My sister... I don't know what to say.
 

I just needed to share this as I'm having a fair amount of trouble knowing that someone near to me has both intentionally and unintentionally hurt my mother, whom I hold dear. I am simultaneously compelled to action in order to protect my mother, but also to help my sister. While I hate my sister tonight for what she's done to herself and my mother through deceit, I spent the evening discussing the issue with my father, half-justifying my sister's shortcomings and explaining away the actions the caused my mother emotional pain. I'm a little torn, and I think I'll just feel better telling my version of the story...

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I had to play referee in my house earlier tonight too. Apparently my sister has flunked out of college, after lying all semester long to my mother about her grades. She'd done very poorly last semester, but had actually managed to pass 2 classes. This semester, however, she failed them all and has subsequently been expelled from James Madison University (JMU).

When her report card arrived this afternoon, my sister initially tried to pick a fight with me over "hiding her report card" (it had been laying on the countertop all day). Can you believe that? She was trying to skirt the issue of her poor grades (she must have known ahead of time) by trying to get me in trouble with our parents!

Upon opening the report, she started emphatically lying about how "these grades couldn't possibly be correct. I had B's..." and was allowing my mother to get angry with JMU. My sister would have continued to allow my mother to twist in the wind had I not intervened and called my sister's bluff. The house of cards crumbled... I then left the immediate area.

When I returned 10minutes later, my mother was in tears while my sister spoke on her cellphone and lightly chatted with friends. My mother was actually physically sick with fear and worry for my sister. Sorry to say it, but I've lost about all of the last remaining shreds of respect I had for my sister.

She lied last semester too about being caught drinking in her room, the tatoo and the tongue stud (and the boys from Pennsylvania, Tennessee and New Jersey). My father actually had to drive overnight from Tennessee to Roanoke, VA (6hrs, one way) one night last Fall to rescue my sister who'd taken a Grayhound bus to another college campus and gotten stranded (after being forbidden to go). All that driving before a business trip the following morning to Kansas.

Its not that my sister has thrown away the entire last year of her life and a vast sum of money (no scholarships either), its that she purposely withheld information and purposely lied to my mother. I've never seen my mother sob so hard.

In my 23 years, I've never met a more inconsiderate and hurtful person in my life... I'm amazed, yet horrified, at the terrible, hurtful things the girl sleeping in this house has done to my parents.

Forgot to mention that my mother goes in for critical surgery in 10days... kinda worried about that too.

I'm sorry to hear that your sister has been so selfish...sounds like she has a lot of growing up to do

it's your sister's life. No one can live it but her. She will reap what she sows. If she sows nothing now, she will reap nothing in the future.

Obviously she's not interested in college, so she shouldn't go. Your parents should lay down the lay immediately. Make good on something in order to live in the same household or pack your bags and find someplace else to hang your hat.

Of course your sister is going to say, that's fucked up et. al. But truth be told, you want to do as you want, then you be responsible for youself, you be your own person, responsible to no one but yourself.

One day she'll look back and realize just how good and easy she had it. Heck even when I was younger making my own way, it was still easier than it is now with 3 mortgages on 2 properties and family spread out across the planet that I have to visit every so often, and then I still have to pay for my own fun.

Agreed. You're sister is going to need to learn what it means to become an adult. Unfortunately for her and the rest of you, its going to come crushing down on her all at once.

Out of curiosity, just how overprotective or controlling were your parents as you and your sister were growing up? This sounds like a definite case of backlash. The younger of my two sisters became pregnant in her teens and her early twenties, and was also a heavy drinker and partier, very much a case of rebelling. I too "rebel" against my parents, but take a much more passive attitude towards them, and am smart enough and independent enough to take not necessarily a better, but at least different approach.

The situations between my family and yours sound somewhat comparable, and my parents were veeery controlling as I was growing up, and they still try to be. Granted I got away with a bit more being the "baby" of the family, but much of this was in part an act on my parents behalf by trying to control me through financial obligation. If I could get the money issue behind me, I wouldn't be surprised if I severed all ties with most members of my family.


BTW, best of luck to your mother and the rest of the family on her surgery. A member of my family has just undergone her 3rd surgery for Thyroid cancer, as well as gastric bypass surgery, so I know how tough it can be. Just hang in there.

War, my parents were fairly protective, not overbearing or unusually oppresive. My folks genearlly limited their intrusions into our lives to reasonable levels: Where are you going? Whose going to be there? etc.

I graduated from college officially in December of 2003. I can't say my time in the educational trenches was easy, but I had more discipline that what I see in my sister. I didn't graduate "cum laude" anything, but I finished...

As far as the tongue stud, tatoo and late night fieldtrips to distant campuses, I concur with your observations. She was rebelling.

Where I lose sight of that hypothesis is comparing her path to my own... I have no tatoos, piercings or history of late night travel. I don't lie much either ("Sir, do know why I pulled you over?" "No, officer...") Why do we differ so much?

has she ever had a job? how did she pay for said tatoo or piercing? or drinking and carousing?

IMO she needs to hit the street and get a job. You parents need to charge her rent and some $ for food. Obviously it can't be so arbitrary an amount, but it can at least be a percentage of her wages. She needs to pull her own weight either within the household/family or out on her own.

Actually, she's only had 1 job in her entire life. From 15-17, she worked part-time as a babysitter, working for families in our neighborhood. She managed a job at a local card shop in the regional Mall last summer and worked hard over Christmas break to pay for her charge card bill (with the tongue stud and tattoo costs).

I guess she'll be looking for fulltime work now. I don't know that reality has really set in with her. She put in applications at the traditional college-kid locations (Barnes and Noble, McDonalds, 7/11) and was turned away every time as no work was available. More to the point, I'm not sure she'll be going back to college entirely on my parent's bill. She has no real appreciation for the work it takes to generate just one dollar as an unskilled, relatively uneducated employee. Considering what college tuitions are these days... that's alot of frenchfries...

I'm a little leary of helping her get work through the small network I've setup over the years. What she does to these individuals has a direct impact on how I work aswell. A few days ago, my mother asked me to put in a call at a company I worked for recently to see if they'd interview my sister. They'd hire her with only my recommendation....

In light of everything, I'm not so sure I want to do that now, but I want to help my mother help my sister too. :(

IMO she's not deserving of your assistance. You may inadvertantly damage your own network by vouching for her.

I'm a big brother myself and when my sister started to shit on things, I had to just let it ride. I couldn't come to her rescue any longer. When she realized that her safety net was gone, she came back down to earth.

Sometimes help is by not helping.

You are not your sister's keeper, and you are not to blame for her behavior. She's responsible for her choices and sounds like she's made a lot of bad ones. Hopefully, she will learn from them and not make the same mistakes again, otherwise she's going to have a long and hard road ahead of her.

She's had it easy til now, college paid for, probably an allowance, never had to work for much of anything. Wake up girlie, you blew it, you are in the real world now. Best of luck to your parents, hopefully they will not finance her immaturity.

Not sure if an ultimatum is the right way to go, either get a job and contribute or get out, cause god only knows where she'd get out too. But a serious talk with her -- letting her know what the new house rules are.

Good luck -- hopefully she'll see you as a role model and an example to follow

that's exactly the thing my parents heaved upon my shoulders.

I tried to be a good role model to my sister. I had my share of doing this and doing that, but I always kept it out of view from my sister. It wasn't a secret, she just never bothered to dig.

I did recommend that she consider the social aspects of college when making the decision in a conversation the Spring prior to her freshman year. So, I do share some *small* amount of blame for perhaps setting the stage for a 8month party.

In our conversation, I suggested that a smaller college would offer fewer healthy options for recreation (as sponsored by the smaller university). Not that I'd regretted choosing the smaller school, but I had wished for a few more clubs. She very well may have misconstrued my remarks to mean partying all the time was allowable in college.

Then again, she had plenty of folks telling her the contrary...

Ditto. I'm no complete saint either, but I've never done long term damage to either myself or any other (except for a tree here and there...). Yet, I've always been 100% straight-up when I was busted. (Parallel parking a friends vehicle into a space almost exactly the same size as the car, etc.). I had my fun in college too. :p

Possessions, jobs, homes, cars all come and go. Family you're stuck with for the rest of your life.

Comfort your mom, offer to help your sister (moral support, not financial). Getting it off your chest is good. Getting angry doesn't help anyone.

When I called my sister's bullshit, my blood was boiling. I hate anyone that makes someone I love cry. I'm just that way. I want to make it "right" for everyone.

I am, however, feeling better now, knowing that other's have shared similar experiences.

If she did that's her fault and not yours - -most everyone parties in college (even me), but most everyone goes to class and doesnt flunk out -- flunking out takes some work.

Her choices got her where she is...

very true. she's going to be the person that people look for later and hear that she flunked out and say,"Oh that's too bad, she was nice and fun to party with..." and then they make the mental note to make sure that they don't flunk out themselves.

http://www.dnronline.com/archives2004/4-5-04/story1.asp

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ine+user+signs

^^^ totally lost.

maybe you took some of those methamphetamines...

Look - you have to watch out for family, but you have to take care of yourself first and foremost. If you don't and the shit really hits the fan - you do no help to them, allowing your sister to destroy the network which you have built.

Besides - that goes against all of the hard work that she is supposed to LEARN by finding a job. She needs a job, but in order to get that job, she needs to EARN that job. Handing her another one on a silver platter will not help her.

I love my family - but I love them enough to let them fall, take their bumps, and learn from life's lessons. Don't get me wrong, you should be there to help them back up, but only that and no more. Otherwise - you deprive them of experiences that can shape them into a better person.

The old adage, "If you give a man a fish..." applies here. Teach her how to fish. Fix up her resume. Help her to find Volunteer work even, just to get started. In the long run, it will help her much more.

Me too. And to think I woundered why severel houses around here blew up awile back.

Certainly environment can play an important role, particularly when one first starts college, and changes occur so rapidly. Some people can just adapt to the change better than others. Part of it may be a cry or need for attention. My oldest sister was a total goodie goodie. Legitimate study groups in high school, highest honors through all of school and college, and has been self sufficient and teaching for the past 10 years of her life. As the middle child, my other sister was a complete 180, and starving for attention. Much of it stems from our parents negative attitude towards us. My oldest sister received nothing but praise throughout her growing up. My middle sister was constantly subject to negative comments from my parents regarding her weight, her friends, etc.

Oddly enough, I seem to combine a lot of attributes from the two, despite both of them being out of the house during my late childhood and teens. I received a lot of those negative comments from my parents, and I still do. Never any positive praise, always a "why only an A and not an A+?" All of this snowballs, and I have developed quite the distaste towards my parents for all the little things they've done and said. Perhaps your sister is in a very similar boat, but just not handling things as well you or other members of the family.

Read: Every asian Family.

Basically they make you feel as though if you're not at the number one position in class - you haven't done good enough. I see where you're going with that one though. It all depends on people's reactions. When people give me negative feedback, I take the challenge on personally to overachieve and show people what I'm capable of.

Even the little things. Once I'd asked a co-worker at a retail store if they think that I'd be allowed to play a piano in the middle of a mall. Getting the answer "No Way!" I proceeded to con my way onto the piano stage and started entertaining the crowd during my break... It's all in how people accept feedback.

I'm shy at heart, and would prefer to remain unnoticed - but sadly my reaction to challenge is to fight back and show that I am "worthy" to exist I guess... I just feel that I have to prove that my existence is worthwhile to myself and others that put me to the test. Had I not received any feedback at all, I'd be sitting around not doing a whole lot.

Perhaps you just have to find out what motivates her, and push her down that road.

sorry to buck the trend of your sweeping generalization, but not mine.

I wasn't the top of my class and neither was my sister.

We were both charged with just having to do our best. Our best being whatever that was and maintaining it. Once you set the bar, you then had to hit it consistently.

But I was never required to over achieve.

I overachieve on my own now, because I was given the freedoms when I was younger, and I'm quite bored with most of what I can accomplish on a minute to minute, day to day situation.

You folks are a lucky few then ;) All of my asian friends complain of the same thing I do, yet all of my caucasian friends do not. I'm envious.

You may thank them later, no?

There's no twist on that question, I'm honestly wondering.

Yeah, my parents do the same thing where I have to DRAW OUT the positive praise by saying: "gee, I'm really proud of myself." Finally, they'll be like: "oh yes, we're very proud of you too."

I think maybe your sister just rebelled. My sister was forced to do a lot of academic shit in sixth grade. Ever since then (she is now a sophomore in high school), she has gotten Cs or lower in her classes. She has failed like three high school classes....she was just overworked and now is rebelling. That could be your sister.

However, I think your sister is old enough to be responsible for herself. She knew fully well how expensive college is, and she should not be shown any pity.

Sounds like me when I was in college. I pretty much halfassed my way through the first year, got 3.5s and stuff, and then all of a sudden had to *study* to keep up my grades. Well, I wasn't going to do that, I had a social life. Started drinking more, dating strange girls, tanking my GPA. Wasn't until I really took a second to realize I was destroying what could be my entire life within a span of about 6 months that I realized I had to do something. Used all my contacts available to write letters to my Dean, my old job bosses and even my parents, explaining to them all how I was going to pull my grades back up while working part time. Took a year of busting my ass, but I figured it out. Maybe your sister just hasn't had that light go off in her head yet. Though from the sounds of it, that light, if it comes on, might be a little too late.

In my last year of college, I worked 2 parttime jobs and I'm greatful for the forced time management that the jobs placed upon me. In the previous 3 years, I had only done enough to get by, usually well after midnight and my grades were merely "okay." The jobs forced me to budget my time wisely, or things just weren't going to get done, and the fatigue of working kept me from staying up late. The result was an unintentional boost to my grades, income and overall physical health (from actually sleeping regular hours).

If my parents were to ask me for my opinion, I'd send her to a local community college and have her working parttime too, to pay for an allotted percentage of the college bills. Its only fair, IMO, that she pay for some to makeup for the bottomline losses. When I found out that by switching majors, I was going to have a net loss of 1 semester (I graduated 1 semester late), I got a job to differ the costs of the extra time -- food, board, books and tuition.

Then again, my sister has never *really worked* for a single dime she's had to spend. Perhaps the reality of working fulltime until January 2005 when she'll have the option of attending a state university will go a ways toward teaching her to stop wasting my family's resources. Its hard work making money...

Yep, I agree. Also it sounds like the parents are too willing to automatically bail her out whenever she screws up, which prevents her from becoming self reliant and mature. When she got stranded, unless she was in imminent danger, the correct response to her situation IMO would be "You obviously figured out how to get there, now find a way to get back. You're an adult now."

sorry to hear that man

Man... reading this made me think about my own sister sooooo much. And the brothers of several friends.
Classic 'younger sibling' syndrome.

The oldest always has to figure things out for the first time and gets to make all the hard choices without any real help. He/she then has to explore the full scope of consequence for the decisions he/she makes. Meaning, that they are forced to wonder about what would happen if they fuck up, and how they could fuck up and what would happen if they make the right choice and what the hell the right choice is.
The oldest also has to be a role model for the youngest, so typically tends to have more responsibility and more weight on the decisions. So all of this makes for a very responsible human being (at times too responsible, but that's a whole thread in and of its self).

The youngest however has the benefit of more experianced parents and an older sibling from whom he/she can 'copy' decisions. However, as it is with copying, they don't really know the reason for your decision and often don't understand the full scope of the decision. They just do what you did and move on. This is all nice and easy, but leads to taking decisions a bit for granted.
So where you and I probably have a little voice in the back of our heads saying "Hey, you need to stop gaming and start doing that homework or... ::little voice shows us picture of self as a bum::" our younger siblings probably have a voice saying: "Hey, you need to stop gaming and start doing that homework, cause that's what you're supposed to do".
You can see how the former is more convincing than the later?

So in short, I agree with everyone else. Don't shield her, don't help her in any way. She's in a new situation now, let her work it out for herself. Don't protect her or make decisions for her.

That's my €0.02 of amateur psychology anyway. :)

EDIT: You know, it also made me think about this quote from Douglas Adams:
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." :p

I agree with those who have said it's time to make your sister start taking responsibility for her own actions. Clearly your parents tried to get her to do it their way - paid her way through college, etc. - and that didn't work. Time to say "Okay, you're on your own, chickie." Love doesn't always look like love, but the most loving thing you can do now is to quit (I hate this word) enabling her.

I also think this is not the "end of the world" scenario it seems to be for your parents. My sister dropped out of college her sophomore year, and after struggling for a while in crappy jobs, she and her (also drop-out) husband are making shitloads of money (more than I am with a master's degree) at fairly decent jobs, living in a nice house, etc. It doesn't always turn out badly. She's just trying to find her own path, and sometimes that doesn't look like what you think it ought to look like.

That is so well put that I don't feel the need to add to it.

On a smaller, but similar case I know the feeling. Someone I thought to be innocent that I loved almost more then life itself. But alas, she turned the world on me and I landed on my face. I've been trying not to be bitter but its hard. She lied to my face and made a bad choice which she can't erase it.

So I know what your going through. All I can say is, try not to hold a grudge. Try to forgive her but its ok to be mad.

Good luck
PMF21

wow that really sucks. hopefully she will realize what she is doing soon. i was a terrible child/teenager but now that i've somewhat matured, i would do anything to make my parents happy. who knows, hopefully she'll realize how important family is.

It is one of those unfortunate stories. My sister acts extremely immature and is incredibly disrespectful to my parents. If she was my child I would have kicked her out of the house a long time ago. All you can do right now is help your parents and tell them you did everything you could. Support them and help them know they weren't a failure. As for your sister, the silent treatment or pretending she's invisible always works nicely. It may seem childish, but it lets her know your fuckin pissed. And it keeps you chewing her out and making things works. Good luck and things will end up ok in the end.

I'm sorry to hear your sister is being so disrespectful to your parents. I think she has alot of growing up to do, and lying is not the way to do it.

Why is everybody cutting her so much slack? The point is not that it's her sister's life and she should live it as she pleases. That's stating the obvious. The point is that through her extremely selfish and immature behaviour of "living her life", she has directly affected eveybody else. Having her father drive to pick her up ... the money lost on tuition ... these are things that affect her parents directly.

She's an adult now and she needs to learn that as an adult there are consequences for her actions. Let her live her life ... someplace out of the house. Your parents should not have suffer from her selfishness.

We all learn in different ways. I learned a lot more about life in college dealing with people and situations than in the classroom - and that is coming from someone who got good grades from a great school.

I would suggest a little perspective that does not include you. This may be tough to do since a lot of your comments compare her to you.

Let's look at the (my?) big three for young people. I choose these because they have the longest term implications:

Your sister is not pregnant. Early kids or even early abortions can have long lasting effects on people. This is a lesson that you pay for for the rest of your life and creates one point in your life that you think of BEFORE the event and AFTER the event. Major regrets can be pretty darn tough to overcome.

Your sister is not married. At that age, it is tough to know yourself let alone who is a good match to spend the rest of your life with. It is almost a similar thought to the above, but can really mess up the rest of your life unless you are REALLY lucky.

Your sister is not into drugs (heavy stuff at least) and is otherwise healthy. Being in a fairly controlled (not in a bad way, just in that it was somewhat grounded) family environment growing up leads to a natural want to experiment. She has not become heavily addicted to a substance and any poor decitions she made did not get her injured or injur others.

Those three areas tell me that she is young, but in the long term still has just about all the oportunities she ever had. She may have hurt the family, but really the family needs to be supportive of her growth as a person and hope and encourage heathy decitions without judgement or shame. Building up a picture (maybe by mom?) of whatever path she was "supposed" to take may be a sign of Codependency. Maybe this event can be good for mom in the long term. We put a lot of hopes into our children and it can be devestating when things don't turn out as we had planned.

You are a diffrent person and you would not have wanted to be compared to your sister in any terms either - much less your success / work ethic / judgement. Don't let something that is somewhat common in the grand scheme of things turn into a stigma of failure for your sister to have to overcome. I would imagine that would only lead to more poor decition making for her.

Spend some time with her this summer. Try your best to relate and NEVER judge. I bet there is a story from your college that the only difference between what you did and what she did (the bus story thing for her) where the only difference was that you did not get caught. That may help both of you. Judging never teaches, but it often hurts. She can come to conclusions on her own about what she did or did not do.

Your sister learned consequences and learned about balance. JMU is not an easy school to get into and I am sure she is smart and capable of getting better grades. She just did not balance personal life with her "work" life. That is a pretty good thing to see consequences of firsthand. When you don't get that right at an older age you lose a house or a marriage.

See this as an opportunity and be mature and intelligent about it. Finally, if you would like to talk about this with me, PM me. We can talk further if you think it can help.