My niece called me last night, frustrated~ at the end of her rope so to speak. She is going through a particularly nasty divorce and all the headaches involved with divorce settlements. On top of that, she has a severely sprained foot/ankle and should be using crutches and staying off her foot most of the time...not a viable option for a hairstylist. She is absolutely overwhelmed with physical, mental and emotional pain right now. Any one of those is bad but all three at the same time can be life-altering.
If those things weren't enough, she's really struggling with her 13 year-old sister who lives with her and she wanted me to help talk to the snotty little teenager since I've been-there-and-done-that by raising my own snotty little teenage niece.
Sadly, most of what my almost 14 year old niece is doing isn't really that bad. She's actually a pretty typical teenager I suppose. Not cleaning her room, forgetting her house key almost everyday, having to be reminded a dozen times to do her chores which eventually get done...half ass. Eye-rolling and a generally hostile attitude. Wanting to spend every waking moment with friends over family. Acting like her sister is made of money and thinking the whole world revolves around her. Etc etc etc....blah blah blah
Anyone who has ever had the "pleasure" of raising a teenager knows how frustrating it can be. In fact, many would volunteer for a root canal without anesthesia before raising another teenager, especially a teen aged girl. I definitely fit in that category....there's a reason I adopted boys....seriously, I'm not kidding.
On the surface, she seems like a very typical teenager. In fact, looking at this blog makes me think maybe we are over-thinking this kid but then I remember there's more to this story. To the casual observer, she seems very typical, maybe even better than most. As big a pain as she can be, she doesn't throw screaming fits. She's not constantly threatening to run away or telling everyone in her family that she hates them. She's never claimed to be embarrassed by any of us or refuse to be seen with us. She isn't over-sexed and while she is a little boy crazy, she isn't pushing the envelope with the opposite sex yet. She isn't dressing provocatively and hasn't fallen in with a counterculture or alternative group of rebellious teens. To sum her up in a nutshell, I think she is lazy, flaky and generally disinterested in almost everything. At least to the casual observer, I think that's how she must appear.
But I'm not a casual observer. She's my family and I have vested interest in seeing her develop into a happy, normal adult. I have an obligation to help this kid since her mom, also known as my sister, decided to inflict maximum damage on her children and then check out, leaving them lost and broken. On top of that, her drug-addicted father, who only lives a couple of hours away, continues to chose drugs over his children.......he hasn't even picked up the phone and checked in with her in two months. Thirteen years old with one parent dead and the other one might as well be. She must feel lost. How could she not? Even though we tell her we love her and want her to be happy, why would she ever believe us? Her mom told her all the time how much she loved her, how important she was, how smart she was. She hugged and kissed her a dozen times a day and yet she put drugs first. The few times her father bothers to call her, he always says how much he loves her and misses her. And yet he doesn't want to straighten up his life, get a job and become respectable so his children will move back into his life. He loves her, but not enough.... So why should she believe anything we say? We don't do drugs and we're trying very hard to give her a solid home life, but her parents are suppose to be the people who love her the most and want the best for her so if she can't believe them, then what chance do the rest of us have?
I feel sorry for both my nieces...one because she's trying to win an almost un-winable fight and the other because she's fighting the un-winable fight.
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