gardenhart
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You are so right, Magic Cat! Hit the proverbial nail on the head! CA was well aware of KC's problems and what she had done or could do. She must have been concerned about what was going to happen to Caylee, but failed to do anything that would have helped the situation. I would imagine that it started innocently enough. When KC was little and did something that warrented a time-out or a spanking, she would probably say something or do something cute and then CA would just let it slide. Heaven forbid that GA might want to spank "her" child! Then, the things that KC was doing probably got progressively worse, and instead of stepping in and doing what any good mother HAS to do at times while raising a child and turn that kid around and make them see that they are doing wrong and that it WILL NOT be tolerated, she just continued to "let it slide". And here we are today. I'm sure that CA saw the problems, was advised by family members, and as you say, told by the counselor, what really needed to be done in order to get to KC but CA didn't agree with these or didn't want to do them. There is none so blind as he who will not see.
What she most likely did was threaten and threaten and never actually deliver a spanking or a time out. That's exactly what she did with what the therapist recommended. If she'd been smart, she'd have taken the therapist's advice and quietly worked to get custody of Caylee, which I think she could have done and knew she could have done because of Casey's many thefts. Instead, she used getting custody as a threat. Confronting someone with empty threats never works.
The other telling thing here is that she did seek advice so she apparently did know there was something very badly wrong. I can't believe no one in the family ever noticed a problem before or that the therapist didn't also suggest trying to get Casey to get some kind of help. I know you can't force an adult to get treatment but she could have when Casey was younger. As far as we know, that was never done, later or earlier.
Someone posted here about their bipolar child, saying they understood Cindy's behavior. Well, aside from the fact that we don't know if Casey is bipolar, there's a big difference between struggling for years to help a child with a disorder and failing and hiding your head in the sand and ignoring or even enabling behavior that shows there is something wrong.