6 yo niece & 5 yo nephew found mom passed out drunk on kitchen floor
One of my older sisters is living life as if she's in her own world, unaware of how her actions are affecting her two children. She drinks mostly every weekend and leaves her children at Grandma's (my mom's) house. If not, she invites her gang of friends over to her home, drinking and karaoking all night while her children are upstairs listening.
There was one morning where they found her sprawled on the kitchen floor, passed out drunk. They thought she had died and cried until she woke up. (They told this to me later in a nonchalant manner). I feel like they are so used to this behavior, it's become normal for them. Now every time we drink on special occasions, my niece cries, thinking her mom will turn "crazy." My niece would beg for my sister to not drink, but my sister would continue to drink. And my sister makes up for it by buying presents for my niece the next day which does not work.
My sister doesn't spend enough time with her children. On weekdays, she gladly drops them off at school. While she doesn't work because she has child support and has assistance from the state, she seldom picks them up after school. My niece told me once that she was sad because her mom never spends time with her but would spend time with her friends. My nephew seems to not care anymore.
My sister creates an unhealthy relationship between the children and their father. She swings back and forth between her ex-husband, one day he's with them, the next he's kicked out. She doesn't discuss to them about any of it or try to explain to them. She blames her faults on on everyone especially him by calling him names and telling lies about him. (He's not a great person either, but he is still their father).
There are so much more craziness to this story especially when I think about my niece - my poor niece who has been body-shamed by her mom since she was four, who had spent many nights at a women's shelter home with her mom when she was just two years old. She grew up sleeping on a dirty, old mattress on my parent's living room floor while her mother was going through divorce.
My niece and nephew are such intelligent and talented people! They have so much potential to do great, but I know my sister is hindering them, leading them down a dangerous path. It makes me so sad to see this happen to innocent children and I'm so torn to see the experience of how it turns them into bad people.
The rest of the sisters and I have been there for my niece and nephew through all this in the best ways we think we know. All of us talk to them about these things, take them to go do fun things, and attend their school activities. But I feel like our efforts are not enough simply because they know we are not her biological mother and they want her there for them, yet they are too young to understand fully the situation and the type of person their mother is...
I don't know what to do to make my niece and nephews feel better. I need a lot of advice and encouragement.