I also have not commented because the topic is somewhat painful and complicated. I have a 15 year old stepdaughter and 18 year old stepson who is away at college. My marriage almost broke up because of my poor relationship with these two kids and my husband's dislike of my son.

Since I'm not talkative and outgoing and neither are my stepchildren, we rarely spoke to each other. It didn't seem important to me since they were teenagers, not living with us, and had a mom and dad who were very involved in their lives and doing a good job of co-parenting.

I reserved my energy and time for my own son, who's father never contacts him, and who has had a great deal of trouble with depression, including a weeks stay in the hospital because of the fear he was going to kill himself.

Anyway, I'm now working on being more involved in my stepchildren's lives. I don't expect we'll ever be close, but we should at least be able to carry on a conversation with each other.

As for my husband's relationship with my child, they both dislike and avoid each other. I wish my husband would try harder to go outside his own jock, conservative, experience and understanding of what a teenage boy should be like. My son tries to be less artistically extreme at home, where, unfortunately, he doesn't feel very welcome. If my husband went to my son's high school, he'd see that my son is typical of an art student.

A healing of their relationship and of my son's bitterness and antagonism towards God and society in general is something I pray daily on.