Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone can offer a bit of advice.
Me and my partner provide kinship care for my 15 year old sister and I'm really at the end of my tether with her. All she ever does is lie. I have no idea how to deal with it. She's been living with us just over a year now and I honestly can't think of a single day that has passed where she hasn't lied about something.
Little things I can handle, things like going out with a different friend than who she says, or where she's going (I don't expect her to keep me up to date every 5 minutes and I know she's not going to wild parties because she only has 2 friends, one lives over the road and the other lives above me, so I usually know what's going on anyway).
It's the big ones that are really starting to get to me.
For example: in September last year she left her facebook account logged in, allowing me to see messages to several people from school about how she was pregnant, definitely keeping the baby, raising it with her boyfriend, and then a week later that she had miscarried. This really hit me hard as after trying to conceive for 3 years my partner and I had only that month suffered our sixth miscarriage. Obviously I know that I was never meant to see this, and that it was never intended to hurt me. When I asked her about it, she denied it all point blank, I showed her the messages, to which she replied "I don't remember saying that", and then the next day she changed her mind again, stating that she had told school mates she was pregnant while still living with her father in the hope that someone would flag it to teachers and she would be moved out of the house.
This made little sense to me as I myself was pregnant at 15, and was never moved, so she knows this would have been unlikely, as well as the fact that even the "I'm pregnant" messages were sent after she had moved in with us...
But I was tired of two days of arguing and just left it at that
I did mention it, several times, to her social worker, who said that it was normal teenage behaviour and basically told me just to get on with it because they had no room in care homes for her (not that I was suggesting that anyway).
Anyway between then and now there have been plenty of other things, from her behaviour and attendance at college, stealing from me and my own children... I could write a list for days...
This morning her Facebook was left signed in again, so I checked it (whether I should or not is a matter of opinion, but to be honest I'd rather know the truth about things than her version of events).
She has recently been to visit her mum who lives quite far away, and it became apparent from the messages exchanged that she has told her mum she has a job. She doesn't have a job. She has never had a job. To some extent though, I can understand that the relationship she has with her mum would make her want to seem like she is doing well for herself, I can just about understand the "I'm doing really well for myself I've even got a job.".
With this "job" came an imaginary boss, who sounds like an awful person! He won't even give my poor sister the day off for her birthday! She's overworked and treat like some kind of animal in this imaginary job, (which is probably for the best as she does nothing around the house). I can't really understand the whole making up an evil boss thing to be honest... but it gets worse than that...
The most recent message to her mum said "can you pleeeeeeease lend me £20 I'll pay you back next week I really need to get a long skirt and a shirt and some dolly shoes for work coz he says hes going to fire me coz im so unpresentable and [me] and [partner] havent got any money for like two weeeeks"
to which the reply was that mum had no money herself
and my sister then said:
"its okay my friend says she can lend me a shirt but can you just lend me a tenner for a skirt and shoes pleasee"
funnily enough mum was still skint.
Now I'm a bit confused as to why she needs this money so desperately. She gets pocket money, she always has everything she needs, strangely enough she has a shirt and a skirt and flat black shoes. I ask her every week if she needs anything (generally referring to deodorant, make-up, sanitary towels etc, but not limited to these things, she knows this as she has requested clothes/underwear/shoes as she feels she needs them.
Looking through her other messages, it's not only her mum she wants money from... She asked friend (upstairs) to borrow £30 because [me] and [partner] had no money, and also asked our other sister for money (no mention of why though).
Now we're far from financially well off, but we budget well and we're certainly not struggling or in a position where we'd have no money for two weeks, so all of the above is lies.
We know it's not drugs, we both have past experience dealing with drug users as well as living in a very deprived area, with drug use all around, we would spot the signs. Same for alcohol.
I just don't know what to do anymore!
My though this week is to buy her a shirt, skirt and shoes that she so desperately needs and replace her pocket money with them. May also resort to waking her up at 6am every day so she can pretend to get ready for her pretend bloody job!!
I just keeptelling myself it's only 21 days until she's officially old enough to move out, and I really don't want to think of her like that!
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to stop the lies?
Social work are not interested at all.
Grounding/Stopping Pocket Money/Changing Internet Password/Taking Phone Away are all things we've tried without any effect.
Also tried talking with her about things she may be upset about etc, she's had a referral to cahms but refuses to go, she is adamant she doesn't have any issues and doesn't need help.
How can we possibly help someone who won't help themselves?
I also have a 6 year old with ASD who is convinced that our two week old baby gets more respect than him, so I really don't need moody teenagers and house shaking arguments at the moment, I just need her to stop lying!
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Help with lying 15 year old girl
4 replies
BonesyBones · 22/07/2014 15:01
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