So this morning hubby starts telling me how his ex has found an inpatient 30-day treatment facility that her insurance will cover.  At first I'm confused thinking "huh? for who?"  Well, for their youngest daughter (yes, the one we've been having recent problems with).  Seems she has finally admitted to being "sloshed" most of the time lately and to smoking pot.  Well I knew she was smoking the pot, my 2 younger kids had told me that, I'd told her father that, but since she said "no dad i never!" he believed her, just as he believed her when she said "I only drank the once with my friends and didn't like it" after I found that half empty gallon bottle of vodka in her dresser drawer.  This girl has been smoking cigs and drinking since before she moved in with us (last September).  This problem has been going on a long time.  I can remember finding a bottle of vodka hidden in my laundry room a long while back.  She must've hid it there during one of her visits.  It certainly explains a whole lot about her attitude and behavior.  I asked hubby if she agrees with going to treatment.  He kinda hemmed and hawwed saying yeah but now she's talkin about doing out-patient rather than in-patient.  Hubby thinks she needs in-patient.  Glad he at least thinks that because with her past record I can just see her not going to her out-patient treatment.  She was just recently kicked out of her alternative school for failure to spend the amount of hours needed there.  Ah well.  It isn't in my hands what happens now.  For that matter, it was never in my hands - everything I ever said regarding parenting for her was discounted.  The only time what I had to say was done was after her outburst here when she slapped me across the face and then hit her father, and I said she could not live here acting like that.  It is sad that hubby could not see what was needed with her from the start.  There were no consequences for her actions (other than being kicked out that time).  Of course back then I said she needed to be put in a place, like a camp for troubled teens, because she needed counseling and needed to have to do her schooling and needed to learn consequences and responsibility for self (rather than blaming everyone else for everything).  But no, in their diseased distorted thinking, both hubby and the ex decided she could learn what its like to have to be an adult by allowing her to go live with her sister and have to be responsible for herself...she'd have to get herself to work and school and pay for her rent and food at sis's.  Course that didn't work.  I already said what happened with school, and because she was kicked out of there, the school then pulled her work permit.  (She's 17, needs a work permit to work).  She was too busy hanging out with friends and partying.  One good thing from this is her big sis is getting her eyes opened to what its like to have someone living in her home and not following the house rules... heehee.  (I had a problem with big sis doing this exact same thing when she was living here *giggle*) 

I'm not angry, i'm not upset, i'm not gloating....I'm just stating matter of factly whats happening.  This is really a good example of what happens with this disease when kids are involved and neither parent has any recovery to teach their child different.  I've tried to share what I've learned, but if someone doesn't want to hear it won't help.  I can be thankful that my own children are listening.  I see my oldest son working on himself, on his anger issues, and I am proud of how well he is doing now.  I truly am hoping that the older stepdaughter is opening her eyes to the idea that maybe that Al-Anon stuff is right after all.  My youngest 2 are just disgusted with the disease and how it makes people act, and I hope it continues that way and that they continue to learn healthy behavior.  My second son learned the quickest how to detach and has always been quite level headed about it all since.  (How in the world did I raise such a fair-minded, honest, caring man?  That still amazes me how well he's turned out.)  Of course, the way my kids are today is all due to my having found Al-Anon and really working on changing myself so that I could show them by example that (1) you CAN change your own behavior and (2) you CAN be calm, controlled and happy amidst chaos, that you do NOT need to react to it. 

I guess maybe I am a bit sad about hubby's daughters.  When I first met him, they were the sweetest, loveliest acting young ladies.  He had been divorced a few years then and they lived with their mom.  I don't know what happened in their mom's home.  I do know she has no recovery and does have a lot of the isms (behaviorisms of alcoholism).  When each girl came to live with us I could see those same isms in them.  They had changed and not for the better.  When hubby was married to the ex he went to AA when she got pregnant.  He did not want his children to have a drunk for a father.  He was in AA for the next 7 years, they went to all kinds of AA family functions, he thought things were good.  Then the big divorce and bam!  and this shows how they need to go to AA for themself cause when she got custody (along with other stuff) he fell off the wagon big time.  How different it might have been if he'd stayed sober for himself, if he'd continued his program.  The girls would at least still had one parent in recovery and perhaps wouldn't have all the isms they have today.  But thats not what happened.  Cunning, baffling and powerful disease.... yup. 

All I can do is continue to work my own program.  Man it is hard to keep my mouth shut at times.  I want to yell "can't you see how your enabling and refusal to allow proper consequences is making this worse?"  Yeah, I've said that in the past and it sure didn't help any...just got hubby pissed at me.  I really have to bite my tongue.  I have to allow each and every one of them to find their own bottom.  No one could've made me see I needed recovery till I hit my bottom...I had been told of Al-Anon 2 years prior to my coming to it.  I just wasn't ready back then, hadn't hit my bottom.  I have to remember this.  Glad I'm here.  Thanks for listening.

Luv, Kis