To ask what to do if your children hate each other.

[Sunblushbugs]

Ds is 12 and a half and I’m starting to find him extremely difficult.
He HATES his younger sibling. Properly hates them and is vile to them a lot of the time. There’s absolutely nothing he wants to do if they are there. He has outgrown most things now but because he has ASD he doesn’t really have any friends to do things with. He’s done two weeks of sports camp this summer holiday but has moaned 24/7 the rest of the time.
He is extremely negative about everyone else and constantly putting his sibling down. He’s just really hard. I’d say he’s always been harder because of the ASD but I’m finding this the hardest part so far. He seems so angry. He told me this evening he will never forgive me for having his sibling and that it has ruined his life. He says he hates them and he’d be happy if they died.
His sister - aged 6 - loves him. She’s actually very easy going and I think he find that difficult too because the social part comes easily to her. She’s not as bright as him but she hasn’t got the side dose of finding life tricky that he does. She doesn’t antagonise him or anything, she’s just her.
He’s so unkind to her though.
I’ve tried explaining to him that she is 6 and he is 12 and that’s why there are different expectations. For example he kicked off tonight because we played a game and I was giving her slightly longer to think of the answers. Because she is only just 6. But he doesn’t see it that way, he said she was cheating, then he lost his temper, threw the whole thing in the air and stormed off.
There’s no allowance made by him for the fact she is so much younger.
When she does writing I will praise her and he will say ‘she can’t even spell’ or ‘your handwriting is rubbish, I don’t know why you’re pleased with that.’
I praise him as much as I can and I honestly feel like I am EXTREMELY patient but I’m worried about the impact on dd. It’s quite nasty some of the time and I cannot leave them alone together even for a minute.
It does make me dislike ds at times but I know if he were happier he wouldn’t do it. I’ve tried spending time with him 1:1, doing a game or activity every evening when she is in bed, trying to involve him with her, talking to him about it, removing electronics for being unkind, social stories etc but NOTHING makes any difference. This summer holidays has been fairly unbearable and I cannot wait for him to go back to school which makes me feel like a terrible parent. Had he been an only one, he’d have been great. He’s just so jealous.

All I can suggest is separate them and try to divert your son into something more positive. I know it sounds facile, but his brain is pre-programmed to be a bit single track, and at the moment he's hooked into a negative obsession. Crowd it out with something more fun, use that single track thinking to the good. I would steer away from talking about their relationship etc with him, just make it not interesting and encourage a different interest to take over. It gets harder and harder to do this as they get older though. What's he currently into?

Sounds really tough OP.
Agree with the advice to keep them apart as much as possible, at least for now.

What I will say, is that I was a jealous older sibling, and what struck home for me and melted my bristly heart a little was was when my little sister showed affection for me, without mum being there. Without mum, the competition element went away. In fact, to this day I get on better with my sister when mum isn’t there. It’s strange, but there you go. My mood just lifts and I relax when it’s the both of us alone.

As a teen, times when I could be “big sister” and she would look up to me, and was no threat to me in any way… those times soothed my ego and I was nicer to her. And when she was bullied in school, I was there to be the supportive ‘saviour’ sister and that helped build the relationship too. If we went to town together, I was in changed of keeping her safe, looking after the money and watching the clock.
I realise I sound obnoxious, but in years growing up while I had a fragile self esteem and a silly ego, this was what worked. I needed to feel unthreatened in my ‘superior’ role.
As adults we get on well now. I do recognise I am the jealous one and keep a check on my feelings.
I wonder if you can manage situations to minimise competition and maximise opportunities for your son to take a sort of ‘leader and protector’ role?

My kids hate each other and always have 2 boys one with autism one without, they fight and argue daily, people say to separate them but I’m not really sure how that’s possibly, they share a room as it’s the only option

My sister was the jealous older sibling too. As a poster above said she was also better when my mum wasn't around - still is the same when we're in our 30's! These patterns are set deep it seems and she's still envious when my mum spends time with me. No ASD just an overindulged child who couldn't bear to share the attention when I came along.

Being the saviour/leader also helps soothe her ego - she thrives in this role, however encouraging that comes with its own risks as in early adulthood she was always happier and confident when I was foundering and struggled when I was in a happy/settled phase as she lost her ego boost. It's really not a healthy dynamic and I was infantilised a lot which does impact on self esteem.

*floundering

I hated my brother growing up. Completely hated him. I remember screaming at my mum about why she made me continue to live with him and seriously telling her I'd kill him if I could get away with it. We were close in age but had nothing in common. It was an all out battle ground most of the time with physical fights, throwing things, deliberately destroying each others property, making up lies to get each other in trouble. My mum came close to having a breakdown. It didn't get better until I moved out at age 18 and then after a period of quiet tolerance we became quite good friends as adults. Never really close but we've got on well for 20 years now and have even holidayed together a few times with our kids.

Try and persevere, it should work out OK in the end.

Tough situation there OP

I’m also struggling

My only advice is to get expert support on coping with asd

This is a very tough one and some advice is needed both for him and also protecting your D

I wish I had advice , but I’m in the same different boat

Asd and puberty’s a very tough one

@PumpkinKlNG I came here to say exactly the same.
We have these exact issues. Ds 8 has asd and adhd. Ds 6 is NT. The fighting is endless. They are both horrible to each other, mostly verbally. The younger one wants the older one to play all the time. Seperating them is no good. For a start they have to share a room. And there is only one room for them to be in downstairs. Younger ds when we do manage to have them apart cries the whole time demanding the older comes back to play with him. Older ds wants younger ds to play often as he enjoys controlling games, and younger ds seems to enjoy being the controlled one . But the fighting and explosions (explosions from older ds mostly) are awful. I've asked his paediatrician for help for older ds. Got nowhere. Apparently there is no help for this.

It’s a nightmare isn’t it, I bought them a toy each today and my older one kept trying to take the younger ones toy, I told him not to repeatedly but he wouldn’t listen, it got to the point Where I had to separate them and send one to the bedroom but he spend the whole time calling down to the other one that he is going to throw his toys away, going to break them etc all for attention I don’t know how people manage to separate them especially when they are younger children

@AmyDudley

I just wanted to give

Because I am 20 years younger and could have written that word for word.

I find my older sister EXTREMELY difficult to be around and try and have bare minimum contact.

Hi OP.

I was the younger sister of a bullying, awful older brother. He loathed me. The more I tried to keep away from him, the angrier he would get.
He has never improved as an adult and we are no contact now.

I want to say you are absolutely doing the right thing by never leaving them alone together. It must be so hard. Please realise that this might have to continue until your son leaves home. I know the idea of not being able to leave a 12 year old and an 18 year old home along together sounds crazy, but your DD needs to be protected.

My parents utterly failed my brother and I, and did not protect me or get him the help you needed. You sound like you are not in denial at all, which is a great start.

Things that would helped me as a child-

1. Acknowledgement that my brother’s treatment of me was outside the bounds of normal sibling behaviour. It would have meant the world to me if my parents said, “Hey. It’s not ok how he treats you. You don’t deserve that. We don’t know how to fix it but understand that we see it”.
2. Not being left alone with him as a latch key kid. My parents got completely absorbed in their small business and we were left alone in evenings and all weekends and school holidays. Don’t do this!
3. A good counsellor for your son who is united with you in working specifically on his behaviours towards your youngest.

I would strongly encourage both of your children to understand that the family expectations for their adult living is independent from the family home. Start discussing with your son about residential halls for uni and frame it in a positive way. Make it your family expectation that post-education, you want your children to flat share. If your son is mainly out of the home as a young adult, your daughter can enjoy her teenage years in peace.

On a final note, my oldest is a very rigid thinker too, who struggles to make allowances for his younger sisters. He can get outraged if they can’t spell a word or if they are treated in an age-appropriate way that is different in the slightest from how he is treated. I spend a lot of time of thinking of examples of what he could and couldn’t do when he was the age of this sisters and constantly, gently remind him of these instances.
It does seem to be slowly sinking in.

Good luck.

Wow op, My childhood ,in a nutshell.

Big sister hated me with a passion..it was bullying. From small children up til I went no contact with her years ago. (We're in our 30's)
As a kid I ran around after her desperate to be liked,hoping.

When I got to my 20's I couldn't take it anymore. It was full on abuse but was seen as the norm in my house by then.

I was hounded to keep trying..told to forgive each and every time.
It severely affected all my relationships outside the home.

So with that as my personal experience, my advice is dont push them to be 'friends' or spend time or put up with each other.

Keep them apart if you must.
Don't force a relationship..as sad as it is.
And encourage your daughter away from him if she is 'bothering ' him

I can empathise with him a bit. I really hated my younger sibling for a while.

Things that really didn't help:
Dm telling me how much he "adored me" (I still don't think he did!)
Dm pushing him to do what I did and then telling me how brilliant he was at it.
Dm giving him my things to "borrow" (they never came back undamaged)
Dm telling me I had to make allowances because he was younger.
Dm dropping everything to do something for/with him (because he was younger so I was expected to understand that he couldn't entertain himself)
Dm telling I couldn't join in because they were doing something together, but always expecting me to allow him to join.
Any games we played allowances were made to extremes for him. I was expected to have the same as the adults. For example trivial pursuits (which I am very bad on) dm would read through the questions until she found one she thought he might know-then he got several guesses and if he still didn't guess got a second question.

Just read through those. I suspect you do at least the first one.
It really does not help.

It comes across as "oh your younger sibling is just perfect so everyone loves them, whereas you should be grateful for any grains of acceptance."

I felt I couldn't "win" on anything we both did-and he always had to do what I did. If I did better, then it was expected as I was older. If he did half as well as me it was taken as a sign of genius.
Anything I got, he had to have because "otherwise he felt left out", even if I'd been told I couldn't have something until a specific age.

Also do remember when he was 6yo you had a 2yo. I bet he had to fend far more on his own at 6yo than she does? I know my eldest would have chosen her clothes dressed herself and made her own breakfast by 3yo. #3 when they started school still struggled with dressing and definitely wouldn't have made their own breakfast-why should they? If I wasn't available, they had 2 willing big sisters to help
So when he's saying "you do far more for her", he's probably right. Out of necessity, it's probably right!

What would have helped: Time apart. Doing our own things and being accepted that we each had our own talents.
Time spent with you when she's awake too. You spend time after she's in bed. Great... but maybe in his mind you give him the crumbs of your time when she's asleep. You give her the time and ignore him. At 6yo she's old enough to do something on her own while you play with him.
Give him advantages of being older. Maybe he can have a phone, or more pocketmoney, or trust him to do things. Maybe ask him to help choose something - when it doesn't matter, let him make a decision about the new printer you're getting.
Take interest in what he's interested in. Let him explain while you listen to him.

You want them to both feel you value them for who they are. Currently he feels you don't value him for who he is.

The good news is that I do get on with my brother now. It really took until i left home and there was space between us (sorry). But I think that things dm did which she thought would push us together, the sharing of mutual interests etc actually drove us further apart.

If you can't leave them alone together for even a minute I think you need to speak to you GP about getting professional help for your son.

It won’t always be this way, and if it is any consolation, a psychologist told me that siblings of children with additional needs often develop huge empathy and can go into caring roles when they grow up, like nurses and occupational therapists etc.

Or they can end up like me and cut all contact with the autistic sibling after years of emotional and physical abuse (from the sibling) and minimising of what I faced (from everyone else).

OP it's critical here that he not be allowed to get away with the behaviour and that there's no "oh he can't help it, he has autism, you must forgive" spiel given to your daughter. No, she doesn't have to tolerate it or forgive him. Putting that expectation on her can do a lot of mental harm. While you're not in the situation I was in - though at that age my brother was much the same, if not less aggressive than that - you need to be very wary.

I have two Autistic dc.

Dd has been jealous as hell of dd from the day he dared to be born.

Ds is also jealous of dd..... And anyone who dares take my attention for that matter.

I don't tiptoe around them, I do however acknowledge their jealousy and why theyre having those feelings. We discuss it as its often shining a light on a bigger picture which isn't even about their sibling. It does work....... Well until the next time one starts.

So sorry to hear this. Just wanted to say you sound like an excellent mum. Favouritism is always hard and unfortunately easier kids are often shown preference even though it’s often unconscious. Of course you need to protect your daughter but your son is also unhappy as you’ve flagged. Try and treat them to 1-1 time where you can and if your daughter is sociable it may well be she can build confidence on play dates, summer camps etc.

At least you’ve noticed the issue and are pulling him up on it. Slightly unorthodox idea, could you video him being horrible to her and then when you’re alone together play it back to him and ask what he thinks. (Then delete it, in front of him). My DS is younger, but went through a truly awful phase, fortunately directed at me rather than DD. I was using my phone once and flipped it on to record, mainly intending to show DH because he wouldn’t believe what I said about Ds’s behaviour. We watched it together, talked about it and DS was really shocked to see how he was acting and there was a marked improvement in his behaviour.