My husband and I are fostering a 15 yo who came from a very traumatic background including drugs and sexual abuse. She self describes as a "hoodrat" or "**bleep**" and while we discourage this behavior she has always displayed this behavior as superficial and not acting on it in real life. We gave her our trust and she has been able to spend overnight visits with her Grandma in her hometown and has a new iphone with no restrictions on it. She tells us about stuff she does that's sketchy but it's never too bad and we talk about the consequences, etc.
However, we recently discovered she's been lying and manipulating us the whole time. Her birth mother in an attempt to lash out at the girl told us about a number of very disturbing events where she displayed unacceptable behavior while she was supposed to be spending the night at her Grandma's. The more we dig into this the more we found out about her lies. We'll ask her about it and she'll admit to something, then a day or two later we find out there's much more to the story.
I don't understand why she has been lying like this. We feel she is a danger to herself with her poor behavior (engaging in risky activity with strangers, etc), and now we know she cannot be trusted. She's had her phone, computer, social media, and friend privileges revoked - she's also not allowed to have overnight visits anymore.
I don't want to have to strap this kid to my chest to keep her safe, I want to give her some freedoms and trust but she has violated that trust over and over again. We're new to this parenting thing so if anyone has advice on parenting teens, especially those with trauma - please, we're all ears.
