AIBU to not have sister and her autistic child (nephew) in my home.

[BetUWanna]

Hi all,

I'll try and give as much detail here with trying to remain anonymous. I've NC for this as this will have outing details in it. I'm here to ask for some genuine advice and opinions on a current situation with my family. I'll try not to drip feed so this may be long.

i (30F) have an older sister aged 33. She is my half sister with us sharing 1 parent.
she has 2 children, 5 and 11, one who is autistic (diagnosed) and the other is NT. I also have a 4 year old myself.
She was young when she had her son who was diagnosed autistic when he was 8. I want to preface that she is a single mum, with both kids having different dads, so I'm not saying for a second that this is easy for her at all. I genuinely love her with my whole heart, but our relationship is suffering hugely due to her son's behaviour. She came to stay for Christmas at my home for 5 days. Some of the instances that happened over Christmas:
We were playing board games in the lounge, my nephew said he was going to watch his iPad. I had a Christmas tree at the top of my stairs, and while we were playing games he picked off each bauble individually and threw each one down stairs and most of them smashed to pieces. There was glass everywhere and there were little children who could have hurt themselves.
he picked up one of the pillows on the bed he was sleeping on, took it to the bathroom and peed on it. Left it there for me to find it. He ate his Christmas dinner with his bare hands, slapping gravy over his face and genuinely making a mess. He picked up a glass, launched it across my kitchen which ultimately chipped my wall and smashed. He refuses to use any sort of cutlery whatsoever. He refuses to brush his teeth, to the point he has black, rotted teeth at the front of his mouth. He's apparently been to the dentist and it's 'fine.' He hits, kicks and pushes my sister and the younger children including his younger sibling. I'm worried about my niece who has to live with this and the effects this is having on her. I have offered countless times for her to sleepover at mine with my DD, but it's declined each time.
He scribbled over my walls and regularly went outside to pee in my garden.

He is incredibly intelligent and my sister says he is high functioning, but i don't know if this is accurate. He is home educated and goes to his dad's house every other weekend. My sisters house is clean, he doesnt wreck things in his house, but if someone comes over his house he will start to lash out and misbehave. He will call us names and tell us he hates us.
I am worried for my sister as he is aged 11 and the same height as me, she cannot control or restrain him at all as he is just too strong. She has had training / classes for this but he is too strong. There is no respite for her. My relationship, and the whole families, is suffering now. We don't want to go to her house because he will lash out, mainly at her. We don't want him at our houses, because he trashes the place and can, at times, cause danger to other family members. What is the answer? My sister works hard home educating her children, and works part time when they are at their dads.

I can see this whole situation is isolating her from the outside world as she lives in fear of her son. I want to offer support, but aside from being a listening ear, I don't know what else I can do. I unfortunately won't allow him in my home now, as I have to keep my DD safe and I will not allow her safe space to be compromised. Which means my sister and niece don't come over, as they are always together.

can anybody please advise me on how / what I can do? Will this ever get better? She won't call out his behaviour as she is too frightened of him, which I understand. But it's straining our relationship hugely.

my relationship with my sister is hanging on by a thread. She has other friends and family members but they all seem to be in the same position as us which is isolating her further and resulting in her losing friendships. I am heartbroken for her. Please can anybody share any words of wisdom or any advice. My parents are in the same situation as me, they cannot cope with his behaviour in their home and their house has also been trashed over the years.

ultimately this is a disabled child who is being gloriously let down by the system.

thank you.

If he’s homeschooled, he hasn’t learnt the social conventions of being with other people, and Christmas was too overwhelming for him.

However, that behaviour is not to be tolerated, and your sister ignoring it is not helping him. Probably be flamed, but sometimes adhd-like behaviour is due to poor parenting and lack of boundaries, rather than being a fault of the condition itself.

Has your sister tried to get a good school place for him, and failed, or decided to do the homeschool route?

He successfully uses the toilet at home, and has done every other time he's stayed with us. This was the first time it's happened.

The homeschooling has been her decision from the offset.

the sad thing is, she is very very different to us as a family. She wasn't like this before she had children. She believed in modern medicine and was an all round street wise cool bonus sibling that I adored.

we have next to nothing in common now and it's breaking my heart.

Seeing your posts about her not using conventional medicine and her reasons for home-ed I am very sad for her kids and worried for your niece's safety. I would speak to social services and keep offering respite for your niece. School would be such an escape for her and the right school would do so much for your nephew.

I don't have my nephews in my house for similar but not as extreme reasons.

I'm not going to comment on his behaviour, there could be many many reasons behind it and contributing to it.
I will say please don't give up on your sister. As hard as this is for you and the rest of your family it is so, so much harder for her. Even if you can't help in practical ways (which it sounds you can't), just be there to listen, or see her on her own if at all possible.

For the sake of your niece, I'd be contacting social services.

Despite having a forty year career teaching autistic children in specialist schools, my immediate concern is with the girl. If she doesn't attend school, she has no respite from her brother at all. And I'm only too aware how incredibly hard it can be for siblings of such children. This young girl also has a mum with mental health issues. Her home life must be very stressful.

I think there's a level of neglect here, yes. I know it will be hard for you to contact social services, but I think you need to put your niece's welfare above your sister.

Thank you, I will give this some serious consideration.

How can he be let down by professionals if she's choosing not to access medical and education supports? It's incredibly frustrating that the blame always jumps to service provision when this is clearly not the case

Okay a few posters have advised that I need to speak to social services.

I will make the call in the morning. I guess this thread has been a bit of a push that I needed. I'm not going to pretend to know much about autism, as I don't. I don't know what typical behaviours there are and what's not.

I will call social services first thing in the morning.

Please see my previous posts, I have retracted that statement.

The boy needs to be in school. Special schools have a lot of experience in handling challenging behaviour and helping families. If he is not in school, things will only get worse.

how you persuade her to send him to school is a different problem.

This poor little lad has rotten teeth, is denied medicine, doesn't get an education and sounds completely feral and stir-crazy.
This isn't just poor discipline OP, this is neglect.

Please contact social services for your nephew, this is not normal and he is in danger

I strongly advise you to get her to take her child to the GP and seak a CAMHS referral. Both your sister and your nephew need serious help right now. Family therapy, or child psychotherapy with concurrent parent work. If she refuses, you really need to phone social services so they can get some support put in place.

This is the big danger with home schooling - children completely hidden and getting no support. I'm sorry but these children need professional intervention ASAP.

I'm sorry but if this is the case, what do you mean by 'he's been let down by the system'?

ETA: Sorry, I see you've already answered this.

I have absolutely no chance. The whole family have brought up this subject may a time. It's one of the biggest reasons why her relationship is so fractured with us. It's sadly turning into an 'us vs her' type scenario and I am just so fucking sad about it all.

I have since retracted the statement. I assumed that because I see it written on here all the time but I'm evidently trying not to blame her. But it's clear to see that she isn't helping herself in this situation and has nothing to do with the professionals.

I don't know the process of being diagnosed with autism, that after diagnosis then that's it, you're left to your own devises.

This sounds so incredibly hard for everyone involved and I really feel for you all. I agree with previous posters who expressed concerns about his sister. It sounds like they all need help to be honest. Is there someone who could speak to her that she will potentially listen to? Could you speak to the boy’s father? Where is he in all this?

Sorry but a lot of this behaviour is down to parenting, I have two autistic kids on both sides on the spectrum and neither behave like that.
He needs to be in a SEN school, he’s being let down by his parents.
Yanbu not to let him round, I wouldn’t neither.

This is actually so sad for all involved. There needs to be more studies, treatment, support etc for kids with autism and their families. My son has 2 friends who each have an autistic sibling. Each have over the years said how much their older brothers beat them up, break their things etc and this all gets excused because they’ve got autism. Thats traumatic for kids to be constantly beat up by their older siblings and for parents to let them away with it. Those kids with violent siblings must feel so let down and so unsafe at home. It’s awful and we are going to have a whole lot of adults in the future who have been let down tremendously by their parents because theyve let siblings away with this behaviour because they are ND. I feel so bad for your niece and I hope she’s never on the receiving end. Your sister needs to seriously wise up. Just because he has autism doesn’t mean he gets a free pass. She has to raise him to be able to live a healthy happy life and able to live as normal a life as possible when he’s older. And doesn’t sound like she’s doing that.

Therein lies the real problem, I think. The child has never been disciplined and never experienced any consequences from his inappropriate behaviour.

That is, I'm sorry to say, a failure on his parents' part.

It will be so much more difficult to teach him now that he's 11 and has been allowed to express his emotions in such damaging ways for so long. But it absolutely MUST be done. There must be immediate consequences when he misbehaves - and he urgently needs to be taught how to use words to express himself.

I agree with all the posters who are saying reach out to social services. Even accounting for his autism, this is not the behaviour of a happy and settled child. I'm sure your sister is a loving mother but I'm not sure she is supporting his needs, and I think she may be in denial about or unable to see how potentially dangerous his behaviours are. I, too, would be worried about your DN.

Can you visit your DSis without your DC?

You aren't responsible for the consequences of her decisions. You can only control your own actions, not hers.

"Hi sister, nephew doesn't seem to be happy when you visit me so let's either meet up at your house or somewhere in between". You can go alone or not.

You are very tolerant of your sister and very considerate of her situation. Let her be tolerant of you making some decisions for once.

I just want to say I would cry if someone smashed my tree decorations... they are not fancy but we have collected 2 a year since my kids were babies.
Sorry not helpful... just feeling your pain!

Unfortunately your update actually makes it clear what the problem is, your sister is anti intervention, anti school, anti professionals and isn’t able to adequately parent her child, lack of boundaries could be a good starting point.

my advice to you is to gently say to her she needs to get her child formally assessed and into a setting where he can thrive, she can also then work. No I would not allow him to trash my home.