Step kids!

[crashdown]

As someone with an asshole for a step-dad (to this day I don't speak to him), I can tell you it's not easy for the kid. You are stuck between parents who might not have the best relationship. Constantly hearing from your step-dad that your dad is worthless, not to mention you become worthless and will never amount to anything. Oh he never hit my mom, so he had one leg up on my dad in that department, but my dad certainly never beat the shit out of me. I started laughing at him in the 3rd grade as he would become inventive in the things he hit me with.. the laughter just made him more angry but I refused to cry that just enticed him to swing harder than the laughter.

My mother ignored it. She turned a blind eye to all of it, maybe because she pretended it wasn't happening as she got beat by my dad.. who knows. I do know I have no relationship with her either. I left home at 17.. soon as I graduated I was kicked out of the house.

When kids are put in the middle of an adult problem, it's something we don't understand till much later in life. We can act out, we can be monsters, but until the day that someone sits us down and asks 'why'.. the solution will never be reached. The truth, as hard as it may be, an unbiased no one getting called names, both sides laid out. I asked, and never got a real answer. Just heard names called. It wasn't untill I was in my 20s that I started to get answers.. Not that I liked what I heard but still. It would have made somethings so much easier to understand as a kid.

I seriously think you should have to pass a test before you can become a parent.. I know neither of mine would have passed. A simple psych eval would have shown so much..

So before you think it's the kids that are just 'monsters' put yourself in their shoes. Find out what the root cause is. Maybe they have questions that no one has answered. Perhaps you have never given them reason to trust you. Maybe the wife undermines your authority. Maybe the dad does. You can assume all you want.

Damn Monky.... not living up to your title at all. Very well put!

[Monky]

Damn Monky.... not living up to your title at all. Very well put!

I apologize.