I'm 26M and my only sibling is 11F. Recently I moved home because I lost my job thanks to Coronavirus. I started an internship recently and have been applying to graduate school, but obviously I've been at home a lot and so has she because school has been cancelled.
We have co-lived on and off at random points in my life, but she has obviously spent a lot of time growing up without me around, as I moved away for college when she was 2. Our parents are divorced, and our father is an absolute asshole. He still has partial custody of her though (the minimum amount - once every two weeks), because "being an asshole" is hard to prove in court, I guess.
Lately I've noticed that she's been behaving super weirdly. She's showing symptoms of depression I think, but she's also probably starting puberty, and I know that being away from school hasn't been easy either. She's been angry/upset all the time and acts like everything is just "too much," constantly sighing and rolling her eyes, and she shows no respect for our mother which really irritates me. She can be really mean and frankly I think the things she says constantly ("shut up," "you're stupid") are really inappropriate for a child to say, especially to a parent. . . ! My mom does the best she can, I think, but she's always working (as a single mom), and I think she can get a bit overwhelmed and doesn't enforce a lot of rules. But I also think, something must be really bothering my sister.
Additionally, I worry about what's happening when she visits our father's house. I know that my father is a weird, hyper-conservative narcissist, and isn't interested in being a good parent. The last time she came back from his house, she was absolutely covered in bruises from an alleged "treadmill accident," and I later found out that my father's mistress (and her friends?) were watching my sister instead of him and commenting on her weight (hence the treadmill). And obviously that's never appropriate, but 11 is an especially difficult age for girls and body issues, I think. It's hard to get all the details out, because my sister kind of shuts down and doesn't want to talk much about the things that happen at his house. Obviously, this incident made me incredibly angry, but it doesn't seem like we can actually take legal action over it. I haven't spoken to my father in years, either, for context. But I know the sort of person he is, and I hate that she has to be there at all.
She was extremely moody and depressed and angry before this incident, so I don't think that caused it per se. But it's difficult for me to know sometimes if she is just not disciplined enough (as I think younger children are somewhat coddled), or if she's being abused at my father's house, or if she's just upset about school, or the pandemic, or comparing herself to me (illogical but I know she does it), or what is causing her behavior. And yes, I've tried spending quality time with her, but she never talks about her problems. At the end of the day, while I think we have a "good" relationship, I'm not her parent, and I have been absent for a lot of her life (and that's not my fault!). So our relationship is maybe not as close as many siblings.
I've told my mom to put her in therapy, but beyond that I don't know what to do. I only have so much time/energy of my own to deal with it, and I don't always know how to react. I do love her and worry about her, but she's also not my child & I can't / don't want to fill a "parental" role. Is there anything I can do? Or any way I can figure out what's wrong with her? Is this just a stage tweeny girls go through? I never acted like this, so it's hard for me to understand.
tldr; sister is super emotional & a lot of things could be causing it, not sure how I should react.
Submitted May 27, 2020 at 05:44PM by gracias-totales https://ift.tt/2XE8tg1
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