In Over My Head?

Most people, when raising a 16 and 17 year old, have had 16 and 17 years to work up to it.  They have years of shared experiences and a clear understanding of the power dynamic.  I was thrown in head-first to make it work.  That being said my sister is, thankfully, not the kind of teenager that causes a lot of problems or gets into trouble. 

However, the teenage years come with inherent drama, and we had our share of growing pains.  These were both on her behalf and mine.  I've lived alone for nine years, so I've had to learn a lot about compromise and how to share my space again.  I've had to learn how to pick my battles (the girl will NEVER eat an onion) and when to let it all go.

Where do I draw the line?  I'm a caretaker, responsible for her welfare (EEK!) but I'm also a big sister.  I had a lot of trouble, for several months, figuring out when I could be the big sister instead of the "one in charge," because those are two very different hats.  But we've worked it out.  It's all about trial and error, and a whole lot of compromise.

In the beginning ....

It's been 10 months now since I had a phone call to go get my sister.  That phone call has changed my life.  At 31, I became the guardian of a 16-year-old who was soon to enter her senior year of high school.  An amazingly smart, extremely independent 16-year-old, whom I had rarely seen and didn't have much of a relationship with.  She and her mother were being evicted, and the option if she stayed was to go to school out of a homeless shelter, which is no real option at all.

Of course, I went to her, we packed her up, and moved her in with me.  Her life changed, too.  She was to began  her senior year in a new school, away from everyone and everything she knew.  We were only an hour away, but it might as well have been a different world.  She's adaptable but there's only so much a teenager should be expected to handle with grace, but she defied expectations.

Enrolling a child in school is a messy proposition when you don't have legal guardianship.  I had (have) power of attorney over her giving me permission to make legal decisions on her behalf.  What I do not have is legal custody.  The school system was refusing to allow me to enroll her without charging tuition (over $2,000 a year) until I could provide guardianship or proof that she was homeless.  So that's what she was according to her school .... homeless and unaccompanied.