My kids want to live with their mom because she smashed her boss and now they are almost done with a 10k square foot house on the water. They don't want to live with me anymore because they have jet skis, an arcade and movie theatre. They are 7 and 10 and now Im in a court battle because she wants to try and flex her muscle.
Point is yes, kids give a crap about nice things around them. I live in a 3400 square foot house in a great neighborhood where all their friends are but it's not enough. They would rather have nice things and live at chuck e cheese and never hear the word no! Kids are kids and they don't change until they become adults and can see through the BS.
So sorry to hear this. I know exactly what you mean. We had a couple of foster kids that were doing really great with us for the 7 months we had them. Grades had drastically improved and they were extremely happy. Once DCF decided they needed to be adopted, bio-mom started manipulating anything she could to move them with somebody else, since we wouldn't let her see them when she was high, and wouldn't let her call to make them feel guilty if they didn't want to talk to her.
Anyway, mom's new strategy was to convince them to be adopted by their paternal grandmother. The younger of the two didn't want to do it because she lived in a ****hole. But the mom convinced the older one and partially got the younger one to go along with it because she said she convinced them they would have almost no rules (which is true, and its the reason dad has been to prison so much).
Of course, we didn't try to convince or pressure them one way or another because we thought it was wrong. Older one told DCF she would prefer to live with grandmother and that was it. That was two and a half years ago now and we have only been able to speak with them once since.
That was really, really tough on us, I can't imagine what it would be like if they had been our own. My point is, these situations are fu**Ed. You will always be dad and the older they get the more they will start to see the truth about it all.