Hello Gina-Ro,   Thank you for taking the time to respond. My lady and I have talked about this at length, her childhood was nearly as messed up as mine. Her father was a career petty criminal that died before she was a teenager (she would tell me stories of these completely random Christmas gifts he would get her, things he had obviously stolen), and her mother is a self-centered drama queen with a string of failed marriages behind her. Her oldest child is the product of a brief affair she had with a much older man when she was in her teens, and he vanished without a trace as soon as he found out she was pregnant. She was forced to drop out of high school, but has since gotten her GED and an associates degree in medical technology and now works as a hospital lab tech. In short, we're both damaged goods that are trying to make the best of things.   I have an excellent relationship with these kids. Her 16-year-old son is extremely overweight and what I would describe as a 'gamer dork'. Most of his friends are in the same boat as him, boys living with single mothers that never knew their fathers. He and I have spent a lot of time bonding while fixing her mother's house or her piece-o-crap 18-year-old minivan. Her mother says I'm the first positive male role model he's ever had, and he's making a genuine effort to lose weight and stop holing himself up in front of a video game console.   Her 9-year-old daughter is, as she describes, a carbon copy of herself at that age. A sweet girl, but very neurotic and hard on herself. She cries a lot and is very skilled at finding faults with herself. She's quite bright and gets good grades in school, but her self esteem is fragile and she's vulnerable to mean coments by some of her classmates. I suspect it's going to be a long and laborious process to teach her to go with the flow and stop worrying about ultimately insignificant things.   Her 5-year-old is my favorite. She's happy, precocious, and fearless. She takes unbridled joy in simple things, very energetic and bounces from subject to subject with dizzying speed. Her innocent exuberence and laughter is something I want to bottle up and preserve forever. Her favorite toy is a bag of beat-up Hot Wheels cars that she's named and assigned genders to, and she has them go on dates and kiss and then collide with each other. I've nicknamed her 'Skeeter'.   These kids see me as some sort of hero, which is flattering but also totally unrealistic. Right now we're all in the 'honeymoon' phase, and I just hope my opinions of them don't change after the novelty has worn off. I feel as though I'm in a position to make a positive impact on these kids, and I lay awake at night terrified that I'm going to screw it up somehow.   I have gone to counselling on occasion, and I've found it to be a waste of time. My opinion of most counsellors is that whether you walk out of their office a changed man or go and harm yourself, it's all the same to them so long as they're making their $125 an hour. ... View more