I am so happy I found this site! Finally I feel like I have finally found "My People" to talk to!

Here is my situation... My apologies for this being such a novel, I had to get it out!!! All of it!
My BF’s 8 ½ year old daughter is coming to visit in July and my panic levels are sky high because of it. I really need to vent because I do not have the full support of my BF and I haven’t been able to vent to anyone so please forgive me if this seems a bit all over the place. So BF and I can’t even discuss his daughter without it turning into a screaming match. We are not married, and don’t plan on getting married anytime soon so I’ll never be an official “step parent”. But that’s ok, I don’t need the title, (I’m already divorced w/no kids) and neither one of us feel the need to run to the altar to have a long life together. We are just fine being ‘us’ so no legalities needed at this point in our relationship. I am not a bio-mom. I do not have kids of my own. My BF has one child, and he has practically little, to no experience when it comes to kids over the age of 4. I have plenty of experience with kids of every age due to helping my brother raise his 4 kids (2 girls/2 boys) when my SIL passed away back in 1991, in addition to the fact that I am a woman, and all my friends have had children. Anyway, BF divorced his heavily cheating wife back in 2014 when his daughter was only 4 years of age and he left to take a new job in a different state that would allow him to comfortable financially pay for his daughters child support. Daughter lives in Texas, we live in California.

Over the course of the years, we have had VERY little contact with his daughter. My BF only talks to her maybe once a month because when he left, her BM bought her a cell phone and gave a 4 year old the responsibility of keeping in contact with her father. This was all so BM would never have to talk to my BF again. His daughter has only visited us three times in California since 2014, the most recent visit was back in March. She’s a good kid, so whatever I say after this, please know that it comes from a lot of stress and just plain frustration as her BM isn’t really raising this child and when we see her, even though she’s almost 9 years old, we end up dealing with a child who acts no more than 5. She has all the behaviors of a latch key kid and it seems there are aspects in this child’s life that have prevented her from progressing past that age. Not a bad thing, but this child needs some adult guidance. So BM refuses to speak to BD & has openly practiced parental alienation by listening in on the one or two phone calls he may get with her a month & keeping her whole life in Texas a secret. We know nothing about this kid! For years this child has been asked to lie about her life and withhold information from her own father. If BF talks to her on a Monday night, and asks her what she did for the weekend, she answers with “I don’t remember”. What kid can’t remember what they did for the last two days on a weekend? We can’t say anything, because we know BM is on the other end standing over her making her lie and withhold all information. We have never seen a report card, BF gets her school picture as a Christmas gift or Father’s Day gift, instead of when BM receives it and gives it to everybody else. We have no idea when she is at the doctors or the dentist. She's flown out of Texas to other states and we have never been told when she is on a plane or that she even went somewhere. She supposedly in counseling but we have no idea when or where she goes. She has a mouth full of silver from eating nothing but sugar and Chick fil-a. Her diet is another story, but to give you an idea, this child has not eaten any other real foods since she was 3 years old, as the only thing she will eat is chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-a, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, French fries, and any candy/garbage filled with sugar. Her diet is incredibly unhealthy and absolutely disgusting! She’s not an overweight kid, yet. If an adult does not drive to Chick-fil-a for her dinner or lunch (lunch is delivered to her at her elementary school) she will only nibble on apples and peanut butter, or a bag of Doritos. She is very hyperactive and a demanding little girl who belts out orders to every adult around her. She cries when she doesn’t get her way, cries if she doesn’t WIN a board game or any game she’s playing for that matter, and if you hurt her feelings, HOLY SHIT it’s a shit storm of sympathy and coddling and crying for a half an hour until she feels better! She has zero coping skills.

She is also very expensive! And by expensive, I mean her we actually cannot afford this little girl! BM is a total lazy asshole on state aid, no job but her family is very wealthy! BM is a complete Dependapotomus and has no problem living off her family or anyone else and neither does her new husband. BM is on her 3rd marriage. BM married a man and said nothing to us, and had his daughter lie to us about it. It’s a very bad situation in Texas all the way aournd and that’s a whole other baby momma drama entirely! Anyway, BM’s family buys BF’s daughter everything she’s ever wanted and not wanted. This child has 8 American girl dolls and every accessory in the store!(Ask me about the $15,000.00 in presents this ONLY child received for Christmas in 2015 and even higher in 2016) BM has to give her old toys away when she’s not home or she will scream and cry and pitch a fit about her giving away her “Stuff”. I sent this child two gifts after she left in March and thanked her for her visit, and I never got a phone call, text, nothing. It was if I never bought them and she never received them. They were wrapped in pretty paper and I took the time to make them special and wrote a nice note, and I never once heard from her even tho I did bring this to my BF's attention. That’s BM’s fault for accepting them in the mail and allowing her kid to be ungrateful and not teaching her proper etiquette when it comes to receiving gifts. It's also my BF's fault for acting as a best friends instead of her father out of guilt and not calling her and telling her to thank people for presents. They both suck as parents!! When she was here back in March, I was appalled at her behavior as she acted like a pissed off teenager the entire visit and had absolutely no respect for me, my BF, our house and our things. She was very unhappy because she wanted to go to the American girl doll store and that store is 2 hours away from us! So we gave in and took her, but with no intentions of buying her another doll because we knew she had 7 of them and they are SO DAMN EXPENSIVE! The look on her face was pissy and pouty when were there until my BF gave in and pulled out his credit card. The second her father gave into an AG doll was only time she showed absolute excitement to be with us, and she wasn’t happy with us, she was happy about the doll and the money we spent. She is only happy when shopping and spending lots of money. So, $350.00 later and me about to throw up and two hours away from home, she got her way. I have never yelled at this little girl for anything, or raised my voice for that matter. I have always asked her nicely to do things, or not to do things, in which she outright chooses to ignore. For instance, some of the things I was correcting her for: She NEVER says “Please”, or “Thank you”. You have to talk to her like a toddler and tell her “what do you say?” She walks and jumps all over my furniture and couch with her shoes on and does gymnastics on them. I’ve asked her politely “Can you please not walk on my couch or do gymnastics off the couch?” My couch was very expensive! The last thing I need is anyone’s kid, even if it were my own, walking, jumping, and doing gymnastics on it. She did it anyway every god damn day for 10 days! I cringed every day she was here because I was afraid she would run off the couch and crack her head open! We don’t have a kitchen table yet…so we eat in the living room with TV trays. I don’t like the eating arrangements when she’s here, but at this time I have no other choice and I’ll be sure to have a real kitchen table when she comes in July! She cannot concentrate on dinner because she’s playing around, lying down on the couch, kicking up her feet, watching TV, playing with our dog, all inappropriate behavior for dinner time. I’ve asked her to sit up straight when she eats. This little girl looks me directly in the eyes, shoves a chicken nugget in her mouth, lies down, and starts kicking her feet in the air! I’m afraid she is going to choke on her food! BF sees nothing wrong with any of this. Our bedroom door was closed, and she crawled through the dog door to get in while I was in there. She opens up every cabinet and drawer that is none of her business including the medicine cabinet! She likes to feed herself whatever and whenever she feels like it by going into my kitchen and taking anything she wants! And because she thinks Chick-fil-a is the only good food on this planet, I get to hear her complain about other people’s food. She’ll look at someone’s plate and say “YUCK!! THAT’S GROSS!” I want to tell her no one cares to hear how “YUCK” she thinks their food is. When BF asks her to try another food like a mac-n-cheese, she will hysterically cry and the tiny little noodle hasn’t even touched her lip yet! No lie! Then she makes this puking gaging sound very dramatically as if the noodle is going to kill her. All this BEFORE the noodle hits her lip! She does this on purpose as I’ve seen her try other small things and not act like this at all. I find that so rude, especially when out to eat in public. No one will let her go hungry and feed her real food. Every adult in this child’s life is slowly killing her and now she has an eating disorder at the ripe old age of 8!

Sigh…. I’ve told her numerous times on her last visit that she is not allowed to answer our front door for any reason. We live in a big city. I don’t even answer my door if I don’t recognize the visitor. Apparently her BM must let her answer the door all the time because every single time our doorbell rang, she bolted towards the door at full speed like a dog resulting in my snapping at her not to touch the door!! She was upset and complained to my BF that she’s not used to all these “rules”. Then he tells this child that it’s because I was raised differently. WTF is that? No, I was raised with respect.

I’m sorry, but I’m not into the “free range parenting” style like my BF and her BM. Especially when it’s my house and my belongings. I’ve tried on so many occasions to talk to my BF about all of this, but of course, he immediately goes on the defense telling me she’s just a kid and she doesn’t need any rules in the house. I’ve tried to explain to him these “rules”, are to keep her safe because SHE IS A KID and to teach her to act like a polite little girl. When she is here, she is my responsibility when he is at work. If she falls off my couch and breaks her leg, or splits her head open, or permanently fucks up her face with an injury, it will be MY FAULT and I guarantee CPS will be in the Emergency room questioning ME! If she chokes on her food because she’s lying on her back while eating, it will be MY FAULT if I don’t save her life! On top of all of this, at the age of 8 ½, she still cannot wipe her ass, as my BF is still doing that too and none too happy about it. She smelled like a dirty diaper several times on her last visit and I had to bring it to his attention. She is unable to wash her own hair, or properly bathe her body. She cannot shower, bathe, brush her teeth or comb her hair independently. I was doing all this at her age, and so were my nieces, nephews, and friends kids. She is going to be 9 years old in a few months. I think she is getting way too old to have her daddy wash her in the shower or bath and help her wipe shit off her ass! She visits in July for a month. My BF doesn’t believe in rules, and his daughter claims she has none at home. I was planning on having her help me around the house while she was here but when I said something, I received a dirty look from BF like I’m a horrible person for even suggesting his daughter help out while she’s here.

When did visitation become a VACATION? We cannot afford this child, and I’ve recently lost my job. When she visits, we have to plan something special every day! We can't even live or act like a normal household because her visiting is just another vacation for her, that she thinks is all about her! And what I don’t understand is how anyone, as a step parent, can be expected to accept a child as their own, but yet sit back and shut the fuck up when it comes to raising them and disciplining them because it’s not their kid? That doesn’t seem right. If I’m babysitting or watching someone's kids in my house & I’m responsible for them, and one of those kids walks on my couch, runs through my house, goes into my medicine cabinet, rummages through my bedroom drawers, you can bet your fucking ass I’m going to discipline them and I really don’t give a fuck if I hurt their feelings. They are in MY HOUSE! And quite honestly, she isn’t my child. I wouldn’t let my own children act so rude and impolite and entitled. This kid doesn’t have to like me or love me but I do expect her to listen to me and respect my home, my personal belongings, and my privacy. Unfortunately, I have to walk on eggshells every time we see her because god forbid she might have an unhappy thought and have to follow a “RULE!” I have become an outsider in my own house with no voice. Inside, I’m screaming at the top of my lungs!