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I haven't posted about my niece and nephew in a minute, but some bad stuff went down yesterday so.. I don't know, SZ. Maybe you have insight.

My nephew is now 16. He was 8 when he was removed from his mother's home and he has always understood that she was an alcoholic. At this point in his life, he understands that both his parents have drug problems. He's never invested very heavily in his mother, and his dad has about a year sober, so of course this affects him heavily. And he has always said he would have preferred not to know growing up.

The challenge is my niece. She wasn't even two when she was removed from the home. She's so much more sheltered from her parents addictions than her older brother(s -- though he's not really a factor in this story, they do have another brother who is 18) and while she understands her mother is "sick" we haven't gotten into big detail on what that means. Essentially "Your mother has an illness and sometimes it makes her mean" is the conversation my mom had with her years ago.

Yesterday my mother was unpacking her backpack just after she returned from visiting her mother and found a make-up case. It was full of drug paraphernalia, including used needles. Apparently they had gone swimming on the weekend and she put it in my niece's bag to carry and forgot about it. My niece has been carrying it around since Sunday at least. It's been to day camp. Needless to say, we are very freaked out.

We had a conversation with her in the winter, against my nephew's advice, about needles and what to do if she sees one. But I think we have to have a conversation about what is actually going on with her mother. She's 10 now. The illness is getting worse. Here are some warning signs:

* Niece has started to get very agitated about alcohol. She gets very upset when she sees hard liquor, particularly. This started last summer.

* A few weeks ago I was packing up in front of her and muttering under my breath "keys, wallet, charger, drugs..." She spun around and demanded I explain what I meant. I meant a small bottle of Advil, but received the third degree about my entire personal history with drugs, alcohol and tobacco. She said she hated all those things (great! keep that up!) And I promised I'd always be sober when she was with me and I was responsible for her.

* She's started to get sad at her mother's. In the winter, she called me while visiting her mother and cried when her grandmother made her end the call. Recently she was supposed to be there for a week and she begged to come home after four days.

My position for a few years now has been that we tell her what we need to for safety and then answer any and all questions honestly. But at this point I think she's protecting her mom and feels like she can't tell us stuff. The bag of needles has really broken this whole thing open, though. I'm not in charge of this situation but I do want to figure out the best way to talk to her about it, particularly when her mother is still using. Most of the resources I've found online are about a parent going to rehab and I cannot stress how much that is not the case here. And if you read this and think "Good God, why does she visit her mother at all?" -- her mother has legal rights and as nuts as it seems, we have to send her. We can cut back visitation to some degree, but we can't currently prevent it. At one point, the visitation was supervised (and it's supposed to still be supervised by her grandmother, but we can't enforce that in their home and we KNOW she has overnights with my niece where no one else is present. Her grandmother is pretty bad about this stuff.)

Oh! And one last thought. These are technically my step-niece and nephew, so when I talk about my brothers, neither is her dad. Her father is a whole other situation, but I give him full credit for his sobriety and he is actively participating in her care right now.

Anyway. I love this kid like mad. I'm very scared for her. Any thoughts about how to talk to a 10 year old whose mother is a hardcore addict with no signs of stopping, I'm all ears.