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.

Glad you brought this up cos i cant help noticing that the boys father is not being criticised in the same way the girls father is

A court isn't going to randomly name a man as the father of a child and give them custody willy nilly without some sort of proof of paternity. Proof is usually either the consent/admission of the mother or a DNA test.

Since he is not on the BC, or if your sister objects, there will have to be a DNA test in order to prove paternity. It will be part of his court proceedings. I'd assume that even if your sister never responds to his petition the court would still order a DNA test rather than an entry 'by default'. I do wonder why he hasn't pursued a DNA test on his own when he had DN for the weekend. It's a simple saliva sample from him and your DN. Your sister need never know.

I worked for a (US) govt agency and have seen cases of births never being recorded. Some were children born to US citizens in foreign countries and they never registered the births with the consulate or the local authorities. Others were like your sister, suspicious of 'authorities' and wanting no interference in raising their child 'their way'. The former cases were 'cumbersome' as the parents had to contact the facility where the children were born and get hospital records, occasionally there would be a baptismal record. But the latter were practically impossible since no records existed anywhere. Before the advent of DNA testing we usually ended up having to get legal statements from 'persons having knowledge' that the child was born to the parents, where, and the dates. DNA has made these cases much simpler.

@AcrossthePond55 in my experience the UK courts will grant a father PR without a DNA test if there are no reasonable grounds to suspect the child isn't theirs. Obviously if the mother claims there are other potential fathers it would be necessary. But if the courts see a clear pattern that the child has been accepted by both parties to be the child of that specific man they wouldn't necessarily require DNA. If the sister objects now, and has never objected before, she'd have to explain to the court why she had changed her view.
As you say though, dad could easily arrange his own DNA test when the child is with him. They're very simple these days.

The boy, at the moment, has agency. His preferences are dictating everything within the home.

My forty year career teaching children like him, and working with their families, means that I have great awareness of how his own disordered brain is making his life complex and difficult. But this is who he is. His disability can't be undone, and hopefully with other agencies now potentially involved, he might get the support he needs.
It's bad enough that he has to live this way. But he and his mother cannot be allowed to destroy the life of an otherwise unaffected small sibling. And that is already happening.

I absolutely disagree that an autistic, extremely dysregulated 11 year old has agency.

There isn't a benefit but it depends on how batshittery she's become and how avoidant of the authorities she is.

She's home schooling, she freebirthed and avoided hospital, she's not vaccinated, she's excluded father and it sounds like she's lied about an awful lot.

It does happen. It's rare but she sounds like it's possible and that she meets all the red flags you'd expect for a case where a birth has been concealed.

It would explain her lack of willingness to engage with social services.

The interesting thing here is she's immediately given SS details of her daughter's father even though he's not on the birth certificate. If she was keeping him off because she didn't want him to have parental responsibility she would be reluctant to give that information imho.

The fact she has makes me wonder if she's done it to avoid greater scrutiny.

His agency might be limited, but surely you agree that he's dictating what's happening in the home? No-one can visit, his sister can't make friends or have them round, she can't have any of the Christmas presents she wants, etc etc

Yes, his disability dictates his behaviour to a degree (though he appears to behave differently with his father, which does seem to indicate a degree of control) but while I have compassion for him, on a practical and immediate level, it's his little sister who needs protecting from him (and her mother, who in turn will need protecting from him, given his assaults on her)

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/headteacher-left-needing-wheelchair-after-36721744?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=main&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawQAXIRleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBRQVBUaEI4QkJPNm15OEYwc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHgfXTtju2PkfaVhmyPhpYPwsfHTkbd9u2sfAIWGPhrf3-K_awRvxqxqSe7Mt_aem_slCPma-qUcIN1UvB893pyw#Echobox=1771063369

You can search the GRO indexes very easily for free. If the OP knows what year, full name and district of her niece's birthday she should be able to easily see. Unless she has an exceptional common name it should be sufficient information to work this out from.

All she needs to do is create a login to the gro.gov.uk website to search.

It's really easy peasy.

(OP feel free to PM me if you have trouble but it's very easy to do).

I really don’t know why we can’t leave it at they all desperately need help?

Do you think autistic people want not to be able to cope with noise, flashing lights etc?
Do you think he wants to meltdown to the extent he harms his mother and self-harms?
I really very much doubt it.

As I guess you know, he’s probably several years emotionally behind where his NT peers would be, more like a distressed 8 year old emotionally.

His sister is very, very clearly deserving of sympathy and help and support, but so is he. I wish people on the thread would remember that there are two children in need of help here.

Yes there are BUT

1. the priority has to be the daughter simply because she's at risk due to the older brother's behaviour. This is an emergency scenario.
2. his needs are already being put ahead of the daughters
3. his needs are extremely complex and probably a lot harder to tackle than his sisters
4. once you have established what's going on with the family as a whole then you can start to work out how to handle the rest of the situation
5. to be blunt, there are unlikely to be many support services available for him anyway. Short of removing him from his mother, which then opens him up to other issues and problems. This is a sad reality of the situation, that there may be very limited options for support in any scenarios in practice. Even for parents that engage there isn't much out there.

That's why my focus is always going to be the niece first.

@RedToothBrush
It’s not minimising OP’s niece’s needs to say both need help.

It’s very obvious that the help will, by necessity, look different for both children.

But I think some pp seem to be totally ignoring the fact that there are two children in distress here and thst is hard to see.

I am listening to you, there's hundreds and hundreds of replies on here and I must've missed your reply. It wasn't intentional. Sorry if you felt like you're wasting your time I am trying to read every reply.

I don't believe it's possible to help the brother until issues with his sister have first been addressed.

Their mother will also need to be observed and assessed as to just how little/much she's coping. That's not remotely possible overnight. That's going to be a lengthy ongoing process.

I think a lot of people are also realistic about the limitations certainly in the initial stages of providing support for THE FAMILY rather than ignoring the brother.

@BetUWanna You have a lot to deal with and you have done the right thing. Its bloody undestandable that you wouldnt have time to read and respond to every single reply

Oh thank you!! I had no idea about this. I'm going to try and give this a go tomorrow. If I get stuck I'll PM you. Thank you! ❤️

Yes, it will be a lengthy ongoing process, agree there.

I’m guessing you mean you want the sister safe at her dad’s before addressing the brother’s issues? This may take a while given that dad is not even registered as such on her birth cert, and as the family are in a distressed state now I think addressing the brother’s difficulties straightaway might work better. Hard to know as we know little about his particular needs. If he has MH issues (I think OP said he’s been referred to MH) he may do better on medication for example.

I think helping the brother will help the family as a whole. I really hope with the correct support life for both children can improve a lot.

We do. But I'm afraid that in the short term, getting that little girl into a secure and safe place is the priority. And doing that will probably help her brother too, as he clearly struggles with sharing his environment with his sister.

You can buy a birth certificate online ...

OP i would be tempted to check and see if her birth was registered.

That’s up to social services and/or her father though.
(And not everyone does, from what I’ve read.)

Wrt the birth cert and whether the little girl was registered - is it a crime to conceal a birth in the UK, and would failure to register a birth count as concealment of a birth?

I think people are losing the run of themselves on this thread.

Even if the little girl’s birth wasn’t registered (which I think unlikely as her brother’s clearly was) she will be in ‘the system’ now. Social services are now involved and, well before that, her dad was legally pursuing parental rights.

Maybe I speak for others, but I personally feel emotionally invested in the well being of this family, and the little girl especially. I desperately hope they get the support the need to find a better outcome than the current situation. I look forward to every OP update, and appreciate her taking the time to write.

I read a book a while back titled Educated that describes the frightening and violent family life of some religious extrémists in the US. The writer’s birth was not documented as the parents shared a similar paranoia of the government. She had a lot of trouble getting herself recognized as a person and citizen later in life when she decided she wanted to participate in society. It was a difficult but very good read, a book I’d recommend to everyone if you are curious about that way of thinking.

I should imagine my nieces father is aware of the birth certificate existing if he has a solicitor. I presume that's something the solicitor will check anyway but I'm due to speak to my nieces father tomorrow to potentially organise a meet up, just a play date for my DD, my niece and his family so will ask then.

There's a real fine line here of not getting too invested with the legalities but also potentially uncovering a whole string of lies that my sister has conveyed over the last however many years and I'm completely aware of that. I don't want to make her life any more difficult than it is already of course either. I'm just trying to decipher where that line is.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

I never imagined the thread would turn into what it has. I'm really glad I posted and it's turned into somewhat of a different scenario than I ever imagined. It's now a far cry from just posting about now allowing my nephew into my home. I still feel shit about it all to be honest but I know it's the right thing. I've had so much support on this thread and so many people's perspectives from SEN families and more so I just wanted to say thanks to you all who's offered advice and help along the way. ❤️