Warning: This is a sarcastic post and if your sense of humor is not fully in tact - please do not read any further.

Most of us have felt the sudden sound of ice cracking, feeling the bone chilling coldness of a changed teen. For some reason the innocence of youth vanishes and nothing but the depths of cold adolescent immaturity snares it's ugly tentacles about the entire family.

Unless the child is evil, this is just typical human behavior albeit we are gasping for our last breath until the sweet sound of warmth from the sight of our bed sends us to senseless oblivion (we will forgo the notion of worrisome insomnia or nightmares currently).

We go to therapy mainly to reaffirm that we are not crazy and in need of medication to control our wicked stepparent thoughts of frustration, hatred or dare I say - that we have instilled discipline, chores and a moral code in the home!!, we listen to the advice of counselors who have never been there or tried that but certainly have dredged up a worksheet to guide us once home on communication - clearly this works well with a pouting, angry teen and an ostrich like BP who goes through home life with their head in the sand, we read grown step children posts who haven't a teen step child of their own, haven't felt that kind of pain of the ultimate giving and getting dumped on like the commercialized cow pasture and can only judge every action of their stepparents, and have tried to relate, although it's more difficult than understanding the complexities of the string theory, to the answers of the happy SP with the ever perfect Bioparent.

So are there really any answers to this wonderful rite of passage of the little Exorcist child whose head just did a complete 180?

Of course - Let's check them out.

1. Divorce - this will permanently remove all SK's from your life and create a peace that you haven't had on visitation, every day of custody, or any day leading up to visitation where anxiety is creeping every so nastily into every pore of your being.

2. Drugs/Alcohol - If you utilize these to their fullest potential you will be completely unaware of their presence and you might be able to misinterpret the rolling of eyes as those of your own slipping back into your own head. If you refer back to seeing a therapist, you might be able to swindle prescription meds to give an air of legality to the situation.

3. Overtime, overtime, overtime. Your job is a great source of extra cash and sanity. Who cares if your boss is a jerk, at least he isn't rolling his eyes at you, calling you the B word, hugging your husband or wife and giving you the evil eye, nor commenting that his mother cooks way better than you can. At least when he creates more work for you to do, you get paid back for the efforts monetarily showing some appreciation for what you've done.

4. Tons of friends that insist on coming over every night and not leaving until the rug rats are tucked back into their cages. This is will interfere with the one-on-one interaction that usually occurs daily with the disgruntled teen and often times offers a new face for the teen to be angry with - but they aren't personally involved and can return a nasty look with no feelings of remorse. Plus if the situation gets too bad, many friends can form a physical barrier between you and the SK thereby allowing any sorts of acts of violence to be thwarted.

5. Turn to a religion that allows for more than one spouse and cheerfully bring into the fold a new SP which is trained in armed combat, has the patience of the god they worship, puts on the face of a southern evangelist and is not concerned or in love with your spouse in any way. Their only mission is to deal with the SK and raise them into loving, caring ....... ok, the complete opposite of what you currently are seeing.

Options to laugh at, but certainly not ones to put into action.

This is my ice breaker to this site. My hero in all this is Erma Bombeck, who took a more humorous approach to her family.

I must admit that being a SM, BM, and adoptive mom has afforded me much heartbreak and much happiness. Sometimes I am super mom and the day just goes swimmingly for all & then there are those other days. I believe that SP have some really bad days that we feel like really awful people, and that step children and bioparents judge us too hard without realizing that often times their unresolved issues are the true causes of turmoil.

To all those SP's out there - my heart goes out to you. I will try to post many things I've either learned or need help with in the future.