My 15yo niece is going off the rails rather spectacularly - see here
Her parents and I are really struggling to understand how to handle it. So far, they have always been crystal about their boundaries and expectations, but DN is simply refusing to abide by any of them. Dsis has been advised by police and iirc the youth worker who's involved that it's time to try "tough love", not giving her money etc, and they've been trying to dissociate themselves by not doing DN's washing etc. when she is home.
But it seems to me that DN is not in a place where she can respond to any of this. She's not behaving out of malice but pain and an inability to handle that - it seems to me she's exactly like my 2yo and 4yo having their meltdowns; that you can't be rational with someone who's in an irrational state. It seems to me that she simply cannot behave any better than she presently is, and to continue laying down boundaries (thou shalt not drink, etc) is to continue to set DN up for failure. Refusing to do her washing must be, to her, tantamount to saying "we are not going to care for you any more" - and while DN has for months been screaming that that is exactly what she wants, I don't believe her.
Her parents are frightened that if they let DN carry on, or support her with money or lifts here and there, that not only will they be breaking the law (supporting, for instance, underage drinking) and setting a bad example for their 12yo ds, they are also "giving in". They don't want to support a 15yo dropout drinking, smoking and sleeping around under their roof; they can only see this behaviour as further harming her and think that if she would just go back to school and live by their rules she could start getting better. My dh also sees it as DN "getting it all her own way".
And to be fair I can kind of see their point - if DN was just acting out, without all the massive reasons for mental and emotional trauma that she's been through. And although I've thought about offering DN a room if she would rather not be staying away, I'm also not particularly keen on having a drinking, smoking teen bringing an array of boyfriends home to my two littlies.
Equally I'm aware, I've got no more idea than my sister how to handle this: do you really keep giving her money, knowing it goes on fags and booze and transport to the sorts of parties that get shut down by police? Do you really just keep her phone on your plan, when she's been running up hundreds of dollars of texts and refusing to come home? Do you really do her washing and ironing when she turns up and dumps it once a week?