TL;DR Little sister lies through her teeth, and lies even more to cover up those lies. She’s subtly rude without prompt. Seems ‘high on her own supply’, can’t admit wrongdoing, denies the past, tries to manipulate parents. But she’s nice to our dog and somewhat ok to our baby sister.
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My little sister (F16) has gotten into the habit of a number of really concerning behaviours. Namely:
– She skips a LOT of school. She will leave early, she’ll delay in the mornings. She’ll fake being sick, which is normal kid stuff BUT – she has skipped 35% of the entire school year! And we have no idea where she actually goes to do stuff.
– She tries to say purposefully hurtful things for seemingly no reason, but with enough subtlety to deny it. I had surgery for cancer two years ago, but she will for no reason ask me “what’s it like not having a thyroid?” And pointing out that she still has one. I don’t really mind, I don’t feel bad for it personally – but I see the intent behind it. And it’s a pretty fucked up thing to say objectively (imagine if I *was* hung up over it!).
To add to this, I’m the oldest child, and generally the most passively loved (parents spend the most time bonding with me). She’s the most actively loved (mum especially **adores** her).
– She lies all the time. You can never really know if she’s being genuine. And she double, triple and quadruples down on them. I don’t trust a word out of her mouth. She will lie to cover another lie. No matter what, she won’t admit she’s lying. But she’ll smile and laugh while she’s doing it, so it’s pretty obvious.
– She seems to live a bit in her own world. She never takes responsibility for her actions. She has skipped so much school that the school wants to call meetings. She actually just straight up denies wrongdoing. “I’ve never done anything wrong”, “when have I done something wrong?” Etc. And today she’s like “don’t look at the past, look at what I’m doing now!” but even just a few minutes ago she lied again.
– She seems very detached and cold, until she wants something from you.
– She seems proud of herself for her behaviour. Whenever she gets caught, she smiles and denies with another lie. And it’s a *really* bad lie.
She DOES however do the following normal human things:
– She cares for our family dog, somewhat. She gets upset when we feed him because he’s quite overweight. And she smiles at him when he’s looking cute. Let’s him sleep in her bed sometimes.
– She has a somewhat okay relationship with my baby sister. Though I’m concerned about her bad influence as the baby sister is 13. Baby sis is really nice though.
– Sometimes she does seem like she genuinely cares and we can have a full discussion, but her ego is crazy and if you’re not speaking to her interests, it’s a bit on deaf ears. Majority of the time though, she really couldn’t care less about what you do.
It’s concerning because she wasn’t always like this. She did show signs, but not flat out dishonest behaviour like this. She was always very intelligent, and used to be super committed to school and stuff. And just learning everything she could. But now she’s dropped all that. She won’t ever admit she’s lying, nor admit she’s doing anything wrong, even despite direct reality and hard fact saying the contrary. She tries her hand at gaslighting, but she’s bad at it. She just, I dunno – she seems like she *enjoys* breaking the rules of the social fabric. A “wicked” vibe. But then there’s small glimmers of humanity. She’s very much a loner otherwise, keeps to herself.
Idk, will she grow out of this? The rest of my siblings *tolerate* her but apart from baby sis, they kind of dislike her. Even our mum who usually *dotes* on her, is now very stressed about the lies and the school skipping. She has moments of being chill, but she is really tone deaf to how she sounds sometimes. She’s lost a lot of credibility.
I don’t know what to think.
6 comments
Yeah, your sister is doing drugs. No one skips that much school unless they’re going somewhere and that usually means drugs. My brother was also detached and had weird emotions and, yep, it was drugs.
This could relate to a personality disorder. Those often start to manifest during puberty. It might not be drugs, although that could well be part of it. I think it’d be good for her to see a therapist and get a diagnosis.
It’s very likely drugs, given what you’ve said here and in your reply.
Your parents need to intervene and take a more active role in figuring out why she is using drugs – if it’s just for the lolz, then that’s one thing, but if she is using drugs to cope with something, that another.
but it’s their job to figure it out and address it. Your job as an older sibling – one that has done drugs – is to just give her advice, remind her that this period of her life is short and before long she’ll be an adult, and emphasis how important school is BUT that there is more than one pathway to get it.
Maybe she’s bored at school and feels she’s already learned all she can learn in the year. Who knows. In that case, take her down to a community college and show her around, get her excited for that next stage in her life.
And if she has zero interest in school, then maybe it’s time for you to give her advice as a big bro about what that means – how is she going to afford to support herself? Is she interested in a trade?
Maybe asking her questions like that will get her to engage more with planning for her future instead of running off and disappearing. You’d be surprised how teenagers – and people! – act when they are bored and don’t feel focused on their future.
She really just sounds like a pretty normal, bored, teenager.
So help her find something to ground herself with while your parents figure out what is really going on with their daughter.
This could have written about my junior year of high school. For me it was not drugs. (Nor did I drink or engage in any real high risk behavior or anything but frequent naps.) It was garden variety teenage disillusionment. Note too tendencies diagnosed as inattentive-ADHD and autism can manifest quite differently in young women than how they’re popularly known.
I think it could be detrimental to jump to the drugs conclusion. I had a family member do that and it created a much worse situation for all involved
She needs a professional. This also sounds like it could be a variety of personality disorders or a reaction to a trauma that she doesn’t want to talk about, though drugs are a real possibility.
It could be she’s got sone anger in her over something and letting it out this way rather than be vulnerable and address the real issue. It could just be she hates her particular school and doesn’t want to be there. Your mother should consult a therapist