I need some advice on disengaging. I read the article on disengaging from a the link posted in someone's response to a separate blog (http://www.steptogether.org/disengaging.html), and while I DO think this will be helpful in my case, because it looks like this article was written based on a more "typical" situation (which makes sense for the masses), there are some important differences that I think makes my situation a little unique and therefore I'm seeking some additional advice.

1) For starters, this article looks like it was written a situation where BM and BF were married or at least parented their children together under the same roof at some point that established a baseline expectations for mom and dad's parenting roles. Unfortunately this was never the case for my husband with either of his children, so of course that also means there was never any "meeting of the minds" between these parents on how these children would be raised. Because of this, I have no way of knowing if my SD has ever had any guidance, discipline or boundaries in BM's home either, or if she has, and it just "disappears" when she's with dad. (I, however, do so wish I'd found this when my SS lived with us because mom was absent!)

2) This article looks like it was written assuming that BF was never the primary, or even co-caretaker of the children, but rather the more traditional situation where mom is the primary. In my case DH was the sole custodian of SS since 9mos while BM was absent, and DH shared SD jointly with BM for the first 4 years, so in the case of both my SKs DH has played the primary care-taker role at least as much or more than the mothers at times. In my opinion this makes my situation that much more confusing and complicated because although DH was the one who saw to all of his children's needs quite often in their lives, beyond the basics he still parented like the article described (results vs. quality), so in other words for example he would brush their teeth until they were old enough to do so themselves, but once they were old enough to do it on their own he just let them go, and will only ocassionally act like he cares whether they do or not, and even then he is more concerned out whether it was done vs. how it was done (i.e. goal is to BRUSH teeth, not necessarily to have CLEAN teeth, or goal is "to clean the room", not necessarily "to have a clean room"!)

3) This article looks like it was written assuming the SKs live with dad or at least spend a significant amount of time there, and while this would've been great when SS lived with us, SD only visits eow and maybe a week or so in summer (for now - BM wants to give more but I am very reluctant given the current situation!), so I don't know if that is enough time to prompt dad to "engage" if I "disengage", but rather it would probably be easier for him to just let it go for those periods. The problem with that is then I'm the one who has to live with the resulting "mess", and since I am the only one who has a "problem" with the mess to begin with, I will still be the only one with a "problem" when its not corrected during that time period!

So what am I to do in my case?

I will say this, the article was dead on other than these differences. I DO feel VERY UNAPPRECIATED in that I have and am caring for my SKs in ways thier own biological parents didn't/don't because I am trying to treat them like my own children, yet I feel DISRESPECTED because in return I cannot seem to simply get my husband to enforce the same house rules for my SKs as are enforced for my own, younger child. This is definitely a recipe for RESENTMENT because the combination of these things makes me feel like I am actually treating my SD BETTER than my own children, and of course that would never be something that I would WANT!

I'll repeat for the record that I DON'T think SD is a "bad" kid. She is the product of a parenting style that appears to have only 2 values: Love and Fun. Everything else seems to be negotiable or just "not important" at all.