Hello there, i have a HUGE issue right now and i'm hoping someone will actually listen to my whole entire story.. I'm married to my husband who has a child currently 10 years old.. well, here we go from the beginning:
i met my husband when his daughter (alyssa) was only 2 years old. at this time we were just friends and my husband had just got done with his divorce about a year now. so, the reason they got a divorce was because alyssas mom(brenda) was a compulsive liar and a thief. she hated being pregnant and was on drugs and drinking, she was a dancer and a call girl while being pregnant. she ended up giving birth 6 month premature. when she had the baby, she neglected her and stated that alyssa was a burden to all her friends. her friends all testified against her stating that she called alyssa foul names and beat on her when my husband was not around. this all came up in court when brendas mother forced her to try to take alyssa from my husband. the judge had brenda take a phycology test which proved that she can not be trusted at all. because of this, my husband was granted full custody of alyssa with minimal visitation rights for the bio-mother ( who moved to california during the trial).
this is where i come in. like i said, i met alyssa when she was only 2. my husband spoiled the crap out of her by giving her her own room with a sterio, plasma tv, dvd player etc (at 2 years old). this little girl was his life. my husband and i didn't start to date untill alyssa had just turned 5 and i helped plan her bday party. alyssa bonded with me immediatly. our bond was so close, most people believed she was in fact my daughter. i put her in a dance academy and karate like she wanted. took her to school everyday, took her to the doctors when she got sick and for regular check up appointments. i became her mother instantly. she began to ask me if she could call me mom and i always said she could if she chose to ( i grew up with 3 stepmothers so this is normal for me). our little family got really close over the years and i felt like a real mother especially since brenda only saw her 5 weeks out of the year.
my husband began having small problems with alyssa lying when she was only 6 years old. i asked her teachers for advice, asked other parents and i even looked on the internet for some answers to this. but her problem only started to get worse. by the age of 7, she was lying and stealing from all of her friends at school and was loosing all her friendships daily. we talked to her about her problem, i made games and lessons out of it but nothing worked. i figured if i put her in more after school activities, this would preoccupy her mind so she wont steal or lie any more. i put her in science class, spanish, girl scouts, church activites directed to girls her age.. anything she wanted she got. my husband would come home after work and he would sit in her room talking to her for an hour at a time. i sat and talked with her on a daily basis, we read books together, did role playing!! WE TRIED EVERYTHING!! finally we started to ground her.. but she didnt care. by the age of 8, she was stealing from her babysitter and blaming it on her best friends. and she didnt care if her friends got in trouble for her. by the time she reached 9years old, she was litterally stealing and lying on a daily basis. no matter what it was, if it came out of her mouth, it was a lie. (simple things too like, did you brush your teeth today? or did you eat breakfast this morning) we always insured her that if she just told the truth, there would be no punishment or even an akward eye anything just to get her to tell the truth just once. each time we would tell her mother brenda about our issues with her, she would just laugh it off and tell alyssa not to do these things because its making her father upset ( not that lying and stealing was wrong). by the time thanksgiving came along in 2006, we ended up grounding her for a whole month. its always hard to ground her because everyweekend we are doing some type of activity; snowboarding, jet skiing etc. all of our friends say we are like a 'leave it to beaver' family. . for thanksgiving break we still went to the lake and played on ATV's and camping. alyssa was right there with us but we kept reminding her of her groundation. right befor xmas, my husband just about had enough of her. with the advice of other parents saying to spank her once and she'll learn, my husband told alyssa of this advice as a warning. even still she didnt care. finally at the end of his whits, he spanked her on her bottom with a belt. the following week was amazing! like she was 5 again, no lying stealing, nothing. so we send her to her moms for xmas break.
this is when our world ended....... we get a knock on the door from police arresting my husband and i just befor xmas! alyssa told her mother and police that we abuse her every single day after work, we starve her (i cook every night) and we are these horrible awful parents. heres the kicker, we tried to speak with child prot. services, but they dont even try to speak with us! we tried to have them come into our home so they can see her huge decked out bedroom, pool, play room etc but nothing. then, we get infront of the judge... and she sais that she cant believe that alyssa would ever say a lie and took ALL rights away from my husband. now we are both in counceling sessions every weekend and have SUPERVISED visitations with alyssa. alyssa continues to say that we beat her everyday, never cooked for her, never did activites, school work or anything with her. just the complete opposite of what we did do for her. she doesnt want to see any of her cousins because she sais that they are 'on our side'. its already been a year and she still claims all of these things. she sais her mom tells her that we are child abusers and to hate us, and so she does.
i dont understand any of this! we gave this little girl the world and now she tells her dad at 10 years old that she hates him and hope she never sees hime again EVER! she's been with him for 9 years of her life, why is she acting this way?? (oh, and real quick, brenda did this same exact thing with her father and now he lives in another country and wants nothing to do with her, history repeats itself??) i know a lot of it is brenda messing with her head because she doesnt even talk the way she used to, she sounds grown up and sais thing her mother sais (like "dont make me feel bad for stealing or lying"). she also sais things to us like we are bad people and her mother is the best mother ever, out of no where. i know this will be like this for a long time to come, i just dont want her to forget everything we did for her or the life we gave her. and how come the evil mother that brenda is is now "the best mother ever" ????

i guess i just want a little advice because i feel so crumby inside!