Dear MIMsters: My Parents Brought This Mess Upon Themselves, Now They Want Me To Deal With It

My parents brought this mess upon themselves, and now, they want me to deal with it.

Hubby and I have been through our fair share of small and big fights. I come from a very poor family, so my soon to be 15-year-old sister is living with us, while I have 2 boys, aged 7 and 2-year olds.

This sister of mine has a lot of bad behavior, never reads and is a bad role model for my children. All my boys want to do is play but I don’t allow them to play all day. This my sister lies a lot. She lies so much that I fear my children will soon start lying to me. She lies and makes my older son cover-up for her, sometimes with a threat.

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Recently, my neighbor told me to be careful of leaving my children with her as she sometimes leaves them all by themselves to go out for several hours, mindlessly, while my children will come downstairs to go play outside the gate.

Lately, a girl in my sister’s school brought an iPad to school and it went missing. Everyone in school was searched, from primary to secondary, but they could not find the gadget. She came back from school very late on that fateful day. I felt sorry for the girl whose iPad was stolen.

About three weeks after, I don’t know what woke me up in the middle of the night at 2 am and I went to her room. There, I saw an iPad plugged into my power bank.

To cut the long story short, she lied it was our neighbor’s son that gave it to her. I was really mad that midnight, I made her ride an imaginary car for an hour. I asked the neighbour’s son why he gave my sister his gadget, and he said he didn’t give her any gadget. I asked her again for the truth, then she said it was given to her by that same Neighbor’s cousin.

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Fortunately, the cousin was around after being away for several months. I asked him and he denied it as well. I became weak. Then my neighbor revealed that my sister came to her and pled with her to tell me that she gave her the iPad but she could no longer keep quiet.

We asked my sister one more time and pled with her to say the truth this time around. She said a strange lady gave it to her because she is a big girl who ought to be using stuff like an iPad. I knew she had lied again.

I stood up and went to her friend’s house and invited her over to our place. The moment her friend sighted the iPad, she recognized it, she said it belongs to one girl in their class. She said their proprietress and proprietor have been through a lot due to the loss of that gadget and that she is surprised how my sister managed to escape all the searching sessions in school.

I called my mum to narrate the ordeal. She was crying and begging me to have mercy on her because feeding is difficult for them back and they can’t afford to feed an extra mouth. She was weeping.

I’m so confused right now and my husband can’t know about all her escapades. He would blame me for it all. This is a big blow on me. I’ve made sacrifices for her, she’s attending a private school here in Lagos.

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I feel I’m being forced and I’m under emotional blackmail, as my parents still have 5 other children; 1 in polytechnic and the others in primary school. I feel they brought all these messes on themselves.

I’m confused and I don’t even know how to punish her. I feel like cutting her and putting pepper in the cut but again, that’s abuse. Please advise me.