Alice in Wonderland

I don't know what to do about my sister (let's call her Alice), or what my mum can do.

She is two years youngers than me (she is 22), and is a bit crazy. She has always had behavioural and learning problems and has acted a lot younger than her age. My mum has taken her to doctors to find out what is wrong with her, but all they have said is that she has 'mild to moderate learning difficulties'.
Mum, in her quest for a quiet life, let Alice get away with a lot of stuff and gave her what she wanted a lot of the time. I've spoken about this a lot with my partner, he says that I was ignored as a child because Alice took up all of my parent's time and attention. I can't say I've suffered particularly, I certainly never really noticed (although looking back, I think he's right). I have grown up to be a very quiet, inward person and I like to spend time by myself. If I spend too much time with other people I start feeling all squashed. I don't blame my parents though, she can be very difficult and nobody knew what to do with her. We had quite a strange childhood, our mum and dad never married and my mum married my stepdad when I was 12. Our parents and our stepdad and his wife were all friends before stepdad and wife split up and mum married stepdad.
Anyway, we're all grown up now and where I've come out of our slightly unorthodox upbringing unscathed and a happy, contributing member of society; my sister has come out badly behaved, with questionable morals and is completely spoilt.
What I don't understand is why she can't change. Perhaps somebody might read this who is a psychologist or something!
Alice's characteristics:

• Her mood can change from happy to unreasonably grumpy very quickly
• She is not very concious of personal hygiene. She still doesnt brush her teeth regularly and needs to be prompted to shower, was her face etc.
• She can sometimes be very unself-aware (is that a word) and not seem to notice that she is talking very loudly (usually something inapproriate on a crowded bus) or that her trousers have half fallen down and her arse is showing.
• She is sometimes very self concious and gets really shy.
• She repeats the same things over and over again, and is constantly talking and talking and doesn't stop. She goes over the same subjects again and again, e.g. 'you're 2 years older than me aren't you? so when I'm 30 you'll be 32. Won't you? Yeah, you'll always be older than me. Won't you? Yeah. Mum is 20 years older than you isn't she? So when she's 50, you'll be 30?'. That is all just her, she speaks but answers her own questions. I have had this conversation with her over and over and over.
• You can't have a proper conversation with her, if you respond to something she's said, a lot of the time she'll say something completely unrelated.
• She is always thinking about what she can have next. If she's eating, she wants a drink. If she's drinking, she wants something to eat. If she's got any money, she must spend it straight away, on anything. She finds it really difficult to save up for anything.
• She steals money from her family and from other people. She used to nick my stuff a lot when we were teenagers, but that was more just bad little sister stuff I think. I live quite far from her now and so she comes to stay for a weekend every month or so. We have to keep our money out of the way. Last time we didn't worry about it so much because we started to trust her and she took £10. She completely denied it, and I tried to be really reasonable about it, and looked for any other explanation for it going missing, but there was none and it was in a place she could have found it. About a year ago, she got a work placement in a supermarket and stole £200 from the locker she was sharing with a co-worker. She got in trouble with the police over that, and seemed to get better, but it looks like she is slipping back.
• She runs away from home sometimes. Last time was about two months ago, she went missing for a week and nobody could contact her. It turned out she was staying with some alcoholic bum she met in the park, at his grotty house in a village about 15 miles from where she lived. She's really trusting and naive, if she thinks someone seems nice she will go with them. She came back in the same clothes she had been wearing all week and was sick from the dirty conditions there. She had got really drunk and that contributed a lot towards her decision to go. When she got back she seemed really sorry, and focused on being good.

Despite these things, she really, really cares about her family, she can be quite soppy. It's like there's two sides of her. There's good Alice, who wants to be good and lose weight and stop hanging around with the local kids and get mates her own age and stop stealing and running away, and there's bad Alice who is grumpy and selfish and dirty and steals and drinks and doesn't care about anybody.

She has a social worker, and she has improved since then. She has a volunteer work placement in a kitchen for a centre for disabled people and she really loves it. She wants to move out one day and live by herself.

I don't know if there's anything I can do to understand her better or to get her to behave better. I can see that she's quite frustrated with this struggle inside herself. We just need to get bad Alice to go away and never come back, and leave us with good Alice!

I don't like it when people talk about her being crazy and bad, or cast their own horrible opinions and theories about her. Sometimes we go out and I can see people laughing at her and it makes me sad for her. It's probably a lot more difficult for her than a lot of people think, and they just dismiss her as stupid and mad.

I also feel guilty for getting angry with her, or for secretly wishing she was normal.

Woo, that was a long post! I just needed to get all that off my chest, I've never really written about Alice before. Its all so complicated and I don't think we'll ever get to the bottom of how she works, or what can get her to be good Alice forever!