The alcoholic sister, the enabling mother and the two children
Dear Doug: I’m raising my sister’s son. Help!
Dear Doug,
My husband and I are raising my younger sister’s two sons. My sister has many problems, of which drug use is one, and wants to act like a mother to the extent she is able only when convenient. My mother lives down the street and allows her grandchildren to ransack her home daily. While we do not allow our own child to act this way, he seems to be learning some bad habits from the two cousins. What can we do to resolve the problem without losing all the boys, not to mention my mother’s good (and well-intentioned) graces?
Signed, Frustrated Aunt
. . . . . .
Dear Frustrated Aunt,
Other columnists might suggest that you let Grandma be Grandma and that your discipline, if fair and consistent, will command the respect of the boys. Such a view would be naïve.
Your sister probably has the disease of addiction, which causes her to engage in reckless, inconsiderate and irresponsible behaviors. These behaviors cause problems. Therefore, what you call “drug use” is her core problem, without which everything else in her life, including her self-centered attitude towards her children, would dramatically improve.
While your mother is a classic enabler (one who protects another person from proper consequences of misbehaviors), you are an unwitting one. By continuing to allow your sister to have contact with her boys, she gets to save face by claiming not to have abandoned them. In fact, by virtue of being an addict, she is already guilty of emotional abandonment (and, therefore, abuse). In addition, you have permitted her the luxury of partial physical abandonment, allowing her to believe she is still a parent while lacking the responsibility that goes with being one.
You need to set boundaries. Although this may seem harsh, you need to offer your sister a choice: enter a program of sobriety immediately, or you will seek legal custody of her children with no visitation rights for their mother until she has at least one year clean and sober. This is best done via an intervention with a qualified interventionist. The alternative is to give the boys back, but adoption (or even temporary custody) is preferable to living with an alcoholic. In addition, we can only hope and pray that the promise of consequences – or actual ones, if necessary – will create the bottom your sister so desperately needs. You also need to display uncompromising tough love towards your mother by forbidding her to see her grandchildren without you playing chaperone and under your rules, not her lack of them. The alternative could be complete loss of control over all the kids, including yours.
If your sister takes her sons back without entering a program of sobriety, you should do everything in your power to help her get a DUI (the single best legal intervention) and have the children placed in your custody. This may seem cold and heartless, yet ask yourself which is better: children growing up with a practicing drug addict with potentially horrifying risks, or children growing up with a non-addicted aunt? Of course, if we get really lucky, the kids will be back with their recovering mom within a year or two, and that is the very best result. This is exceedingly unlikely to occur with continued enabling.
(Source for story idea: Annie’s Mailbox, November 16, 2004.