My son is treated like an outsider by his own siblings and it's breaking my heart

[Marielouisee]

I honestly don't even know why I'm writing this. Maybe because I've kept it inside for so many years and I just need to let it out somewhere. I'm a mother of four kids. My oldest son is 20, my second son is 19, my daughter is 17 and my youngest son is 15. I love all four of them equally. There has never been a favorite. They all grew up in the same home with the same parents. My husband and I have always tried to give them love, support and everything we could. We weren't perfect parents but we genuinely tried our best. That's why this hurts so much because no matter what we've done over the years, nothing has changed.

My second son has had some health problems since he was little. He has never been seriously disabled or anything like that. He can take care of himself, he goes out on his own, he has hobbies, he has friends and he doesn't need someone looking after him all the time. He's just different from the other three. He's not as sharp, fast or energetic as they are and he has always had a weaker immune system. He would get sick more often and sometimes he needed more attention from us than the others did. As parents we couldn't just ignore that. If one of your children needs you more at certain times you naturally give them that extra care. We never loved him more than the others. We simply responded to what each child needed.

Because of his health there were times we had to cancel family vacations or trips at the last minute. We never felt right leaving one child behind while taking the other three. Looking back now I know those moments affected the others more than we realized. They missed out on some things because of it. But it wasn't like their childhood was full of disappointment. They still had birthday parties, holidays, sleepovers, school trips, sports, time with friends and special moments with us. We always tried to make sure every child had attention and opportunities. It just wasn't always possible to make everything perfect.

As they got older though, especially around sixteen or seventeen, something changed. The frustration they had toward us slowly became resentment toward their brother. Instead of blaming the situation they started blaming him. It was like in their minds he became the reason they had missed out on certain memories as kids. From that point things just kept getting worse. They stopped inviting him to things. If they planned to go somewhere together they left him out. If they were hanging out at home they acted like he wasn't there. They have a lot of the same friends because they're close in age but they rarely include him. Even their friends have started treating him like he's invisible because they follow the example my other kids set.

The hardest part for me isn't even the exclusion. It's hearing the words they say to him. More than once I've overheard them telling him they wish he had never been part of the family or that they don't want him around. Every time I hear something like that it feels like someone is ripping my heart apart. I look at my son and he never screams back or starts a fight. He just goes quiet. He smiles less than he used to. Sometimes he'll simply walk back to his room like he's already expecting it. Watching your own child slowly believe he doesn't belong in his own family is something I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Last week was another example that completely broke me. The other three bought tickets to a music concert together. My second son was excited because he likes the artist too. He asked if he could come with them. They had already bought tickets for themselves and never even considered buying one for him. They told him no and left without him. He didn't throw a tantrum or beg. He just said okay and went back to his room. I don't even think he expects to be included anymore. That acceptance hurts more than if he had cried.

The thing that makes this even harder is that he's genuinely such a sweet kid. He's gentle, kind and thoughtful. He has never been the child causing problems or getting into trouble. He's incredibly talented in his own way. He paints beautifully. Honestly some of his artwork amazes me. He has found a small group of friends through art classes and local galleries. He goes to exhibitions, talks to other artists and that's where I actually see him smile. Those people appreciate him for who he is. Sometimes I wonder if complete strangers understand my son better than his own siblings do.

My husband and I have spent years trying to fix this. We've had countless conversations with all of them. We've explained how hurtful their behavior is. We've asked them to imagine how they would feel if the roles were reversed. We've tried family time, one-on-one talks, setting rules and encouraging them to spend time together. We've cried in front of them.

I'm just so tired. I feel like I've failed all of my children somehow. I feel guilty toward my second son because he deserves siblings who love him and accept him. I also feel guilty toward my other three because maybe somewhere along the way they carried resentment that we didn't recognize soon enough. I keep replaying every parenting decision in my head wondering where we went wrong. Maybe we made mistakes. I'm sure we did. Every parent does. But I never imagined it would end with one of my children feeling like an outsider in the only family he's ever known.

I don't even know what I'm hoping to get from posting this. Maybe someone has been through something similar. Maybe someone has advice. Or maybe I just needed to tell someone because I've carried this pain for years and it feels unbearably lonely. I honestly pray no child ever has to wonder why their own brothers and sister don't want them around and I pray no mother ever has to stand there watching it happen while feeling completely powerless to stop it.

"He wasn't sick and disabled. He was a little bit ill and loved the attention mum and dad gave him when he was ill so he fucking milked it and loved it when our holidays got cancelled because of him. He saw how upset it made us and he got a power trip over it. We couldn't possibly go away with Dad whilst Mum stayed home. Nope. Dad was inept and never stood up for us and stuck to the plan. We were framed as being spoilt and greedy in wanting to go on the holiday we'd been promised for weeks with all the excitement and build up."

"So we have decided to have our sibling experience together going to gigs. The experience we missed out on. We sure as hell aren't going to invite him because we don't want to take the risk of being guilted into not going because he decides he has a migraine on the night. The three of us bonded over the years when we were upset that we weren't going to Alton Towers tomorrow after all. We weren't going to Spain on Friday as we planned and instead would stay home and have to play with each other whilst our brother was given Calpol by mum".

The fact the three are close at an age you wouldn't expect says a great deal about family dynamics of it being them against mum and dad and no2. Rather than it being them against no2 alone. No2 was never left out and isolated. Mum and Dad always sided with him. It was 1, 3 and 4 who were left out and an inconvenience.

"I haven't seen any bullying"

Ah yes of course, what parents of all bullies say, along with "dont be so sensitive" "he is just teasing" "she didnt mean it" etc.

They are literally ignoring someone in his own house and encouraging his peers to do the same. They tell him they wish he wasn't part of the family.

If someone in school said to your child "you should never have been born" "life would be better for everyone without you" etc you wouldnt call that bullying? If an ex friend told the whole class to ignore him just because they'd fallen out so he had to sit alone at playtime watching everyone else you wouldnt call that bullying?

Blaming him for, essentially, a disability, even if not a severe one is disgusting, and discriminating against him for it would be literally illegal in other contexts, like workplaces. If the only person who had additional learning needs or cqncer was excluded from the Christmas party or Friday night drinks that company could be sued for thousands and have their name dragged through the mud.

She has specific said she didn’t discard their feelings. That they felt bad and apologised and made it up to them. They went on holidays. They seem wealthy, putting 4 kids through private school, all had birthday parties, day trips and enjoyed holidays (I’m assuming they probs went away several times a year). These kids are all privileged and whilst the 15 & 17 yo might not know just how privileged they’ve been the 20 yo certainly should be aware

She has said that a resentment built up that she didn’t recognise at the time.

I haven’t read the full thread so maybe advice like this has already been given.

But here goes anyway.

When you have talked to them all, cried in front of then etc, what message were you actually saying to them?

Because if it was ‘please be nicer to your brother, it breaks my heart’

What the others hear is “My thoughts and emotions are still consumed by your brother.”

I think what your other three need to hear from you is a version of “I’m sorry, I really love you.”

You need to have a conversation (perhaps several conversations) individually with each of them about how they feel about your family and your relationship with them.
CRUCIALLY: You need to avoid saying the name of DS2 or the words ‘your brother’ AT ALL and especially not as an explanation or justification for ANYTHING. You need to OWN EVERYTHING. You are not talking to them to fix their relationship with their brother. You are talking to them to fix your relationship with them because that is where the resentment comes from.

Your attention and thoughts and emotions were spent on him more than on them. That’s just the way it was. There were reasons, but kids don’t care about reasons. It’s probably not about the holiday deep down, it’s about feeling like they were not valued as highly as he was. And so they’re devaluing him now in retribution.

When they say “I just feel like you always prioritise DS2 and we didn’t get to go to Spain that time, and you always held his hand and waited for him by the stairs and never waited for us, and even now you stick up for him over everything and just keep banging on about how sad he is and how we should be nicer to him”

Do not reply with a justification for every decision you made, why DS2 needed X or Y and start explaining why it had to be that way and that it doesn’t mean you don’t love them too. Say:

”I’m so sorry I didn’t give you that time. It breaks my heart to think of you wanting me and me not being there.”
Remember: do NOT bring up DS2. Even if you feel you were justified in your choices - this isn’t about you, or him. It’s about how this child felt/feels, and your relationship with them.

Your DC might be unconsciously testing you by being mean to their brother. ‘will she pick him or will she pick us’. You are between a rock and a hard place here. By getting upset about his feelings and asking them to change their behaviour so that he is happier, they see you picking him, again, over them.

The only way around this is to make a very real and genuine effort to show them how much you love and value them, through healing conversations such as above, and also through your thoughts and actions.

As an exercise, roughly estimate for each child:

How often do you smile at them?
How often do you initiate pleasant conversation with them?
How often do you go out of your way for them?
How often do you think about how they are feeling and what you can do to help them?

Keep a mental tally throughout the day. You might be surprised.

If the balance is off, redress it.

This will take a long time. But if your children feel genuinely ‘seen’, loved and cherished by you, I suspect in time it will help heal things with their brother.

Not so. You most certainly can have a thing called sibling alienation. It is becoming more recognised. But one dominant sibling encourages alienation towards another.
Behind it can be a range of reasons. And certainly a dysfunctional family. It is long lasting and largely not as well known as it should be. Look it up.

You have put your remarks above in inverted commas, as if they are the words of the siblings or one of them.

Have I missed something or are they your words as a sibling ?
If not you should not put them in inverted commas.

This. 100%

Heal the situation through kindness & empathy. They are getting your time because they are getting your time. DS2 shouldn’t be mentioned. Not every single significant family conversation you have should have him at the centre.

And hopefully in time they will feel more loved. & secure and stop lashing out at DS2.

Don't tell me how I should punctuate.

It was speech marks. It is as if one of the siblings is talking from their point of view.

It's not real but I'm not the OP. I'm not pretending to know. I'm offering an alternative thought process and comments that could be made.

The poster I quoted said no2 was disabled. The OP has repeatedly said they were not. So it's a case of a child who is framed by mum as 'sickly' rather than more serious. And everything revolved around that - TO THE EXCLUSION of the three other kids who were much younger at the time.

They were not part of the family. The family were mum, dad and no2.

That's the point. They've formed bonds based on this exclusion by parents and sibling.

Then to be criticised for this by their mother, is so fucked in the head. Mum wasn't there for them.

I can see all sides of this. The idea of a sibling being left out purely because of their health does tug on the heartstrings, and I can imagine it’s extremely tough on the parents. However, my own experience with having an autistic sibling has perhaps clouded my judgment slightly.

My sister was diagnosed with autism at 3 years old, neither me or older brother had been born at that time. She was classed as “high functioning” (I don’t believe that’s the correct terminology anymore), however she was completely mollycoddled by my parents. I don’t know how to say this in a politically correct way, but outwardly; you wouldn’t know she was autistic. She works, she has a great social life, is a good communicator (no offence is meant by this, I know autism is a spectrum but in terms of how my parents treated her, you’d think she was non-verbal, physically disabled etc).

She was 4 when my brother was born and 6 when I was born. My brother and I used to, and sometimes still do, wonder why my parents bothered to have us.

I think my parents had a similar view to you; they still gave us birthday parties, a few holidays etc so didn’t feel like they were casting us aside but they did have to prioritise our sister. However, brother and I feel differently.

Yes, we’d have birthday presents and parties, just like our sister. But on our own birthdays my sister would also have to receive presents, blow out candles, and even had the final say on where our parties would be.
We attended a cousin’s birthday party once and she smashed up his birthday cake. Of course, my parents justified this with “she’s just very overwhelmed”.
After that, none of us were allowed to go to other’s parties as it was too “overwhelming” for my sister, and if we’d have gone without her that would’ve been “unfair” and “upsetting”. Quite a few times I’d shouted at my parents that I wish they never had me.

Family holidays were few and far between. Lots of cancellations because sister decided she didn’t like the look of the place, or didn’t want to share a room with us.

We’d ask for help with our homework, or some crafts, and we’d be told “No, I need to tidy Abi’s room/cook Abi’s dinner/stop doing crafts now, Abi wants to watch TV”. We had to swap bedrooms multiple times because whatever she wanted, she got. My parents left my brother’s graduation as soon as they arrived because my sister phoned them asking for a lift home from work because she was too hungry to walk home. Not sure why both parents had to leave for that.

As my brother and I got older, we sadly did start to go off and do things together without our sister. We’d go off on weekends away with both our groups of friends, we’d go to gigs together etc. I do feel bad about that now, but at the time I didn’t. I wanted to get away from her and my parents, I resented her, I was angry at my parents.

I am absolutely not saying that you’re at that level, but I do understand why your other children are feeling the way that they do. I’ve never genuinely wished my sister wasn’t around, but I can’t lie and say that I haven’t said it out of anger and frustration before. I love my parents, and I love my sister, but I blame my parents totally for the way my brother and I have been made to feel. The worst thing is that they’ve never acknowledged this, so I think doing that would perhaps help your other children.

Well, you should know inverted commas are used for when someone is repeating what another has said verbatim. And as such if used creates a false impression.

The OP has been a bit unclear about the DS2. And contradicts.
What she does say though is that that the others had all they wanted. In fact they had better health. She explains they each and all had holidays, sleepovers, trips, etc etc and crucially, ‘special moments with us’.
Bar the holiday or two. No idea how often that occurred. We are not told.
There is no suggestion that everything revolved around DS2. That I think has been inflated, suggested and somehow has become some sort of ‘fact’.

The sibling alienation is very likely due to dysfunctional parenting. But the sibling alienation is usually started by one in particular who draws the others in. The reasons as to why can be all sorts. It is becoming more widely recognised. Resentment alone because of being favoured will certainly run deep.
But to actively draw in other siblings against another requires calculation, manipulation and is I think something more disturbing altogether.

I have four adult kids. A daughter who’s 26 and lives close by with her fiancé and three boys 24, 22 & 19 all living at home. My eldest son has HFA (non verbal) and has a normal-high IQ, but little to no filter as regards danger from other people, so needs to be accompanied everywhere. My other three kids don’t blame him for them missing out on anything, as he was always part of everything and happy with it. However, now the other three are out and about with their friend group (who are lovely and accepting) and rarely want to include him in anything they do. He supposedly developed epilepsy last year (one incident after slipping and banging his head on a stone floor) and is now on meds as a prophylactic measure. The two side effects are that he is clapping in weight and sometimes (rarely) gets impatient, especially when it comes to food. In any case, they are really sweet to him, but rarely include him in anything they arrange. We have asked them to take him along and sometimes they do, but begrudgingly…
obviously we can ask, but not force them. It upsets me greatly, especially when 99% of the time he is a happy guy and no trouble, except for the constant vigilance. We take him out with us, but we are 60 and it’d probably be better for him to be around young people his own age. I totally get where you are coming from, as I feel similar disappointment.

Your post is very distasteful. It's fine to have a go at the OP. She is an adult who has decided to post on here.

Framing the situation as the 19 year old not being ill at all as a small child but pretending to be sick to get all the attention and to deliberately prevent his siblings from going on holiday is a very twisted interpretation of OP's version of events. Making OP's 19 year old son the villain of the piece based on no evidence at all is pretty horrible.

There is an ocean between being disabled and being labelled ‘sickly’. You’re minimising the health issues of a person you don’t know to try and make a point which you seem very personally invested in.

There are some seriously messed up people on this thread needing a shit load of therapy. Never seen a thread like this in 18 years on MN. Sorry op.

100% agree. A lot of people seem to be trying to work through their own hatred/jealousy of their siblings here!

I think this is an excellent post.

"What the others hear is “My thoughts and emotions are still consumed by your brother"

This is exactly what your other children are hearing and seeing when you cry, beg and plead in front of them. That your DS is still your priority, that everything needs to be centred around him and this is only going to further disrupt their relationship.

Of course bullying is not acceptable. But we are only getting one side of the story here and a very biased one at that. It's clear from your posts on how you speak about your children that you unconsciously favour your son. You may not think you do but it's absolutely clear from your posts you do and no doubt your other children have picked up on this.

And as said before context is everything. How ill is your son? What support does he need? Are the comments said regularly to him or in the heat of the moment after years of built up resentment?

And I find as well SOME parents (not all), when they have several children all close in age that they do this because they want their children to be close and friends and there's this failure to see them as individuals and instead just one mass group who must do everything together. And when this doesn't happen, there ends up being pressure on the siblings that they must get on and must be friends which just ends up causing the opposite to happen.

Are you from a very Christian community? Are you American or British, as your spelling is US but I suppose could be AI. It reads a little unusual for a UK context. It all sounds incredibly Dramatic and what jumps out to me is that you are trying to control your young adults. Leave them be. Enable your ds to achieve his potential support his friendships, encourage them all to move out sooner than later. Just leave them. It might still work itself out without you and your husband breathing down their necks and trying to control them. Btw the problem with AI written posts and I say this as someone who uses ai to rephrase at times is that what could be said in a couple of sentences becomes a huge wall of words resembling a soap opera.

Best advise is: tell your nearly grown up dc that it makes them look bad to exclude one sibling and then leave them to it. let them move on and out and see how it all pans out. Sound like your ds2 is doing incredibly well with his art, friends health, encourage him to find his own path/ Provided you do NOT favour him they'll probably soon enough find him cool and want to hang out.

They're not "discriminating" their own brother for gods' sakes 🙄

And you, and the OP, refuse to admit that the way their childhood was managed has consequences today. And refusing to acknowledge and try to fix things, is going to do the opposite. It's sad.

It's even sadder that the one who ends up alone is the kid who was a bit poorly. Not disabled, not life-threatening conditions btw, just a bit poorly .

The siblings have learnt their lesson and do their own thing.

Blaming him for, essentially, a disability,it's not a disability but carry on. Its the parents who are to blame but refuse to accept responsibility.

@youplonkerrodney nailed it

It was obviously life threatening at a point because OP stated they weren’t sure he would survive when he was born.

I don't know if I've seen anything too terrible on this thread. Ive seen worse and the worst post on here is from the parent who decided the "correct" way to deal with a sibling argument was to stand eyeball to eyeball with her own child and threaten them with physical aggression.

Many people like myself have grown up in similar situations. Which is why its never black and white. One of my siblings almost died at birth and while I am very close to my parents, it is VERY clear my mum unconsciously favours my sibling. He can never ever do anything wrong, has always had preferable treatment and has had all sorts of allowances made for him. I've accepted it now, but absolutely has made resentment. It's a natural reaction to it.

I'm also not sure why the siblings friends are being brought into it? Why do they need to include the 19 year old? They aren't his friends, he's nothing to do with them. I've never expected to be included with my siblings friends growing up and I was a twin! Surely it's actually healthy they have seperate friendship groups.

If you read the posts, it says the friends are also unkind to him

I've re-read and all I can see is posts saying the friends don't include him and treat him as invisible. I was never included by my siblings friends! Most people arent.

My DC do hang out together and share friends - but that's their choice and while I'm very pleased by it I wasn't expecting it as in my and DH family sibling relationships aren't usually great at all.

I'd have loved a closer relatonship with my siblings and tried several times in my life but they weren't interested and I couldn't change that. Since having my on kids frankly my attitude has hardened as things I put with I won't have my kids exposed to.

Op can and should insist on basic poltiness in her house and outside but she can't insist on friendship or expect inclusion all the time. She'd be better of encouraging the 19 year old to focus outside the home connections and opportunties. She may also want to consider if she making the current situation worse between them all - backing off may actually give them space needed to change whereas pressure could harden positions.