[Insta-mom]

Hi all,

I'm new here and registered after reading up on my problem.

I am the stepmom, unofficially as yet because of my boyfriend's divorce case dragging on for over 18 months now. He decided to leave his ...for lack of a better word...wife because she was having an affair with the father of their daughter's best friend.

Their daughter is 9 and son is 6. Over the past year we have become a close family even though I only see them every second weekend when we all stay over at my boyfriend's house and function as a well-adjusted family.

The mother of the children is delaying the divorce as she will obviously be worse off financially afterwards. She seems to be quite a hothead as there are always fights happening at her house. Three times it has happened that the children have called us, begging to be picked up when it's mom's weekend and my boyfriend arrives to find her drunk, screaming at the top of her voice and breaking anything in her path. Unfortunately, we do not have enough evidence to file for custody yet, since the mom refuses to let us take the children to a therapist.

My main concern is the relationship between my SD and her mom's boyfriend. SD told me in confidence one evening that she was sleeping in her mom's room one night when she woke to find her mom and mom's boyfriend (whom she insists is "just a friend") having sex. She repeated some of the words her mom said and they were quite graphic. I had a good talk to her about sex that night, no graphic details but just the basics- that sex is a way for grown-up people who love each other very much to show their feelings, that it is a private affair and that she shouldn't have been put in the position of being in the room while they were having sex. I also made a point of making sure she understood that "just friends" do not have sex.

What worries me now is that I hear from the boyfriend's (almost)ex-wife (we occasionally still chat, to keep each other informed about the whole saga) that her daughter -my SD's best friend of the same age- complained to her that my SD has developed a habit of running into the bathroom when the boyfriends is showering. I'm extremely worried about this...to my thinking, SD might have a little innocent crush on him, or is just exploring the excitement the man obviously brings her mother, without having the slightest notion of the sexual connotations of what she's doing.

I wonder if it's time to have another birds-and-bees talk, also bringing in the not-so-good aspects of sex, or should I try and get her to talk to me? Her mother has now told both children that they are no longer allowed to talk about what happens at home- her repeated words: "What happens in the house, stays in the house." This is making the children worried and stressed, especially when they have the need to talk about things. What can I do???