Hi,I just joined this site due to my utter frustration of raising a step son. It's internally eating at me. I have my son who lives with me aged 11, my step son aged 11,and our daughter aged 4. My step son is aggressive, manipulating, forever crying victim, seems to never be happy about anything, and constantly will moan about every little thing that he encounters. His mum has been on holiday for the last 7 days, and he has driven me around the bend!! The day before last, he decides to take my camera ($300 worth) takes photos, then leaves it outside overnight, as it happened it poured down with rain. My camera is no longer. I inform him that he has damaged my camera,and will now be required to weed my garden to work off the debt (yes, only half hours of work) but it wasn't that simple. He cried, moaned, demanded, cried more, yelled, became abusive and finally finished the job.

Take into account normally he has two adults to moan at so I get a break

Then he started to pick on my son as he does routinely, my son very relaxed kind kid, who just gets on with things. Then he moved on to teasing my daughter until she cried

I cracked, I clipped him around the ears, and sent him to bed. The next barrage from him,was i am a abuser and on and on

Today he woke up,moaning cause I hadn't washed his clothes ( that he hasn't put out of course) and how come this doesn't get done...and on and on.. I'm only just waking up myself.

Another day of his continued moaning

I keep telling myself, only 5-7 years to go,and I can live more relaxed without the constant barrage of how bad his life is

I also think of leaving my wonderful wife and taking my son, and having shared custody of my daughter so I don't have to deal with this kid. I truly don't like him, not many adults do that I know.

My parents who are great with kids, never want him to stay,as he is constantly moaning to them about how miserable his life is. My parents then feel bad as they want to have my son also, but then that creates a division in our family home. ( they are easily able to have daughter for a night, for some reason ss wont moan about that?)

Today I feel terrible for clipping him around the ears,and the worst thing is, I didn't feel bad at the time and felt he deserved it

I'm now also worried I might clip him about the ears again, i really am over his negative, victimized, self absorbed selfish attitude towards everybody he comes into contact with.

I know I am supposed to praise his positive aspects,and don't dwell on his negative traits. That is just so damn hard, his negative traits are constantly there, all the time, he can't even walk in the door from school without moaning (my feet hurt, school sux, why don't I have Nike shoes, why do I have to change out of my uniform, can I have, you never give me stuff, and on and on and on)

It is like war for me, and I now spend alot of my day thinking about it....... I know I probably have some love for him, and maybe like him sometimes... but that has become more of a distant memory due to the constant poor me attitude.

I really should know what to do, I work in Social Services and help families, and I am to ashamed to tell my work collages that I am not coping with this kid,and I smacked him.

I really could do with some advice, and it's certainly very refreshing writing all this down

Thankyou in advance