Wow. I will definitely keep you, DH and especially sd in my prayers, and commend you for doing all you can to help this child. Hopefully she is also getting the professional help she needs.

Oh Yay, now you get to deal with the abandonment issues her BM just heaped on her as well by dumping her on you and giving up her custody!!!!!

You are in for a long haul.

Prayers going up for you all.

Love her first and one day, yes she will love you.......Sound like she just needs your friendship right now, be that and the SM-SD relationship will come.

Love is not exhausting yourself or forgetting yourself continuously though.

I'm surprised that her mother thinks the appropriate solution to finding her daughter has emotional problems is to relinquish custody. Does she still have visitation? I wish you luck but I should warn you that the 6 week honeymoon is unlikely to last and unless her issues are tackled by her parents, with professional help, changing custody and her place of residence will not solve the problem. She may imagine it will because she is unhappy and thinks that living with her Dad will give her a fresh start and change things, but it won't change the way she feels inside. It's hard to stop a needy, attention seeking, self-destructive girl from spiralling and her parents need help to deal with it.

I was in your position, my YSD opted to move in with us when she was 14 after it transpired she had been self harming, controlling her eating, drinking and generally engaging in risky self destructive behaviour. BM opposed it but SD was determined, she wanted a fresh start and thought it would solve her problems. It didn't. I put a lot of time and effort into my relationship with her, we had a honeymoon period where she seemed much happier and more settled, we found her a counsellor, we helped her move school. Unfortunately it didn't last, she just didn't have the coping strategies or self-esteem to deal with life and the counsellor turned out to be inadequate in helping her or us. The problems resurfaced and worsened. I found it incredibly stressful, as a SAHM I ended up as her primary carer but a lot of her problems lay in her childhood and her relationships with her parents. Eventually she moved back to her mothers, where she had another honeymoon fresh start before reverting to the same behaviour.

Some advice - be careful what she is doing online, my SD fed her problems by spending hours online viewing the blogs of similarly disturbed teens and publishing herself. Teens blog about and publish photos of their harming and weight loss for the approval and attention of peers - it triggers and normalised the behaviour and an be very destructive. Get her a counsellor, but keep a close eye on how effective it is and find a new one if SD isn't making progress. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can 'save' her, her attention seeking behaviour is designed for her parents and they are the ones who need to take responsibility for addressing it. Good luck.

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Your stepdaughter is a full-on mini wife, isn't she? (I think I've read your blog; forgive me if I've mixed you up with a different poster.)

Maybe her problems will help convince your DH that having an emotionally incestuous relationship with his child is unhealthy for her. So many of our DHs (mine included, sometimes) don't really understand this.

I think the child is better off in your home, where you can begin to model a healthy husband/wife and parent/child relationship for her. Her BM is a toxic loser to give up custody of her child.

As hard as this is for you, you are going to be one of the best things that could happen to your SD. Count on it.