1. I have three entirely different and unrelated sets of thoughts about this letter.
The first is practical. LW should absolutely not, under any circumstances, allow Sally to move in. LW cannot enforce any rules against Sally, and will not find it easy to kick her out at the end of whatever arbitrary time limit is set up. This is a nonstarter. Sally needs to be told that this is not happening, in no uncertain terms. This advice is bad.
The second is... look, Sally sounds thoroughly awful. She also sounds unhappy - she can't hold down a job, she can't make it into class, she can't keep her friends - who'd be happy like this? Sally does not want to be like this. She sounds miserable, and at a pretty young age. Of course, I'm not the one who has to deal with her, but what I *would* suggest as an alternative to letting Sally move in is to continue to pay her rent on the condition that she goes to therapy. That might or might not help - therapy is one of those things that works if you're willing to do the work - but I honestly can't see how things can get worse for Sally with this deal.
The third is that LW needs to seriously reconsider how these family dynamics are playing out, because it reads like LW is blaming Sally's "permissive" father for Sally's behavior, while LW's saintly partner gets none of the blame. Well, okay - but one of those two people has stopped supporting his adult daughter, and the other wants to make an even larger commitment to her. So which of these two is more of a pushover, really? And cycling back to my previous paragraph, if LW's grasp of the situation is so dependent on which of the two people they like more, is it possible that LW is misrepresenting Sally's behavior here? I genuinely have no idea, but I don't like how LW writes this letter.
2. LW2 calls these troubled teens, but I don't think that she really thinks they are troubled. Let me just say that if a child is unable to leave her bed to go to school, that sounds less like she is "refusing" to do this and more like she is suffering from a mental illness such as depression. And the same goes for the older child's use of drugs - this can mean a lot of things, but at the very least, I'd want to have the kid screened for mental illness.
Annie's advice is shallow and useless. Her first paragraph is entirely irrelevant and also wrong. Not only do the grandparents not have any say on how they're disciplined at home, but you cannot discipline your way out of mental health problems. And if nothing else is clear to me from this letter, it's that the trouble here is not that the children do not understand consequences, that they are "acting out" or "ruling the roost", but that they are, in fact, troubled teens. They need help. And again, that's easy enough for me to say, since I'm not the one who has to deal with them - but then again, LW doesn't have to deal with them on a daily basis either.
The second paragraph doesn't connect to the first in any meaningful way, and also doesn't provide anything useful for LW to actually do.
What LW asked for is advice on handling the kids. Well, LW can't put them into therapy, so actually, they can't do much. What LW also alluded to needing help with is their resentment of these teens for the trouble they're causing for their parents. And this is something they can get help with, probably through a support group of some sort.
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The first is practical. LW should absolutely not, under any circumstances, allow Sally to move in. LW cannot enforce any rules against Sally, and will not find it easy to kick her out at the end of whatever arbitrary time limit is set up. This is a nonstarter. Sally needs to be told that this is not happening, in no uncertain terms. This advice is bad.
The second is... look, Sally sounds thoroughly awful. She also sounds unhappy - she can't hold down a job, she can't make it into class, she can't keep her friends - who'd be happy like this? Sally does not want to be like this. She sounds miserable, and at a pretty young age. Of course, I'm not the one who has to deal with her, but what I *would* suggest as an alternative to letting Sally move in is to continue to pay her rent on the condition that she goes to therapy. That might or might not help - therapy is one of those things that works if you're willing to do the work - but I honestly can't see how things can get worse for Sally with this deal.
The third is that LW needs to seriously reconsider how these family dynamics are playing out, because it reads like LW is blaming Sally's "permissive" father for Sally's behavior, while LW's saintly partner gets none of the blame. Well, okay - but one of those two people has stopped supporting his adult daughter, and the other wants to make an even larger commitment to her. So which of these two is more of a pushover, really? And cycling back to my previous paragraph, if LW's grasp of the situation is so dependent on which of the two people they like more, is it possible that LW is misrepresenting Sally's behavior here? I genuinely have no idea, but I don't like how LW writes this letter.
2. LW2 calls these troubled teens, but I don't think that she really thinks they are troubled. Let me just say that if a child is unable to leave her bed to go to school, that sounds less like she is "refusing" to do this and more like she is suffering from a mental illness such as depression. And the same goes for the older child's use of drugs - this can mean a lot of things, but at the very least, I'd want to have the kid screened for mental illness.
Annie's advice is shallow and useless. Her first paragraph is entirely irrelevant and also wrong. Not only do the grandparents not have any say on how they're disciplined at home, but you cannot discipline your way out of mental health problems. And if nothing else is clear to me from this letter, it's that the trouble here is not that the children do not understand consequences, that they are "acting out" or "ruling the roost", but that they are, in fact, troubled teens. They need help. And again, that's easy enough for me to say, since I'm not the one who has to deal with them - but then again, LW doesn't have to deal with them on a daily basis either.
The second paragraph doesn't connect to the first in any meaningful way, and also doesn't provide anything useful for LW to actually do.
What LW asked for is advice on handling the kids. Well, LW can't put them into therapy, so actually, they can't do much. What LW also alluded to needing help with is their resentment of these teens for the trouble they're causing for their parents. And this is something they can get help with, probably through a support group of some sort.
Terrible, useless response.