Thirteen Going On Thirty

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My youngest niece is 13 years old and she is a mess. When I first moved in with my sister in 1998 this child was about four years old and she was acting like she was grown then. While I lived there, she calmed down a lot. A few years ago, my sister says that she is now running the house. When I first moved in there, I was not use to dealing with spoiled out of control children. So I had a no non-sense approach to dealing with them. One night when she was four years old, she was sitting on the floor in her mother's room playing a video game. Her mother was in another room calling her over and over again. When the child did not acknowledge her mother's calling, I said, Brittany, your mother is calling you. To which she replied, wait. I repeated myself, but before I could finish she cut me off by saying, I said wait. Pop, my hand slapped her on the arm. I said, you get up right now and go see what your mother wants. She got up immediately and went to her mother whining that I had hit her. I battled with all six of those children day and night. Until I finally started realizing that these children were not the problem, their parents were. Nothing ever changed. When I would talk to my sister about it, she would laugh it off as if she did not care. Now this child is thirteen years old and the teachers at school were constantly calling my sister at work. Then they got mad at her, because nothing was changing. So they said that they would start calling her father. Things would change for a little while, but then go right back to normal. The family just recently set out to move to Atlanta and my sister was telling me how happy the teachers looked when she checked her out of school. She said that Brittany has a surprise coming because the teachers in that school only cared about their paycheck, but the teachers in Atlanta are not going to put up with it. I was thinking to myself, no they are not going to tolerate it. They are going to suspend/expell her and send her home. For some reason, my sister and her husband is looking for the schools to raise their children properly. Teachers do not get paid enough for that and it is not their job in the first place. It is the parents job to teach their children how to behave. I feel sorry for the children, because their parents are not doing them any favors by spoiling them. It is mainly my sister's husband. When they were younger, if my sister tried to discipline them, her husband would have the kids hit her. He said he wanted spoiled rich kids. Well, he did manage the spoiled part. I just hope that Brittany will see the error of her ways and change as she gets older, like the rest of them are doing. Because that child is a mess and a half. I love her too much to see her go down the wrong road.