or parents) to come visit there anymore. She texted me yesterday "I will talk to you about this stuff when I can. I don't have a problem talking to you or in front of (Cultured difficult child), he has the problem with me talking to you very much. Long story."

And she admitted to not allowing her to bring the saddle. I asked. lol

 

[susiestar]

I am sure that a good part of the problem is cultured-difficult child wanting to get away with things and/or not wanting to get into trouble, but I also wonder how much is trying to create waves to show how big the problems at her mom's house are? The man sounds abusive and I wonder how much of that abuse/controlling behavior extends to cultured-difficult child. There is almost nothing you can do but try to enforce the rules to show her some consistency and listen if she ever wants to talk. I doubt that any move to get custody of her would be successful as she is old enough that changes must have her consent. I am SURE mom and gma would guilt her and extend BIG bribes if it ever came up.

Sadly, the entire frustrating situation is NOT likely to change anytime soon.

 

[AnnieO]

Shari. the more I hear about C-difficult child's mom, the more I wonder. This is super confusing. If easy child is fudging the truth she probably is looking for attention. Is the mother's husband that intimidating? I'm a bit confused on this part - LOL!

 

[Shari]

What's confusing? Cultured difficult child is MAJOR attention seeking. She sees some of the people I shoot with 3 times a year and she will literally hang on them when she sees them. And she doesn't know them from Adam, but of course, they treat her nicely and she revels in it.

And yes, Susie, a lot of stories are to stay out of trouble. We'll get a story that blames mom. Mom gets a story that blames us. Teachers get a story that generally blames mom cause mom isn't the one that checks the stories out.

Things aren't good at mom's. She has spent the night with friends and that we don't know and she has told them she doesn't want to live with her mom anymore and reasons why. This has been happening for at least 3 years. But you are absolutely right, mom and grandma will buy her to keep her. I'm not so sure that's not already happening (ie the birthday party).

And Step, I don't think the husband is that intimidating to c-difficult child, but he has mom under his thumb and has had for some time. Her parents have even complained to us about him. He and his children are not allowed at their house or their lake property (and their house is 50 yards away).

Is that any less confusing at all??? lol

PS - I'd love to "fix" this, but realistically, its not going to happen. I post it here so I can make light of it and laugh about it because much of it is just plain absurd. Poking fun at it is much better than fretting about it.

 

[AnnieO]

What's confusing? Cultured difficult child is MAJOR attention seeking. She sees some of the people I shoot with 3 times a year and she will literally hang on them when she sees them. And she doesn't know them from Adam, but of course, they treat her nicely and she revels in it.[/QUOTE] OMG - Are you maybe talking about ONYXX here??????? LOL

And Step, I don't think the husband is that intimidating to c-difficult child, but he has mom under his thumb and has had for some time.

Oh wow. Yeah that's actually what I was trying to figure out - if mom was intimidated.

I'm just sending HUGE hugs to you and C-difficult child.

 

[Shari]

I feel for c-difficult child, owever, my hands are tied. And she can make the situation better or worse...and she makes that choice....

 

[susiestar]

Sadly, the whole situation seems geared to turn almost ANY kid into a "cultured difficult child". in my opinion this is esp true as cgfg probably sees how intimidated her mom is and probably takes pride in trying to intimidate mom into doing what she wants too. Causei fmom is able to be controlled, well, it gives cgfg that much more stuff and freedoms.

I think venting and laughing about it here is problem the healthiest way for you to handle this. It sure isn't going to change unless somehow mom gets the cajones to toss out this guy or stand up and make him back down, AND stands up to cgfg and follows through with some discipline.

 

[ML]

A good time for the response to the lot of them... WHATEVER!

 

[Shari]

Exactly.

When she and husband were still together, several years before they split, she was miserable and complaining to me one day that. I asked her why she didn't do something about it, and she assumed I meant leave him. She said she didnt want to be alone; having someone that you reallly didn't like was better than no one at all....

So I imagine we're stuck with the new hubby, too...

Time will tell.

 

[DaisyFace]

What's confusing? Cultured difficult child is MAJOR attention seeking. She sees some of the people I shoot with 3 times a year and she will literally hang on them when she sees them. And she doesn't know them from Adam, but of course, they treat her nicely and she revels in it.

And yes, a lot of [her] stories are to stay out of trouble. We'll get a story that blames mom. Mom gets a story that blames us. Teachers get a story that generally blames mom cause mom isn't the one that checks the stories out.

Things aren't good at mom's. She has spent the night with friends and that we don't know and she has told them she doesn't want to live with her mom anymore....

Shari--

You know I've been reading your threads about this child, and I'm not so sure she is "cultured" by her Mom's behavior. It's possible...but--

This child reminds me so much of my own difficult child. The stories! Everything is somebody else's fault. The teachers constantly misplace her homework. (Yeah, right) Mom and Dad are the worst, most abusive parents in the world. Little brother does everything wrong and difficult child is always in trouble for it (Double yeah, right!) My daughter has caused some major family feuds by telling one relative one thing and one relative another.

My daughter, too--shows way too much attention to perfect strangers.

And I can't tell you how many times difficult child has told someone that things are so bad at home she just cannot bear to live with us any more.

And I can't count the number of times difficult child's lies have been blamed on me and my bad, horrible inconsisten parenting. "Well, she wouldn't lie this way if...."

I'm beginning to think that maybe BM is not all at fault, here. I'm also wondering if maybe all this child's stories are contributing to some of BM's strange behaviors (like being paranoid about the saddle and other issues).

I know there have been times that my difficult child has told such outrageous stories that other parents thought I was crazy for my reaction. For example, difficult child told me such stories about a particular friend, that when her family extended an invitation for difficult child to sleep over--I said "Heck No!". Well, they turned out to be perfectly nice, normal people when I met them later...and they confessed that they had been taken aback by my not letting difficult child particpate in their daughter's slumber party. I hadn't even known it was a slumber party! difficult child had made it out to be a three-day-weekend that the family wanted to spend with difficult child and difficult child alone. How bizarre is that?

 

[Shari]

Oh, I agree, DF. There is likely to be a difficult child component to her all by its lonesome. But I firmly beleive its enhanced by her mom's admitted lack of discpline and involvement.

I stopped playing the games and if she says the teacher did this or that to her, I have all the teachers on email or my cell phone...I dial them up and ask. Its stopped.

When she kept swiping the game boy from her mom (who had "taken it away" because she'd taken it to school) and taking it to school, that last time, I put it in the safe instead of taking it back to mom's. And I left it there 6 months. It never went back to school.

Mom's reaction to everything (IF she does anything) is to take away tv and video games (But she's not NOT allowed to watch tv, she just can't choose what to watch - she has to watch whatever someone else has on cause mom doesn't want to go without her tv). But last year, when grades and turning in work were a problem, I talked mom into making her earn video game and tv time by turning in work and getting good grades for the last half of last year, instead of taking everything away IF she got bag grades and didn't turn in the work. There were very few D's and F's and NO missing assignments. She has had upwards of 50 missing assignments this year and is looking at failing math and social studies at this point this quarter.

In February, she had 14 or so missing assignments over 4 weeks. She told her mom it was because she'd been ill and missed school after being with us for the weekend and avoided getting in trouble with mom. She'd missed 1 day. Then, when she wanted to switch weekends to go camping with us in March, her mom questioned it being a good idea because it was still cool out and she'd "missed so much school". Cultured difficult child even told her mom that she hadn't really been all that sick, trying to get to go, but we were the ones that stood the ground that time and said no....you missed too much work to take that chance again.

So its not that she wouldn't do the stuff...she would. But I think it could be stopped or seriously curbed if someone would just do it.

 

[TerryJ2]

Now, really ... if her mom had called and told you how wonderful you were to protect difficult child like that, would you have believed your ears?
Nope, didn't think so.