Nina: Hi! We are back, okay now we are going to touch upon a touchy subject and that is step children, what to do when you acquire a child that you have not biologically given birth to and now this child is yours because your husband has brought this child back. Okay some Charlie she is calling out for help. Charlie says that her husband and she have been together for 7 years and they don't know what to do with their step daughter.
Kendall: Do you know it's his daughter?
Nina: His daughter, they have custody of her for five years and their was absolutely no contact between her and her biological mother. She for the most part is a great tack then-
Kendall: Okay go ahead, I am sorry.
Nina: Every six months she start stealing her things, the step mother's things, she goes through the things, she lie, she has bad grade, she is hiding junk in her room she is signing her name in school letters. So as the step mother say what should I do. That thing has worked at this point and I am tired of trying to help her and so what should do at this point.
Kendall: As mother I can say this is complicated, I wont go into how complicated because well this isn't a four hour documentary so I don't have time to say how complicated, but this little girl needs help.
Nina: She trying out for help.
Kendall: Now if she has no connection with her own mother, there is a --
Nina: This is now her mother, the mother that's there now the step mother is now her mother and therefore all this behavior, this bad behavior they need to see if they can sit down with all of them to see why she is doing this, there is something at the root of all this is causing her to be behave in a bad pattern.
Kendall: But I got to tell you I was talking to one my friends in the phone the other day, her parents -- she is a grown woman with five children of her own and she was telling me she was one of five or six and her youngest brother was 14 when their parents split up and she said to this day so this is a long time ago because my friends 45ish so her brothers probably 38ish something like that I am guessing. She said to this day he blends any failures in his life or his inability to get on with it, on the fact that his parents broke up and they ended up with two step parents, both the parents remarried frankly both -- she told me the other day that her father is now been marry to his second wife longer-
Nina: Than the first wife.
Kendall: Right the first woman was along marriage, my friend was fine she has got a nice husband, she has got a nice family, they got a great life, but some people if you don't address it, sometimes you think if they are young enough or if they are teenagers or whatever, you will just let it, it will go.
Nina: This is a common thing to in America that there are step children and step parents and so on a lot of people are getting divorced, its nothing unusual any more it use to be a big taboo thing and it was hush-hush and it was not a common thing, this is now a common thing a lot of people get divorced they are raising kids on their own, they are single parents and step children have to understand that now the new family that they are in has to be the family that they respect, this is the one that's providing them their home, they cant abuse the privileges.
Kendall: But if she is a little girl, that environment --
Nina: We don't know how old she is, we don't now how old she is. But if she is a teenager, regardless of her age, she needs help, they have to go to therapy, figure out where the problem is.
Kendall: You know what I think, I think that these new combined families in retrospection should go to therapy before they combine.
Nina: Before they combine yeah. When you have his child your children and now his, her and yours. If you marry a woman who has kids of her own and you have kids of her own. So you have your kids, her kids and then our kids combine together, so whenever you would perhaps your step son may be your husband want to feel that why yelling at my son, but in retrospect it's now your son as well and therefore you will treat in the same way you treat your other kids, you are going to yell at your step son or not yell, but reprimand.
Kendall: I think I yell everybody equally, I mean equal opportunity yell.
Nina: But you will reprimand him in the same way that you will reprimand your child or their child together because you have him as you child.
Kendall: Right but there is a lack of balance in how everybody sees everybody. I am sorry that's cliché but therapy.
Nina: Yeah we will be right back.
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