My Sister Is Having A Really Hard Time

by Simone
(United States)

Hi. I hope you can help me. I am 14 and my little sister is 10. She has had some anger problems for a long time, but in the past year or so they've really spiked up.

So my mom's side of the family is not in perfect mental health, and my sister inherited some of it. She has trouble when she is asked to do a task and she sort of shuts down. Me and her have been homeschooled for all of our lives, but one day my mom decided that it was too hard to teach her.

If my sister got confused or something, she would get upset, and she might start screaming or throwing a tantrum. It never gets physical, but it's very stressful.

As of September she's been going to school, but we have a hard time getting her there. I'm usually in bed when this happens, but for some reason, she gets upset, and she ends up screaming, and my mom who's trying to deal with this ends up crying, my dad ends up yelling, and I lay in my room and wonder how to help.

Sometimes she'll argue with me, and I admittedly sometimes set her off, but a lot of the time there's no reason for anger. This is very stressful, especially for our mother, who sometimes gets sad for no reason. And after one of the fights about school, she just stays in her room for most of the day.

I think the main issue here is that my sister is too dependent on our mom. She always ends up missing her, and she gets homesick. Sleepovers are rarely an issue though.

But after an outburst my sister has a hard time doing anything else. We've tried a lot of things, and even though my mom doesn't want me to worry about it, I can't really ignore it.

Can someone please help me? I'm a bit concerned about how this is affecting my mom.