Better, I guess

Life on the home front, at least with my husband, is better. Now we have stepson issues. Although we have fought in front of my stepson, it has never been anything bad, just fussing mostly. The big blowout a few weeks ago happened on a weekend when we didn't have him and he has never seen anything near to that kind of fight with us. Now, though, he has not wanted to come over like he used to. It's mostly been since we moved into this house, which is about 1000 times better than the shack we lived in before and there's a huge yard for him and my husband to play ball so I don't think that it's the fact that we moved into a new house.

My husband went to get him today and took him to Karate then J. tells his dad that he wants to go to his Mom's. My husband is deeply hurt about this and we are really confused about why he doesn't want to come over. My husband asks his ex if she knows what is going on (J. was not around at the time) and she proceeds to tell him a few things. One thing she told my husband is that J. told her that I yelled at him for breaking some pictures (glass in the picture frames) when we were moving. This was a flat out lie. I was upset, but I didn't say ANYTHING. In fact, my husband started to get a little loud with J. (because he stepped on them with socks on and he could've gotten hurt and then he went and hid and didn't tell us) and I stopped him and said it was no big deal. So what he told his mom wasn't even an exaggeration of the truth and it hurts me a great deal that he would tell a complete lie about me.

It also really hurts because I have gone out of my way to do things for him. I completely redid his room before I have done anything else in this house. He got a new bed, new mattress. He has a TV (which was against my wishes, but what the hell does my opinion matter anyway), satellite, DVD, and fucking surround sound (all of which I set up).

I'm just so pissed and hurt, but I know I cannot even begin to feel what my husband is feeling. What makes it worse is that he is not reprimanded for the things he does. I'm not talking about physical punishment. I believe you can discipline a child without all that. I also don't believe in yelling at a child. I think you can get your point accross much better by the seriousness in your voice. I don't have children and I am by no means an expert on child rearing, but I do think children should be held accountable for the mischievious things they do and I also believe that they should be polite and respectful. I don't think I have ever heard this child say please or thank you on his own. I realize that it takes time to teach them, but it is impossible when my husband only gets him every other weekend (well not even that lately). I don't think he was even punished for lying to his mom, much less be made to apologize to all three of us for lying.

No, I don't have kids, but if it had been my child I would've taken his TV and video games away and made him apologize. I probably would've even made him write out "I will not tell lies" quite a few times. But what the fuck do I know? I'm just the stepmom (and an evil one at that, I guess).