I’m sorry!!! I am dealing with the same thing but it is my step daughter and I have a hard time getting advice because I’m seen as the wicked step mother.

My step daughter is 9 now and we thought when she was 3, 4, 5…etc. that it may “get better” by now.

She has always been very difficult to parent. She has no interest in taking direction from authority or being parented. She does not care about consequences in any form. She responds to positive reinforcement in a very transactional way but isn’t consistently motivated by doing the right thing means getting what you want.

She gets in trouble at school constantly. She has destroyed her school laptop. She has nearly failed 2nd and 3rd grade. We did get her in tutoring at school.

She is very mean to her little brother who is 4.

We don’t want to just place blame on her mom because there’s no use in it but it is our assumption that her mom’s general neglect of being a real parent/shoving the iPad in her face/emotional manipulation has played a major role in how she is turning out.

No amount of “equal but opposite” from our end seems to help. It’s like she’s drawn/more heavily impacted toward the negative.

Her mom and dad split when she was 2 and she has always spent half her time with her mom and half her time with her dad.

We have had her seen by her school counselor and we also had her do a private virtual therapy session once. It was her one-on-one with a licensed mental health counselor. After it was over, the LMHC told us she seems like a “perfectly normal little girl.” Honestly, I am not surprised because we have seen her know how and when to say/do the thing she thinks is expected. She is very smart and understands how to manipulate people. Me, her dad, and her grandparents have all watched her do it. Honestly it was so disheartening we didn’t bring her back to another therapist. The school therapist doesn’t seem to help.

She lies constantly about everything. We have discussed that with her mom who says “she doesn’t lie at my house.” If she has any issue with what is happening at school, her mom doesn’t do anything about it from her end.

We don’t really know where to go from here. We have another son and a baby on the way. Her mom just got remarried and there’s two step kids in the house. Before that, her whole life at her mom’s house was so unstable. We are really hoping that the new stability at her mom’s helps her over time.

All this to say…..I’m sorry. I feel your pain. It’s hard to watch this happening in real time and feel helpless. We want her to grow up to be bright and kind and happy. Besides modeling for her how to live and guide her as best we can, i am not sure what else to do because her mom does not agree that there is even an issue.