I am so sorry! Your situation will be sadly familiar to many of us. It is my experience that the children take their cues from their parents. Their mother clearly supports and encourages their behaviors. Often it makes them feel as though their kids are loyal to them. Totally sick, I know! How does your husband deal with them? Does he actively attend to their rude and inappropriate behaviors,or it it just reprimanded without consequence or ignored? He is a big part of this as well.

My husband's ex is not as outwardly venomous, but she does nothing to disavow her kids of any of their misperceptions of reality or their behaviors either. In short, when he one child was referring to me in texts to his father as the "f***king w***e black sheep" nothing was done by her or him. They both were so caught up in wanting to win favor that they would not put their foot down and punish the child. I finally told my husband, don't have either around me if there cannot be the same courtesy and respect that would be given to a harmless stranger on the street. In short, I stopped tolerating it. So, until they could pull it together, my husband would see them outside of the house, or take them to things that kept them out of my realm. They finally got sick of always being taken different places and complained, and my husband finally said, "listen you want to be in the house, you need to be polite, you don't have to like, but you have to be polite." One ignores me totally and the other will speak a bit, but once their father told him no more stepmom as punching bag as they saw that he meant it all changed. That's what I mean by their parents dictate the outcome. My one stepson probably still refers to me in the same fashion, but the difference is now he does not write such things to his father.

I think it is a bad idea to deny a parent their children, but you do not have to tolerate their behavior either. Let him do everything for them. Take care of your kids and keep a careful eye on them around his kids because I doubt they mean them well. My kids wanted nothing but to be friends with his kids and they made it very clear they wanted nothing to do with that, so I don't try to force it, and my kids gave up long ago.

If you try to come between the kids even though they are terrible and crazy your husband will always remember that you are the one who forced them out, and he will forget their role in the circumstance. Just let him deal with them, and make decisions completely free of you demanding he do anything.

Any decisions about how often your husband's kids are over and visitation is changed is best coming from him, but in the present stop taking their abuse. Best wishes! I hope all improves, but in my case it took much time.

I would suggest a far more aggressive and consequence based approach to dealing with this. This kind of crap needs unpleasant consequences applied, directly, immediately and consistently IMHO and consequences should be applied to the SDs and the BM. BM needs legal consequences applied and her ass bared for her driving and manipulation of the SD behavior.

IMHO of course.