Mad mom here....

Argh. I need to remember why I am doing this (being a mom)....
DD has been asking all week to go to a dance at her school tonite (Friday).
She admitted that it was not just the middle school kids, it was high school kids too. DD is in 8th grade. In our town, the middle school kids go to the high school too, but often they have dances and other activities that are just for the younger kids. DH and I both expressed concerns about a dance that involved the high school kids too. But on one or two occasions, we have allowed dd to attend these with DH or me "volunteering" at the dance as a chaperone.

I knew I would not be home, and so I told her to talk to her dad and see what he said. I made no promises. I told DH that I felt that dd could live without the dance this time, unless he was up to being a chaperone. He decided to tell dd that he didn't have the money to give her to go to the dance ($4). Which he didn't.

So when dd asked about a zillion times to go to the dance, DH, apparently replied a zillion times that he didn't have the money for the dance. She started to get very upset. So DH went outside to have a smoke (no smoking allowed in the house), and through the window observed dd take his wallet and go through it looking for money. (!!!!!) Then she slyly put the wallet back, after discovering the $10 that I had given DH to put gas in his tank to go to Spenders tomorrow.

When DH came in, she said "Dad, are you SURE you don't have enough money for the dance?" And DH told her that he had seen her through the window. She denied going through his wallet, then she accused him of lying to her about not having money for the dance (how she would think that without going through his wallet escapes me), told him that she's glad he's not really her dad, and a bunch of other things, which did include the "F" word. We don't use that word in our house--swearing is not allowed. But it was a prominent part of her former life, so the swearing is not new, just incredibly disrespectful.

DH was so angry, and I can't say I blame him one bit, bipolar or not. I fantasized about slapping her silly when he was just telling me what happened! (don't worry, there's no slapping in our house, but that didn't stop me from thinking about it!)
There are so many not-very-nice things I would like to say to her right now, but of course I'm at work, and when I see her tomorrow, I'll have burned off some of this anger.

I believe that the consequence(s) will involve the following:

No more dances this year. Period. It will save us the trouble of this ever happening again. From now on, the answer is "no", no matter what.
And grounded inside at our house all weekend. This is bad, because it means that she won't be able to visit bio mom. We have talked with bio mom about this type of consequence and she is fine with it in extreme situations. (bio mom actually doesn't really care if dd visits or not, we don't think--but it is something that dd likes to do and the court ordered "visitation with bio mom at our discretion".) So being grounded at our house will be a severe consequence for her and, "in our discretion", we have decided to not reward her tantrum with something she looks forward to.

(not to mention we have been aware of a decided lack of supervision at bio mom's house and this (grounding) presents a good excuse for dd to not go over there). We know that before we adopted her, dd was exposed to many things in her bio mom's life that she shouldn't have been. And we have no reason to think that things have changed there.
DD looks forward very much to visiting with her bio mom, but DH and I both have come to dread the visits, so they have been getting shorter and shorter. We don't feel that we have the right to completely refuse to allow dd to visit her bio mom, since the court directed us to "use our discretion" with visits. But we sure would like to.