Hi, this is my first post here. I confess that I'm not a parent, but I am an older sister and I'm very worried about my family. My younger sister is now just over 17 years, and she suffers from both anxiety and depression, and she is also, unfortunately, somewhat spoiled. She recently got into a nasty fight with her group of "friends", with whom she had been working on a school project. Said project was an elaborate, complicated affair, and she ended up doing most of the organisation and work and going through a lot of stress. She was up working on it for two nights before it was due and she was in pretty bad shape the next morning. She still went to school, though. We don't know exactly what happened, or exactly what she said, but her friends haven't spoken to her since unless they had to. At the risk of sounding partial, neither I nor my parents liked those girls, who were quite well spoken, but also spiteful and egotistic. My sister can be quite abrasive at times, all the more so if she is under stress, and according to her she commented on how one of the girls had elected to go to a lunch party instead of joining the study group to work on the project. She says that that is all she said, and apparently it was enough to make them all start shouting at her. After that, they started ignoring her and she came home in tears. She went into depression after that, and it kept getting worse because her friends made no attempt to patch things up. The situation was bad enough that the principal of the school decided to intervene and tried to mediate. My sister apologised for whatever she had said, but the other girls refused to accept her apology and bluntly told her that her sorry was not enough, it was "too late", and they didn't want to speak to her. I got the impression that they were enjoying this, somehow. Recently, one of the girls spoke to my sister- to tell her to return the outfits she had gifted her. This situation had a terrifying effect on her, all the more so because two examinations have come up- a 'practise' session and the finals. The school offered to exempt her from the former, but she refused, because she was afraid people would gossip. The subsequent work, and continuously encountering those girls in school is taking its toll on her. She has always been very moody and somewhat bad tempered. A simple comment can cause her to snap at you and get defensive, and we generally have to walk on eggshells around her. If she wants something and it isn't possible, she gets angry. She has got into the habit of refusing her food unless it is something she likes (a very narrow range) and she may not eat even them. She is past the age when we can force feed her and her recent checkup showed that she is suffering from malnutrition. This recent matter has made everything much worse. For the past month, she has been asking for a puppy. Apparently it will make her feel happy. Under normal circumstances this would have been possible. The problem is that while she might take care of the dog at first, most of the work will end up being done by my mum. And she already has far too much to do. She isn't young any more, or in the best of health, and she's under a lot of stress as it is. On top of that, she's extremely worried about my sister. There are other factors as well- we aren't very well off, and a new puppy will be a drain on our finances, we might have to move house because our old home will need to be renovated soon, my sister will soon be busy with her exams and then college- she may not even be at home anymore, and we already have a dog and two cats. The dog was brought as a gift for my sister five years ago, and after a while she lost interest in it, and my parents and I took care of it. She literally makes no contribution other than petting her and occasionally putting food into the dish if she is asked to.
My mother was frightened by my sister's behaviour, especially when she said that she had been thinking of suicide. (She is under counselling and medication, but it is a bit difficult because she often refuses both) Mum agreed to get her a puppy and we went to take a look at a litter her acquaintance was looking after. These dogs are a local breed and found as strays everywhere in my country. Since our dog is an unspayed female, we didn't want to risk taking a male. There were two females in the litter and my sister promptly fell in love and asked if she could take both. The lady who was caring for them promptly chirped up, exhorting us to take both the puppies. Between the two of them, my mum caved and brought both the pups home- which she regretted within minutes. Caring for them was extremely difficult, and while my sister kept her word, there was only so much she could do while juggling her studies at the same time. Continuously cleaning up after them, waking up to them howling at night got to be too much for her- as well as the rest of us. The family dog became jealous and irritable and one of the cats, who is a rather neurotic creature, fled the house altogether. My mother in particular found it far too much. Then one of them fell ill and it was the final straw. My parents and I decided to return the puppies, and my father called my sister and I and spoke to us seriously about the difficulties we were having- in particular our mother's health. She suffers from high blood pressure, and too much stress can cause a lot of damage. When my father and I got back from returning the puppies, we found that my sister had taken nothing away from his words other than that her puppies were being returned even though she 'needed' them so desperately, and that we hadn't given her any time or even a choice about it. My mother felt terrible about it, as she had promised her a puppy, and she had had to take back her word. She promised that we would get her a puppy as soon as her practise exams were over. My father, however, stated that he doesn't want a local breed, as he thinks they aren't very healthy. My sister has decided to set her heart on a local breed, because rescuing strays is the right thing to do, which is the only matter in which I agree with her. My sister now alternates between depression, haranguing mum for a puppy, sulking, crying, raging and rarely, behaving almost normally. She pays no attention to anything other than what she thinks she wants, and has become almost impossibly self centered. My mum is bearing the brunt of all her harsh words and bad behaviour, and I can see how difficult it is for her. I can't be at home, as I'm both in university and working. Today, I got home to find out that we have two leads on puppies, and that my father caved on the local breed issue. The first lead is my sister's primary school's teacher, who is looking after a litter of 1 1/2 month puppies, who are too young, and the second is a 2 1/2 month old female, who lives indoors, is vaccinated and used to cats. The latter is ideal, but my sister insists that we look at both because she wants 'options'. That this will involve mum driving her first to one side of the city and then to the other doesn't concern her. After all, she isn't asking her to do it everyday. My mother had been he one to ask her to call her primary school's teacher and ask about puppies, something she wasn't too keen to do as she disliked her earlier school. She now insists that she can't back out without at least seeing the puppies, and refuses to tell her teacher that we have already found another option. When I tried to reason with her, she instantly got, first defensive, then angry, at which I got irritated as well. She shouted that she 'didn't want a puppy', accused us of not understanding how miserable she was and stormed off to her room, crying, and then tried to walk out of the house (it was almost ten at night). I tried to apologise, at which point she turned on me and said some fairly nasty things. Mum eventually got her back indoors. Despite everything we are probably getting the puppy, and I don't think it'll do much good. I've reached the end of my rope, and so have my parents. Lastly, as selfish as this is, I am very worried about my cat- the one who ran away when the two puppies arrived. She is an extremely nervous and unfriendly animal, and doesn't react well to anything new. She came back after the puppies were returned, but I'm afraid that if a new pup arrives she might decide to leave for good. I've raised her since she was an abandoned newborn, and I really don't want to lose her. To top it all off I keep expecting mum to fall really ill because of the amount of stress she is under. I don't know who to ask for help, but I've heard good things about this website and so I'm hoping you can suggest something?
If you got through that novel, I thank you for your patience and for reading. As parents yourself, I'm hoping you might know just how to handle this situation.