My stepdaughter is turning 19 in just a few weeks. She lives with her mother about 4 hours away from us. She was in a high school/college program to be on track to graduate high school and also have an AA through a community college which should have happened actually last year, but she kept telling us the counselors didn't know what they were doing and she wasn't taking the right classes, which I highly doubt. We were then told she'd be graduating this summer, which didn't happen because she was still missing a couple of high school graduation requirements. She told us she was going to take a summer class to catch up, but then didn't and told us she'd wait until the fall quarter. Well, turns out she isn't going back to school, at least not this quarter. So not only doesn't she have her AA, she doesn't have her high school diploma! She also got a job back in July, but was only there for a month before quitting, telling us that everyone had an agenda against her. It's pretty much the same excuse she told us when she had another job the previous year and then up and quit after a month. So now she's not going to school and not working. She says she has anxiety and thinks she will fail at school. Apparently the "anxiety" is keeping her from working too, but she has no problem buying a bunch of expensive makeup and dying her hair from blond to red to brown whenever she feels like it and going on road trips with friends and being on Facebook all day long.Don't ask me where the money is coming for all that. I'm sure her mother is giving her an allowance of some kind.

My husband thinks he can "fix" her or "help" her if he got her away from her mother and she came to live with us. He doesn't ask about her classes, if she's seeing anyone, if she has a job. Conversations on Facebook are pretty much kept to "We should go see this movie" or you should check out this video game". She hasn't ever even visited for more than 3 weeks since I've known her but he thinks at 19 she should move in?? I mean he hasn’t seen her since late May. Keeps telling her he’ll come down and visit but then never goes. Has only talked to her on the phone once since that and that’s when she called him on Father’s Day. There’s a bit of back and forth on Facebook, but that’s it. There’s no fatherly effort on his part until things go badly on her end when she says she’s not working or going to school and then he thinks he has to intervene and get her away from her mother and say how wonderful it would be if she moved up here and worked and she could “find herself” and paints this great picture, but in the end, it will be the same old thing. He’ll sit and play video games all night while I go nuts sitting on the couch with her while she plays on her phone for hours on end. Just like every visit. He will have a 5 minute talk with her about how she needs to get her life together and she will promise she will, but will do nothing about it and he won’t push her. He will be just like her mother and want her to be his friend and not hae her angry at him. The only thing that will change is now we have another person in the house to provide for. He is so hell bent on getting her up here even though I have told him numerous times I don't want her living with us. She was never with us for more than a few weeks before (and that was at age 15/16) and now he wants a nearly 19 year old to live with us because it will let her "find herself". Changing her geography isn't going to help her. She doesn't have any friends here but he just feels he has to intervene. She can get a job up here, even work with him, and then go to school up here. She can do all that down there as well, but she chooses not to using anxiety as a reason as to why she can't do anything.

Do you think he should try and help her by moving her up here? I mean he's a mess himself! No money (so lets spend even more money we don't have on her), skips out on work sometimes just because (but he says he can get her a job with him), but he thinks he can improve her and motivate her.