I am looking for some advice on how to best help my stepdaughter without simply enabling her.To give a bit of background, my husband has two kids from a previous marriage and there were a lot of acrimonious issues over visitation and custody after his divorce. His ex moved to a different state with the kids and after many court cases over the move, visitation fights and parental alienation, we ended up with a situation where my husband had a frail relationship with his kids. Whenever we did see them we focused on keeping a relatively happy environment for them. Ex-wife and stepdaughter would threaten with no visits at all if things didn’t go her way, so I was mostly walking around eggshells and avoided being any sort of parental figure. There is a lot more story here, but I am keeping it simple just to make it clear that we haven’t been able to really parent the kids and so are confused about how to deal with the situation now.Once my stepdaughter graduated high school, her mother insisted that she go to college close to us, in our state. So she has moved here. Her mother has greatly lowered her relationship with her daughter, that is, she is unwilling to provide any financial help and isn’t even willing to have her visit home more than twice a year (thanksgiving and christmas.) The reason is that stepdad doesn’t like the kid and has decided that now she’s an adult she’s no longer welcome in their home. As far as I know, she hasn’t done anything more than talk back occasionally and not finish her chores. But they felt that her rudeness was bad enough that they can’t have her living with them or relying on them.Stepdaughter was a mediocre student in school and her test scores weren’t impressive. But she elected to join a competitive engineering program at college. I was surprised that she wanted to go for it and even more surprised that she got in. We gifted her a portion of the tuition for the first year (the rest was covered by her part time job savings and federal student loans.) We also promised to help her financially if she kept up her grades. She failed half her classes in the first year. We are all disappointed by that but she wants to continue going to college, but doesn’t know how to fund it anymore. Her Mom won’t cover anything or cosign any loans. We were willing to help with tuition if she passed her classes but she failed half of the stuff and her current GPA is 1.6.She is staying with us for the summer and we are trying to figure out what to do with her. My husband recommended that she get a job and go to community college. But she really wants to be in college full time. So I have offered to her that she go to community college in summer and if she gets at least a C in those classes then I’ll help pay for her to go back to full time college as long as she keeps passing her classes. She has failed before but the fact that she badly wants to be in college makes me feel that we should give her another chance. She’ll also be moving into an easier (non-engineering) major.Now I love my stepdaughter and she’s a good kid, but she can be lazy and procrastinates a lot. I also feel that she’s suffering from depression and I have tried to get her into therapy but she isn’t interested. She’s been on ADD medication since she was 9 years old and I suspect that she’s developed a tolerance to them and it isn’t helping any more.Her summer school has started and she seems to be putting very little effort in her studies though she does sit with her books every day. I am not impressed with her work ethic and I am at a loss about how to handle it. I am not going to make her study because she needs to learn to do it on her own. But given the arrangement we have I am worried about what we should do if she fails these classes again. Even if she somehow manages to pass them and we spend money on the fall semester I am concerned about what we do next if she fails that after she is back at college.My husband thinks that if she fails, then we help her get a minimum wage job, buy her a used car, set her up in an apartment with 3-4 months rent paid and have her figure things out on her own. Her mother feels that she should either do well in school or go join the military.We don’t have a lot of money, very little savings and we have two small children together. Her mother and stepdad are a lot more financially solvent than we are, but they are unwilling to help. I want to help her, I worry for her and also feel sorry for her because she was tied to her Mom’s apron strings all her life and now is suddenly cast out whereas my stepson is the golden child who gets showered with gifts and money. However, I want to spend in the most efficient way possible while teaching her to become self reliant. What is the right thing to do here? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2rI3tFw
No comments:
Post a Comment