Ok op, I say this with as much kindness as I can. YTA for treating Lola the way you have been but not for not knowing why she needs so much compassion and understanding. She’s 9 and highly traumatized which means she’s feeling terrified all the time and can’t make her brain calm down. She can’t feel safe.

From what I can see in your comments, nobody ever taught you how to have empathy. But not having been taught does not excuse your responsibility to learn it. You’re almost a full grown adult. You’re about to be independent and responsible for yourself and having the ability to have compassion for someone different from you is a crucial piece of being a reasonable and decent human being. It is your responsibility to make sure you have the tools to do this.

So take a minute to reflect. Think about a time when you were extremely afraid and felt that you were not in a safe situation. Think about how intense that fear was. How distressing it was. When you were feeling that, were you able to just make it go away? Were you able to decide to suffer alone so that your siblings weren’t inconvenienced? Would it have helped or hurt you to have your mom say “I know you’re scared honey but I can’t support you because that would be inconvenient for me and my family” when you needed someone safe that you could trust? Lola can’t trust people right now. People don’t get put into the foster system for no reason. I don’t know her story but I do know that if she was removed from her family, things were BAD.

Take a minute to think about your mom and how she made you feel at 9. Did she feel safe? Kind? Did she make you feel like she would protect you and make sure nothing happened to you? Was she someone that brought comfort when you were scared? Did she make you feel better when you felt hurt and betrayed? If so, great! That’s how parents are supposed to be. They should be the people that you can trust above everyone else to not hurt you. Before you even had conscious thoughts, your little brain was already programmed to know that mom and dad = safety, security, and protection because that’s how it is supposed to be.

But Lola doesn’t get to feel that way. Her mom and dad either never made her feel safe and protected like that or they did and then at some point they took that safety away and started to make her feel afraid that they would hurt her or punish her all the time. Have you ever known someone that you felt you could not feel safe around? How did that feel to you? Did you like it? Did you want to be around them all the time? Would you want to have to depend on that person to care for you and keep you safe? Have you ever had someone you trust betray that trust? How did that make you feel? How would you feel if that happened over and over again with the same person? How would it feel if you were stuck with that person constantly betraying your trust and you couldn’t get away?

Lola is stuck right now. She can’t control how she feels. She can’t make herself feel safe. She can’t make the fear go away. Nobody can just make that kind of trauma go away. I know from first hand experience that it takes years to get to the point where anything feels ok. She’s only been with safe people for a few months. If the timeline for my trauma recovery is anything like it is for Lola, she’s probably just now starting to feel like she might be able to start trusting your parents. For me, I didn’t even register that my parents couldn’t access me to hurt me anymore until I’d been living somewhere else for nearly a year. And I was 18 at that point and was not at risk of being given back to them. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to have to live knowing that even if you are now with people that seem safe, you might get given back to the people who hurt you.

OP, I know you’re just 17 and it seems like you’ve grown up in a happy and stable environment and as a result, you just don’t understand or have enough life experience and empathy to remotely get what this little girl is going through and what type of trauma and discfuntion she has grown up with in her 9 years on this earth.

OP, I don’t know her story but the hiding out in her room and feeling overwhelmed and scared of new people and environments points to a life of not being safe or feeling safe around others and bad things having happened to her in environment where lots of people are around and in situations she’s unfamiliar with. The attachment to your mum and older sister, is a good thing. It means she feels safe with them. it’s probably the first time in her short life where she’s found people she feels safe with and whom she can trust.

The squirelling away of food in her room also likely signifies she has never lived a life where food in a fridge or pantry is a given and always there. She’s likely had periods in her life where she’s felt genuine hunger and learnt quickly to take it when it’s available and save it for later on so she will have something to eat for when there is nothing provided by her parent/parents.

This little girl didn’t grow up in a loving home like you did where her parents loved her and did everything they could to feed, cloth and keep her safe. This is likely her first time in her life where she has love, understanding, shelter, food and a safe space live. It sounds like you’ve had all that for all your life and just do not understand what her life has been like. You had parents who did all that and kept you safe and sheltered from the awful parts of humanity and the world. I’m not judging you on that. Your thought process on this is very much on par with other 17 year olds who have little life experience and have grown up in safe and loving families. You are lucky and I’m genuinely glad that you’ve never experienced situations in life that forever change your perception of the world and make you distrustful of others and go on in life always looking over your shoulder for danger.

I will however say, your parents have made one error here by trying to protect you from truly understanding what this girls life has been like. They should have sat you down and explained why they are allowing certain behaviours with this little girl because I’m certain that to you it feels like a double standard when they allow her to do things that would have gotten you into trouble at the same age. They are ultimately trying to build trust with her and make her feel safe at a pace that feels comfortable to her and are giving her allowances to do stuff that normally wouldn’t have flown when they raised you or your siblings. This might feel totally unfair for you but it’s definitely the best thing for this little girl.

OP, I know it’s difficult to live in a situation that you never asked for. It probably feels like your life has changed drastically and that you feel you are not a priority with your mum, dad and older sister. That does suck and maybe you should voice that eith your mum in a constructive way.

e.g. “mum, since Lisa moved in, I feel like everything has changed and I miss the things we used to do as a family and I miss us not spending more time together. Can we please organise a few more family activities and set aside some ‘mum and daughter’ time where it’s just the two of us?”

OP, please show every one in your family some grace. it’s a new adjustment for everyone in your family having a foster child move in. Also show this little girl some love and understanding. She needs more people in her life that love and support her.

As the mom of a child with special needs, sensory needs, tolerance issues, noise/crowd/people triggering issues, your mom and oldest sister are not equiped to foster this child. She needs to go to another home with special training and who knows how to deal with Lola. Right now, your mom and sister are enabling her and making her worse not better. For example, allowing her to run the show and hold your mom and sister hostage in a room all day. That’s ridiculous. Lola needs extremely structured rules/discipline. This is how we behave, this is how we don’t. And when she acts like she did on mother’s day, she shouldn’t be catered to or allowed to do so. Actually, what she needs is the exact opposite of what your mom and sister did and until they learn how to parent a child like her, they need to not bc again, they are doing a lot more damage than good. And the last thing Lola needs is another adult in her life making her worse not better. Lola isn’t dumb. She is playing all of you like a fiddle and getting exactly what she wants. And it’s only going to get worse as time goes on and she gets older. You did nothing wrong. Lola needs to hear that her behavior is unacceptable and unfair. Lola probably has been neglected and ignored for a min, so attention and affection from your mom is like gold to her right now. She needs to be taught that your mom and sister are not possessions that belong to just her. That she is the mom of 6 other people and those people would like to have spent time with her on MD. If she cries, let her. Oh well, too bad. Some things in life aren’t pleasant to hear. But that’s how she will learn and grow or she needs to go to a different home. And you need to talk to mom about it and about maybe the fact that Lola is taking too much of her time and she isn’t fit to care for her and that her own kids still need her. Good luck!!!

From the perspective of someone who has recently turned 18, I think you are an AH in how you delivered this. Not a soft AH as people say, you are being an AH. And I think part of you has to know that.

If one of your older siblings had come up to you and gone “God, you ruined (insert holiday)” for whatever reason, it wouldn’t feel very good, would it? Now imagine you are 9 years old and they’re saying that you.

That’s how Lola likely feels, or possibly worse due to the situation she has come from. It’s generally not fair to tell a kid “You ruined this[insert holiday here]” because it hurts them. It puts needless blame on someone who likely didn’t mean to cause any trouble(notice how I said generally, sometimes children can just be nuisances, though, to me, that’snot what it sounds like here).

Now, having a new kid in the house is an adjustment, especially one that is a foster. However, like how you are mindful of others in school(hopefully), you have to be mindful of the new addition to your household. You don’t have to like Lola, you don’t have to like anyone you don’t want to for that matter. You do, however, still have to be mindful of what you say and do because even when emotions are high, you still have a choice in your actions. And you chose wrong.

There are more tactful ways to say what you’re saying and y’all should address this in therapy for both you and your family unit together. You’re allowed your feelings but Lola is also allowed hers.

YTA for how you went about it and should probably apologize to both your mom and Lola. Fostering isn’t easy and helping a child adjust into an environment is a BIG step that takes lots of time and effort. You might have stopped any traction that your mom was getting with helping Lola readjust which can push any further healing she might need to do back by a lot.

You are allowed your feelings.
You’re allowed to feel jealous of Lola taking your time away from your mom/dad.
You’re allowed to voice those opinions: However you need to voice them to the proper people- Your Parents NOT LOLA. Lola is a literal child and you are basically almost an adult and it’s not fair to her that you’re acting so antagonistically toward her.

Questions for clarification:
Have your parents ever fostered before? Is this their first time? Do they know about Lola’s past situation(s)? Do they have the resources to help meet those needs? Do they have Lola in Therapy at all?

NAH. She’s not being a pain on purpose. How she reacts to situations more than likely have a deeper meaning to it. Your family doesn’t really seems to know what to do with a child from the system. Your parents; at least; would have been told her back story, and they should have talked to your siblings and you so everybody could understand where she is coming from. Group therapy wouldn’t be a bad idea either. From reading this i can see she has a problem with being around a lot of people. It amazing that she trusts your mother and sister like she does, but I don’t think that party should have happened. You are her foster family and if she can’t even eat at the same table with everybody yet, than a big party was the wrong move. Of course she wouldn’t have  been comfortable and would want who she trust to stay with her until all those people leave. Did your parents have a conversation with you before they decided to foster or just told you want was happening? You are probably feeling a type of way. You only had your parents to yourself for a little way before they moved another child in. 

You might be TA. I see nothing wrong with saying SOMETHING to her more along the lines of how she missed out on a nice time and people missed her, but without knowing her circumstances of why she’s in foster care in the first place, in her young head, specifically mentioning Mother’s Day may have gone a tad too far. That might be something very painful for her.

I also think your mother makes a mistake catering to her. Spending the day in her room with her might encourage the behavior. I’d have simply made sure she was okay, hugged her if Lola is OK with that and told her if she was feeling better later, I’d love to have her come back out. Then leave her alone.

I also understand how you might be feeling somewhat cheated or neglected. You may be 17, but you might have liked your home life as it was, and pictured your last couple of years turning out very different from what is now, and not having to share your parents. Have you tried befriending her. As the only other sibling still in the house, you might be the best bet to draw her out, assuming you can be patient.

YTA in this situation, but simultaneously not the worst person in the world.

I understand the need to like protect your mom, make her happy, etc. But also, your foster sister is 9 and traumatised, and your mother has decided to take it upon herself to take the responsibility to raise her. Missing a social affair might be a downer, but not the worst thing in the world.

My suggestion is to apologise, and perhaps reword yourself better. 17 is when the subtle skills of socializing grow exponentially, I believe in you.

Try to explain to your foster sister that in parties like that, a lot of aunts, uncles, and cousins came together and get together, and they perhaps don’t meet mom all that often, and they missed each other. Also, maybe offer to accompany her if there’s a get-together next time, so you and your mom can do tag team (you accompany her for a stretch, then get some air let your mom accompany her for another stretch, then it’s your turn again).

YTA.

Based on all of the behaviors, it sounds like Lola probably came from an abusive situation. She’s not acting like this to spite you, it’s something she can’t control because of her trauma, which can take years to process enough to be “functional”.

I get that you’re 17, but that’s still plenty old enough to understand that kids in foster care, while amazing kids deserving of just as much love as anyone else, are kids that have been through hell a lot of the time. Instead of emphasizing with her, you chose to berate her for things she can’t control because you refuse to understand her and her situation because it inconvenienced you.

You owe her a big apology, and if you want to understand her. You don’t have to love her, you don’t even have to like her, but you need to respect that she’s working through life experiences you never had to. I hope you take this as a learning opportunity and never treat her like this again.

NTA. You are a child that has needs too, and it sounds like your mom is neglecting you to take care of Lola when it’s clear that your mom doesn’t have the skills or experience to take good care of this particular foster child. Unfortunately, if your mom keeps Lola, this will be the new normal. They are going to think you are an AH as long as you don’t treat Lola the same way they do. Unfortunately, sometimes kids get forgotten about by the parent(s) when a high needs child comes into a home. You can share your feelings with them and see if it helps but if they are not receptive, I’d suggest you find and start building a support system somewhere else. Maybe with other family members who don’t live with you or with good friends and their families. It will help you not be so dependent upon your parents and you have more stable relationships to help you when you move out and are on your own. I wish you the best of luck! 

I’m not really fond of how you said this to her. May I ask, how often does the child get therapy and how often do you as a family get therapy together? What tools has therapy given you to help work through all of these issues? If you don’t do therapy, I suggest some for all of you as a unit and individually. You need therapy as an outlet and all of you need classes on how to incorporate a foster child with emotional issues into a household. She clearly has past damage that she needs help with, which is to be expected and you need to understand that the foster system is not a good place. You don’t know what this child has been through. I understand that you are only 17. I am not placing the responsibility on you, but please, as someone that personally has emotional issues myself, talk your parents into therapy-group and individually. 

You were deliberately cruel to a traumatized, presumably orphaned, possibly disabled, elementary school child.

Your main issue with this poor kid is that she has severe trauma around food, and therefore you don’t get to gorge on takeout on the reg? Your priorities are out of wack, this is absolutely bizarre. It’s been a couple of months and you’ve hyperfocused on the inconvenience of… not going to restaurants? Really?

Imagine if you were scared by something on mothers day when you were nine, and someone screamed at you that you ruined everything because your mother took the time to comfort you? Wouldn’t you think that person was awful and hateful?

If this isn’t fake then absolutely YTA

She’s 9, and she’s a foster child, so she’s had her mom taken away from her, and she n needs someone to hold on to. At your age, I don’t expect you to understand just how rare your parents are and how lucky that little girl is to be with your family, to be where people care for her. I’m sure she is being provided with the psychiatric care that she needs because of her circumstances, but it doesn’t work unless she had carrying parental figures and I’m so very very glad that your parents are there for her.

I’m a decade, maybe, you’ll look back and realize, hopefully, that’s she wasn’t running anything on purpose and she needed help.

You’re an AH. Read up on the challenges foster kids deal with. Food hiding is a common behavior among foster kids who’ve been denied food at various homes. There are strategies to break kids of this behavior that are compassionate and understanding.

Your family should all go see a family therapist who has worked with foster kids. Neither you nor your parents seem to understand you’re working with a traumatized child. Lola isn’t a rental kid to keep your parents company. You need professional help to understand Lola’s needs and establish reasonable expectations for her to help her heal and grow.

Ops mother is not able to meet the emotional needs of her biological kids. Op feels like her mother is being taken away from her and I understand. 17 is still a child, I don’t care, and her emotional needs are not being meet.

OP is just as human and will remember mothers day as a day where her mother put the need of a child she meet a few months ago before hers.

The only person who is AH here is your mother. Not sure how she didnt ask the children who were still living there if they were okay with this. She could have waited a year untill you left for uni.

YTA. That was just a mean spirited thing to say to a 9 year old girl who is clearly traumatised and just trying her best to cope. You have your family and it sounds like you always will – it was one Mother’s Day out of many and you, unprovoked, walked up to this poor girl and told her she ruined a day for a dozen or more people. You made her feel like an outsider (more than she already would have been) and ashamed. Why? You’re 17, you’re nearly an adult, you should know better. I think you made this post because you feel a bit guilty. You should.

She’s too young and probably too traumatized for that message to be appropriate. I think you should apologize to her, and also educate yourself on foster kids. You might tell your mom too that you’re sorry for any hassle that you caused with the sister, but it’s just because you love her and wanted her to have a nice day, and you understand now that she was probably too young for that message, and you probably don’t fully understand everything she’s gone through. Then give her a hug and move on.

Next time you are frustrated with your foster sister, speak to your mom, not her. She’s clearly struggling with many issues, but you’re struggling too. Your mother and your dad, if he’s in the picture, are the adults and should, therefore, handle any issues like this. Hopefully the foster is getting therapy. I’m going to give you a soft YTA for handling things badly, considering your age. I’m also giving one to the adults for having a party when they were aware of the 9yos issues.

NTA I’m mad for you and Lola OP. They should have waited another 2-3 years for you to mature or leave the house. Your parents started fostering out of empty nest syndrome and are forcing you to adapt to it in the last few years you have together before you’re out on your own forever. Lola is also suffering because your parents are clearly set on manufacturing this “big” family environment by throwing large family parties that they know will be overstimulating to Lola.

YTA without a doubt.

You have the privilege of being raised by your own family.
Kids don’t end up in foster care just because, they end up there because they’re severely abused.

Then, even though it is an abusive background, removing the kid is another stacked trauma.

You might try to see if you have ANY empathy at all.
She’s probably hiding food because it was a point of control where she came from oraybe she was even being starved.

YTA BIGTIME.

I hope this is rage bait.
Those are all signs that girl has experienced abuse you have no idea existed.
I suggest acting your age. You should calmly talk to your parents and let them know you aren’t comfortable with the current need level of the foster child.
It’s unhealthy for her to be in an environment where she feels uncomfortable.

Perhaps your parents could begin fostering again when you start college.

I don’t know if this is completely wrong, but anyone else get the slightest feeling that OP is actually referring to a Foster pet (dog)? New pet in the house can’t handle crowds or going out. Very picky on eating and clings to the first caring humans it came in contact with? Having a hard time adjusting to new home (being an older pet of 9 years of age).

You are absolutely the AH here. Foster kids often have issues that they need help working through. You are 17 and she is 9. You’re able to do more for yourself, she isn’t. You obviously grew up in a more stable environment, she didn’t. Hence being in the foster care system. Talk about a spoiled brat, that would be you.

I have to agree with the soft yta as you’re young and it seems fortunate enough to have grown up in a loving and supportive environment. Rather than being harsh with Lola, speak to your parents about feeling like things have changed and how you can still get some of the quality time you seem to be missing.

I am going to go NAH-My wife and I did foster and at her age she knows how to manipulate things. Your lack of knowledge about the situation doesn’t help. If you are leaving soon you may want to have a conversation with your parents about things. Be open but also mindful of things.

JFC yes, you are the AH.

This is a child in the foster care system who has undoubtedly experienced trauma. Put your big girl pants on and think of that rather than your own needs. You’re basically an adult and behaving like a 6 year old who doesn’t want to share their toys.

She’s nine. You should have had a talk with your mom after your foster sister was asleep. You were right to feel disappointed, but this is obviously a troubled young girl and she did not intentionally set out to ruin your mother’s day.

Yes – you are the asshole. Lola is 9. You are 17. Lola is in foster care for a reason. Mother’s Day is just another day with a title. It’s also about your mom – but you made Mother’s Day about you.

Soft YTA.

That little girl didn’t rush n Mother’s Day. Your mom just smothered her the way she needed to be smothered.

What the hell has happened to that poor kid on there short life?

Found this in a news app but knew I needed to comment that I’d bet Lola was food insecure in her life with her birth family, hence hiding food. She needs a therapist.

Simply not the asshole.  Lola needs to be evaluated and moved into a specialized home. So sorry for all the stress you are going through.