BB--that is what I suggested to my DH. He ultimately makes the decision and hands it down, when he is here to do it. He is very frustrated with everything at the moment. Never thought his daughter would be getting in trouble so much. What frustrates me even more is that right now SD thinks that she is not going to have punishment for the grade issue because she is already being punished for the other issues, and DH hasn't said a word to her about it even though he thinks she should be punished for the grades as well. I am leaving it all up to him, but I think that we should stick to our guns about there being a week long punishment for the zeroes. That is the decision we made and informed her of the last time, and that is what we should stick to. Otherwise, I think it will give her the impression that she can manipulate situations to suit her or something like that. I don't know. I should probably just wash my hands of it and let DH deal with it, but in the end I am the one that gets shit on by SD because she learns to think that she can get away with anything as long as she can push the right buttons with Daddy.

Selkie, it is a very tricky situation. We don't come down hard on her for every little thing she does wrong. God bless her, if we did she would probably never see the light of day. She has a lot of problems due to the emotional and psychological abuse she has suffered for years from BM. There are times when I let things slide because it is just not worth it, but when it comes to her safety and her future I have to put my foot down and insist that my DH do the same. It's difficult for me because DH is hardly ever around because of his job, so I am always the one that finds out about everything and has to be the "bad guy" and bring it up to DH and let him deal with it. We have always tried to work as a team when it comes to parenting SD14. She doesn't really have any other stable mother-figure in her life and she NEEDS one. I try talking to her and that seems to help in the moment, but after a day or so, it's like we never talked at all and she is right back to being disrespectful and dishonest. DH and I have both tried asking her what she would do in "this" situation before when it comes to punishment. She has so many issues with authority and self-esteem and self-confidence that she has an extremely difficult time answering that question. She either breaks down and cries and says she'd be better off dead (or something like that) or she gets extremely defensive and tells us that if she was in our position she would let her kids do whatever they want as long as it makes them happy. I just feel like we've tried everything, and nothing seems to work. I feel like we are worthless as parents to her because neither of us are getting through to her, not really. I think I've tried to approach her from every possible direction I can think of. I've recruited help from my mother (an excellent resource), my best friend's mother (a social worker), and from SD's therapist. Everything I try either only works for a short amount of time or completely backfires. I just have to take a deep breath and be thankful that we have come a long way in the past year with her depression issues, but I still think we have a long way to go. I agree with everything you said in your post, Selkie, I'm just feeling tapped out at the moment. Thank you for your suggestions and I will certainly keep trying them. Maybe one day something will work.

Not to my knowledge, starfish. But that's not necessarily saying much. I would like to think I would know if that was going on, but she is extremely manipulative and deceitful. I do know that she does not spend much of her time when she is home sleeping. She spends most of it either on the computer, watching tv, or playing video games while closed up in her room or down in our basement.