Wife’s kid is an absolute nightmare at all times
I’ll start this off by saying I know I’m not completely innocent in this situation. I know I sound like an asshole, and maybe I am to some extent, but I’m genuinely at my breaking point.
My wife’s 8 year old daughter is emotionally exhausting to live with. Every single day revolves around avoiding or managing meltdowns. It’s 24/7 of walking on eggshells around her. If something doesn’t go exactly the way she wants, it turns into screaming, crying, hitting herself, and hours of chaos until someone eventually caves.
For example, the other day we were getting ready to leave for a family party at 6 PM. At 5 PM she found a cookie recipe on her iPad and suddenly decided she HAD to make it right then. We told her no, we could do it tomorrow because we needed to leave soon.
That turned into an hour and a half meltdown until my wife finally gave in and they made the cookies. We ended up late to the party and had to make up an excuse for why we were late. Didn’t even bring the cookies, they just made the raw cookie dough.
Yesterday she was drawing in one of those blank artist sketchbooks. Because she’s 8 and obviously not a professional artist, she got frustrated that her drawings didn’t look like something worthy of the Louvre. The entire evening became nonstop screaming and crying because her art wasn’t good enough. This lasted from about 530-10pm. This is not a rare occurrence. It is EVERY day. There is not a single day in this house without screaming or crying over something.
She also refuses to listen or follow directions, but has absolutely no problem barking orders at my wife like she’s a servant. The weird thing is she only behaves this way at home. At school she’s apparently a perfect angel.
At home, asking her to do literally anything results in attitude, refusal, snide comments, or a meltdown. She only has TWO chores: cleaning the cat litter box( takes about 5-10 minutes) and gathering the trash cans on trash day (4 small trash cans, it takes 4 minutes to do that chore.) 15 minutes of chores, one day a week. That’s it. But getting her to do them requires asking over and over again, we’ll have to ask her to start her chores 30 plus times before she’ll even move. When she’s asked to do those chores, you’d think we asked her to dismantle the Berlin Wall with a spoon. Screaming, crying, tears, hitting herself, the whole thing.
When I call her out on her behaviors, she gets defensive, mean, rude, and angry. She’s never had anyone question or call out her bad behaviors before. Her real dad doesn’t want anything to do with her, but her grandparents, (her real dad’s parents) have her on “his weekends.” While she’s there she gets to do whatever she wants, eat and drink whatever she wants, zero discipline provided to her, the word No, simply doesn’t exist there. That’s how it’s been her whole life. And when I call her out for barking orders at her mom or just being plain mean and rude, she gets defensive and angry at me. I feel like I’m providing the discipline that she doesn’t get anywhere else and that’s part of, or mostly, the reason she acts out this way. I feel like she thinks she is competing with me for her mom’s attention. But like I said in other parts of this post, she has 98% of her mom’s attention at all times.
My wife and I also cannot have a normal adult conversation without constant interruptions. Her daughter barges in repeatedly because she suddenly needs my wife for things she could easily do herself. If we ask her to give us a minute because we’re talking, she refuses to leave. If I eventually get frustrated and raise my voice, another meltdown starts.
My wife has tried therapy, but it’s inconsistent and honestly hasn’t helped much so far. From what I can tell, this kid has spent her entire life getting whatever she wants immediately, and now the behavior is completely out of control.
Ever since my wife and I got married, it feels like things have gotten progressively worse. I’m mentally exhausted. My home feels less like a home and more like emotional war zone every single day.
I don’t know if this is bad parenting, behavioral issues, anxiety, manipulation, or all of the above, but I genuinely don’t know if I can tolerate it anymore. I could go on for another 50 paragraphs about how awful it is but I’ll stop it here. I’m half venting and half looking for advice because I don’t know what to do anymore. My wife and I are arguing about this constantly.
Edit: for more context, before my wife and I met, stepdaughter and my wife had a room in their parent’s basement and slept in the same bed together, her entire life. I moved them into my home and stepdaughter got her own room.
Edit2: often times after the meltdowns stepdaughter will say that my wife doesn’t love her or care about her. It’s clear manipulation on her part that she knows will work everytime. She needs constant attention and if she doesn’t get the attention she wants, she will create a scenario in which she gets hurt. For example she will throw the canvas cubby box full of markers or something from her closet onto the floor and lay down on the floor screaming and crying that she hurt so my wife will come running. I watched this first hand when she didn’t know I could see her in her room. Which if I say what I saw, she denies and gets angry which turns into a meltdown.