Alright, this isn’t so much a rant about one specific event, as much as a collection of events that have happened over time. My girlfriend’s parents (mostly the mother) are absolutely terrible parents… most teenagers say this, but for hers… i’m rather sure not all of their behavior has been legal, and a lot fo the rest is pretty bad. First, as a background, the family consists of my girlfriend (18 years old), her two sisters, (16, and 9), her mother, and her father (who divorced her mother, and has remarried). The middle sister is also bipolar. Now, as for the rant parts, some things she has done:
First, her mothers work situation… she has been on disability for 6 years for crippling headaches… as far as we can tell, she hasn’t actually had one for a few years, but stays on disability (and they used to be really obvious, like can’t tolerate anyone moving around the house at all, unable to walk, etc…), has tried to convince someone else to leave their job to go on disability, and if she is asked about why shes not working, simple says “You wouldn’t understand”, and gets very angry.
Semi-related to the above, the family was moving, and my girlfriend brought up the disability thing… she was told to go live with her dad. Doesn’t sound so bad written here, but a parent telling their daughter to go live with the other parent (who my gf didn’t really talk to) and meaning it…
She did go to her dads house, and because she refused to drive somewhere when she was really tired and the weather was bad. She as much as told him she would get in an accident, and he didn’t care, he kicked her out and sent her back to her mother.
Her mother would get mad at my GF because her little sister would run to her instead of her mother, and tell my GF that she wasn’t the mother… and then another day tell my GF to handle her daughter, because she couldn’t.
Her mother forcing/tricking her to family counselors (who thought she was coming of her own choice) and lying to the counselor about things she’d said or done.
There was a tack outside my GFs door, and she left it there, saying to the middle daughter “maybe she’ll step on it”.
She frequently yelled at my GF about how useless she was, and how terrible a child she was.
She felt that since she was a grown woman, swearing at the 9 year old was ok.
Related to that, because of this, the 9 year old would always go to my GF for help. See above about what the mother thought of this.
She yelled at my GF for not respecting her, my GF told her she didn’t deserve respect, and she said that children should always respect their parents. my GF asked her “What if a parent kills someone and goes to jail, should the child still respect them?” and she responded “yes”.
She once locked the 9 year old outside, and refused to let my GF let her in. The reason she did this was because the 9 year old was upset, because the mother made her miss her Girl Scout meeting, because the mother was busy doing her makeup (My GF did eventually manage to let her in).
The mother greatly favors the middle child, and when asked about it, she says she has to do this because of the daughter’s bipolar. When asked to explain how the two are connected, she says we wouldn’t understand, and it has to be this way. The middle child is extremely dependent on her, calling several times a day from school, and running for help at the slightest problem. The mother would like my GF to be like this too…
Birthdays… My GF for her birthday, got to clean the house all day, and she picked the 9 year olds party theme (which the 9 year old said she did not want, but the mother had already bought everything, so she didn’t have a choice). As for the middle child… her father gave her a limo ride to the Cheesecake Factory, dinner with ther family (this is seperate occasion), and from her mother, she got to skip school for breakfast out and a movie. My GF called to ask her mother something that day, and the mother said she couldn’t talk because it was the middle girl’s birthday.
She’s asked her mother for money to help pay for a car to get a job. Her mother has had two responses to this. One is that the mother will help my GF with money once she gets on her feet (and my GF’s supposed to do this without money…?) and that she spent her money backwards, she should have gotten a job first, then bought a car (noting that we live in a town where it is practically impossible to get a job without a car.)
Bleh… i hate her mother so much… and she may have to go back there, because due to lack of financial help, she has no where to go and has been unable to make progress towards finding anywhere to live, since she hasn’t been able to get a job to earn money…