Oneoffour - I saw a saying today you may appreciate. "Going to church every Sunday makes you a Christian about as much as standing in a garage makes you a car."

BM over here too goes to church all the time and even sees a Church counselor. But yet, for some reason, doesn't want to pay child support for her daughter! Very Christian. Of course, I'm no better. She has taken my "turn the other cheek" bone, and broke it.

By the way I am sure that SS knows exactly who helped him get to where he is. Don't worry - BM can have the show. You will have the skid's heart.

Step-parents usually get the blame when their skids suck at something and never get the credit when they help them! It's so frustrating! It's not fair and things need to change to give credit and kudos to all the step-parents out there who work incredibly hard for their skids. Being a step-parent "in public" is often extremely awkward because everything is geared for traditional nuclear families and step-parents make teachers, doctors, care givers uncomfortable and they usually have to scramble to accommodate the step-parent. It really sucks and pisses me off.

I am not conceited about my role in my skids life, but they would definitely be in a world of hurt if I didn't spend so much time working on helping them normalize and keep up with other kids. When I married H, SS12 was testing into the mentally retarded category for reading and language and had to have a special ed reading teacher at school. BM is delusional and thinks that both skids are genius and talented! She can't face that she produced two mentally handicapped and emotionally troubled children and her powers of denial are mind blowing. I arranged and enforced a reading routine for SS12 of daily reading as a part of homework and after a year he was scoring into the 90th percentile with reading! SS6 is a lot less intelligent than SS12 (which isn't saying much because they are both slow and below average I.Q.-wise. I knew SS6 was going to have problems this year in school and I was just waiting for the inevitable phone call from the school and sure enough BM called H, freaking out, and said that SS6 had tested way, way below where he should be and that he will need tutoring and lots of at-home help. BM was pissed and tried ranting to H about how she can't believe he tested so low because he is "so smart." LOL!! I care about him, but the truth is that he is one of the stupidest kids I've ever encountered! He has an almost impossible time learning things and has a horrible memory and never remembers anything. H was upset about SS6's reading issue too, but doesn't have the brutally honest take on it that I do. I am now doing the same thing with SS6 that I do with SS12 and am having him read to me and then write out sentences from the book. He is really whiny and almost always gives up or refuses to try things that are hard for him, but I'm not letting him get away with quitting and because of the school's concern, H has given me full reign to help SS6 out, given that I had a lot of success with SS12. Neither of them are ever going to be strong academically, but I want them to at least keep up with their peers.

BM's denial is so strong that I have no idea how much she has faced in regards to her kids academic problems. She thinks she is really smart even though she is shockingly stupid and failed out of college. She also thinks that the skids are adorable and ahead of other kids and I don't think anyone could convince her otherwise. I do wonder if she realizes that their drastic improvement is mostly due to me spending hours and hours working with the skids and doing everything in my power to help them become educated. I once told BM that I thought the skids were incredibly stupid (during one of my petty fights with her back in the day) and I definitely hit a nerve and she freaked out. I know she knows I think she's stupid and that the kids are sub-normal and I wonder if she feels any shame or embarrassment for producing such messed up kids and that everything I predicted for them to her has happened. I predicted all of their school problems and told her what I thought and she was so upset she was shaking. It felt great to piss her off (I'm not perfect!) and hit her where it hurt and I really wonder what she thinks about the recent stuff with SS6 and that my predictions were correct. Her first reaction was to tell the school that they had to be wrong and that there must have been a mistake with the testing or a mix up with some other kids results, so they tested him again and he scored even lower than the first time! She has a big denial problem so it's satisfying to see her faced with blunt reality and qualified educators telling her what I pointed out a couple of years ago.

When the skids do well at anything (and in BMs world, mediocrity is something to be celebrated) BM takes all the credit and acts like she is the sole producer of talented prodigies! When they do poorly, which happens most of the time, she acts like it's someone else's fault (usually mine) and denies and refuses to accept reality. It's extremely annoying and typical of BMs like her.

You'll endure this treatment for many more years, but you know what? When your skid gets older, if he's any kind of a decent human being, and with you in his life, he probably will be, he will see his mother for exactly what she is, and he'll see you for the what you are, and he will love you for it.

When I was growing up, my BM was a douchenozzle. Self absorbed. An addict. A major man-hopping trollop. My dad was also a jerk. Abusive. Also an addict. My one saving grace was my stepmom. She was wonderful. Took the time to teach me things that my mom couldn't be bothered with. How to cook simple things (I think I was around 11 when she married my father). How to sew on a button. How to fix my own hair. Personal hygiene lessons. Just girl stuff that I needed to know. I still look back on my time with her and use her example to parent my own kids and steps. My jerkbag dad left her, of course, and I was adopted to an aunt a short time later. The point is my stepmom was a saint. And I treated her like hired help. I just wanted my mom to love me because she withheld it, and I didn't seek it from my stepmom because she gave it freely and in abundance.

Now, at 31, I still send my stepmom a mother's day card/thank you card every year and I email her at least once a month. She's the one, along with my adoptive mom, that gets email updates and pictures of my kids, and she's the one I call when I need maternal advice. I haven't spoken to my bio mom since I was in my early 20's, when I finally saw the forest for all those damn trees. She has tried countelss times to manipulate her way back into my life, but it's always all about her.

Your skid will get it. It'll probably take him having a kid or two of his own, but he'll figure this out, he'll know it was you all along, and then there is NOTHING BM will be able to do to go back and change what she did.

What's that saying about revenge being a dish best served cold? I think it's a dish best served by someone else while you watch from across the room.