Adopted brother

[Grovegreen]

I’ll try not to make this too long: I am in my 30s as is my brother, who we adopted when he was a child.

He was diagnosed with a ADHD at a young age and was a very, very difficult child and teenager. He was violent, lied often, stole often and was always in trouble at school. My parents’ decision to adopt him ruined my childhood. I have such lovely memories before he came to live with us and mainly awful, traumatic ones after. I was 10 years old so lived at home with him for 8 years and then moved away for university.

I didn’t communicate with him at all for most of my 20s but after I had my first daughter, 6 years ago, I began to build a relationship with him. I now have two daughters and they both really like him and his girlfriend.

My parents are very supportive of him and his girlfriend; I think this is testament to the sort of people they are because his behaviour, especially in his late teens/ early twenties, which involved drugs, the police and being violent to my mum, would have been enough for me to wash my hands of him completely.

Anyway, fast forward to now and although he is unable to hold down a permanent job, he is mostly employed in construction type roles. He and his girlfriend rent a nice little house and she is about to give birth to their first child.

I am absolutely filled with rage and I so, so wish I wasn’t. I feel that it was bad enough that my own childhood was ruined by him and that I have to share my parents with him even now but the fact that my children now have to share family attention, be just two of the grandchildren, rather than the only two and we have to include his child/ children in our lives in the final injustice.

I sound absolutely mental, don’t I? I honestly can’t even look him in the face and every time I think about the situation I want to cry, but that’s mainly because I know how awfully, disgustingly unreasonable I am being. Especially as he’s always believed, due to a health condition, that he would be unable to have children. I think the fact that he can has made this more of a surprise and I’m therefore caught even more unawares.

Can anyone suggest ways for me to get past this? At the moment, all I can think of is completely erasing him from my life and sacrificing any family time I’d have spent with my own parents. This will seem
strange to everyone, of course, including my own DH and daughters. I can’t sit there this Christmas with them and a new baby: I am just not a good enough person to swallow this down and get on with it.

I don’t think you’re being unreasonable. Your parents chose to add him into your family, you had no say, and his behaviour was damaging to you.

I can imagine how you must feel

Has he ever shown any remorse for his behaviour in the past?

So you've allowed your children to build a relationship with him and his girlfriend but want to cut ties with him now just because you are jealous that he is having a child and now you'll have to share your parents with the baby....give your head a wobble OP

That sounds really hard op. Not surprised you feel the way you do

Sounds like maybe you’ve not fully acknowledged processed the anger you legitimately hold towards him because if the way he treated you and your parents when you were little, and now it’s coming out focused around the baby which makes it somehow feel more manageable. You’re right that it doesn’t really make sense to be angry because his partner is expecting a baby. But anger can be a very frightening emotion and women are prone to suppressing it, and maybe this is your way of allowing yourself to partially feel that older anger now. Does that make sense?

@UltramarineViolet I think his opinion of it is that he was an idiot growing up. He hasn’t expressed regret or remorse for a specific event or action but I guess there were so many that it would be unreasonable to expect him to.

OP - have you thought about how your parents might have arranged their will ?

@onlylovecanhurtlikethis yes I think you’re right. Another thing I’ve realised, thinking about all this, is that I like him as long as he isn’t overshadowing or bettering me in any way. I’m the one who has gone on to have a professional job, a good marriage, a good income and two lovely daughters, and as long as the spotlight is on my successes, I feel I can maintain a relationship. Now that attentions are temporarily on him, I feel jealous, angry and resentful.

@ShouldGoToBed yeah, makes total sense and I think you’re probably right.

I fear that my response, which is currently to act like a total spoilt brat and not be anywhere near him, is the only way I’m capable of processing my feelings.

@DustyLee123 there isn’t much to leave. They have never owned their own house and have no savings etc.

Sadly a lot of adopted children follow that pattern. A huge %. Your parents probably had no idea at the time that he would cause so much strife. I'd recommend counselling to help process how you feel

Do you think it's fair to say the pregnancy/baby has brought your repressed anger and resentment to the surface, rather than causing new anger and resentment?

@entitledparents oh I’m not sure about your comment! That hasn’t been my experience at all and I know at least half a dozen families with adopted children.

And OP sorry that childhood pain is revisiting you, I think you sound like a good person and I hope you will find a way through thisthat keeps your family relationships intact.

Get yourself to a good therapist and start processing all that baggage that you dragging around. It will do you good.

@SpecsAndSlippers I'm also adopted and didn't but adopted children have baggage if their own. Children adopted as babies maybe less so but a child adopted age 6-10 as OP post suggests will have no doubt had difficult early years

Adopted children are legally able to challenge their adopted parents will if they are not included. Its part of adoption

Have you done any research into attachment disorders and adoption in general? Your brother was the product of his experiences and the processes he went through, and it sounds like he had a completely normal response to his life history. It might help you to learn a bit more about what is expected of adopted children.

It must have been very difficult for you to grow up with him 💐

I totally get it OP.

Sadly your brother will have been through a lot of trauma being adopted at such a young age, figuring out ADHD and trying to find his place in society so it's not unusual that now he's dealt with that he would want to move forward and not look back.

That however doesn't mean your feelings aren't valid, inside there's probably some grief for the childhood you've lost and anger that your parents put you through that and perhaps your misplacing that and putting it on your brother instead?

It's easy to say you should move on but it's harder to do without allowing yourself to acknowledge your feelings. Have you considered counseling or talking to your parents about how the adoption made you feel?
Although I don't have a similar experience, I did have difficulty growing up due to choices my parents made and whilst I'm not really yet in the place to hold them accountable for their part, I found talking therapy massively helped me acknowledge what I needed at the time and speaking to someone who listened and validated my feelings really helped me deal with a lot of the big emotions I was not coping with.

Your honesty is admirable and I think it’s the first step towards helping yourself to process how you feel. You know what you are saying sounds extreme, but it’s how you feel. I get it.

it must have been very hard for you as a child. Now you are an adult, I would get counselling to try and work through how you felt hurt in the past and how you can accept the present. Your parents chose to bring your brother into their family and have stuck by him. We don’t get to choose how our parents shape our lives as kids. Sorry it was tough.

I always find it a little odd how wordings and opinions change when a child is adopted rather than biological. For example it feels a unfair that you would not have been consulted about the adoption, but how many people are consulted when their parents choose to go on to have more biological children. Why is it different? We adopted him? Would you word it like that if he was biological brother. I think if you can open your mind to removing the difference between biological and adoption your healing might begin because the truth is that you are no more entitled that a person who had a biological brother with ADHD xxx

I can understand where you’re coming from, I have a similar adopted brother who put us through hell for decades. But your reactions sound a bit worrying. It does sound as though you could do with talking this through with a counsellor or something. I didn’t really see or speak to my brother for years, I was so annoyed at him for how he treated my parents. He didn’t see my mum for years either. Sadly it took my dad dying to wake him up. Since then he’s been like a different person, helping with caring for my mum. It’s nice, but I wish my dad could have seen it.

Another vote for counselling for you as well.
I don’t think you can hold your db accountable for past behaviour, he’s clearly had a terrible time prior to being adopted and a lot of baggage to process himself . He sounds like he’s doing decently well which is probably all credit to your parents.

The one who seemed to have been expected to put up and shut up is you, and that doesn’t seem fair so I quite understand why you would be simmering with resentment. The only caveat to counselling is that you may end up holding your parents responsible instead of your brother .

I suggest you take yourself off for counselling

I can’t sit there this Christmas with them and a new baby: I am just not a good enough person to swallow this down and get on with it.

As someone who has experienced very strong and socially unacceptable emotions of a similar nature - I think you may be able to adopt strategies to enable you to do just this.
Things like suitable phrases to repeat mentally - pick what you like - "I am an adult and can behave acceptably despite feeling awful inside" , it can be anything that works, anything at all... particular mental images which induce feelings of safety, calm and control again this can be anything which does the job for you... breathing techniques.

Long term, PPs are right. Find out more about childhood trauma, adoption, how (The Body Keeps The Score is good for this) it has a huge adverse effect on someone's ability to think and behave well. Not to excuse or to forgive, simply, at this stage, to have a clearer idea of why things went the way they did.

If you don't want or can't afford therapy, write things down. Like you have here. How you feel. Why. What would happen if you took various course of action. (Sometimes thinking through the consequences of carrying out the awful things you long to do, that alone can defuse the feelings a bit). How you think other people are feeling about all this.

Bottom line - you feel the way you do, and it SUCKS. And Dawkins might say that your bro is no genetic relation to you, neither will his kid be, and at some mammalian level you know that, and it exacerbates the existing resentment about your fraught later childhood.

But as long as you can keep your mouth shut nothing too dreadful will come of your corrosive internal termoil. And most likely the feelings will fade with time, because that's true of any and all burningly strong emotion. The body just isn't built to keep them up for too long.

So hang on in there, take up a huge complex crochet project to hide behind at family visits, and this too shall pass.