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.

Good post. OP, I get the anger — not adoption-related, but my parents made not wildly-dissimilar decisions that made my childhood terribly difficult. There is no point in talking to them about it as they are both the products of their own deprived, dysfunctional backgrounds, and haven’t the emotional capacity to recognise that they made poor choices, but therapy has helped.

You need counselling op. You are stuck in a 10 year old's reaction of having to share her parents and the jealousy that came with it.

Your parents decided to have another child. Any child comes with their own set of problems.

Lots of people have siblings who cause issues and struggle. You are using the fact he is adopted against him and your parents.

Your feelings are those of a 10 year old child who feels her parents replaced her with a child who is inferior to her.

You must get help.

So what would you prefer? Him not to have a child and move on with his life because you're jealous and feel overshadowed. You're being incredibly unreasonable. If he had been the perfect biological child, then your children would still have to share your parents' attention.

If this was how you were as a child then maybe his view of you isn't too favourable either.

I do however understand that you had a difficult childhood, as did many of us, as did he. You came through it though and should be enormously proud of what you've achieved, it's laudable.

I agree with this.

Do you think you would feel the same if he wasn't adopted? For whatever reason you are the only natural child but given being an only child isn't the norm in the UK anyone with a sibling could feel the same way. He could have had the same issues as a natural sibling particularly on the ADHD front, there are too many variables to know if any of his behaviour and the knock on effects to your life and family life in general is related to him being adopted.

You are perfectly entitled to go low or no contact if you want to, there will obviously be consequences in doing that particularly for your parents. If you haven't had any counselling to unpick the effects of growing up with a disruptive sibling it would probably be worth doing that first. It's interesting that you have gone on to have 2 DC given how you feel. Regardless of natural or adoption your parents made a choice to have 2 DC just like you have. Have you thought about how you would feel if your 1st DC felt the same way you do about their sibling (either justified or not)?

My situation is different, but I was struck by your comments about your brother never having apologised.

Due to my mother's mental health issues, my childhood and adulthood up to the age of 40 was incredibly difficult.

I had years of therapy to help me come to terms with what happened, as well as researching her various conditions so that I had a better understanding.

But the one thing that made the biggest difference was to stop expecting her to apologise and somehow put things right. Once I had done this, it was honestly like a huge weight was lifted. It freed me from the burden I was holding on to. The burden of anger, disappointment, hate, rage and rejection.

Your brother's ADHD, adverse childhood experiences and attachment disorder were not his fault. His subsequent behaviour, yes, including the drugs, police, violence etc are not of his making.

You are both victims in this.

Please look into getting some really good, specialist psychotherapy.

You are the one who is continuing to be hurt. So you are the one who needs to seek support.

It sounds to me like you are stuck emotionally at the age the trauma occurred when dealing with your feelings towards him. Does that make sense? The pain and anger, fury and resentment you had at 10 has not been resolved and still lives within you.

I realise this is probably an unpalatable comment but I know 3 families who adopted children and there are problems and challenges with all. I know that's not representative but I would feel as OP does - her parents took the risk. There is always a risk with biological children but in my view its higher with adopted children. I would resent that

Have you spoken to your parents about this OP? You speak about them in saintly terms but it was ultimately a selfish desire which led them to adopt. Stop regarding yourself as the spoilt brat. Your anger and feelings are normal and will probably reduce if you feel you're allowed to be honest.

I think I would organise Christmas away from ‘family’ this year, so just the 4 of you, as a little unit. Go away, make it different so there are as few questions as to why around it.

In the mean time, find a counsellor.
You suddenly had a brother, and one with serious issues. I suspect tye spotlight was on him all the time, with good reasons. But raising a child with SN is difficult (see the glass child concept too) and you probably didn’t get tte support you needed to deal with it.
Do it now. Work with a counsellor on what’s going in, the feelings of jealousy, the anger (and I suspect some grief, feeling let down, not good enough etc… too).
Then reassess your relationship to your brother and your parents.

Massive amounts of sympathy from me OP. I have some experience of the issues you raise and I too have considered (momentarily) cutting myself off from the rest of my family as I struggle to cope with the emotions involved. You had some great advice from previous posters (as well as some who obviously don’t get it). The person who suggested techniques for getting through Christmas with family seemed particularly helpful and I’m going to try some of those myself. Counselling seems like a good idea as you do need someone you can say these things to. I’m able to share my feelings with an equally affected family member but you don’t really have that.
Regarding your parents, I expect however prepared they were in theory, the reality will have floored them. You can see the posters on this thread who think that armed with some attachment theory and some CAHMs sessions everything will turn out OK. Neither are a magic cure.
Also for those posters who know adoptive families and say they are all fine. We dont always want to share the truth of our lives. Only a couple of close friends know the truth about mine. To everyone else I just say oh ‘they are fine/they’ve got a new partner/ moved to X place, rather than they’re unemployed, taking drugs, on a five day alcohol binge.

No more than it’s a ‘selfish’ desire to have more biological children, surely? My parents kept having children they couldn’t afford to feed and clothe, so we were extremely poor, and we’re not close as adults, because we spent our childhoods experiencing one another as drains on scarce resources.

I think both scenarios are selfish @GallopingSeahorse

Love isn't pie. Your children are not going to recieve any less love from their grandparents because there is now a cousin. The new baby is a new person in the family to love and to be loved by so their arrival will increase the love in your children's lives, not reduce it.

You clearly have unresolved hatred towards your parents for their actions during your childhood which you are misdirecting at this innocent baby.

Get some counselling and work out how to forgive your parents. They are who they are and you can't change them.

This gives me a very interesting insight, OP. I am adopted. I have never ever caused the sorts of issues that you are describing but I have a strained relationship with my parents. My brother hates me and hates my children. He is competitive for my parents’ affections and attention. Once, as a child. Now still as an adult - for our children’s attention and affections from their grandparents.

I feel like a light switch has just come on inside my brain.

Seeing your parents abused by your sibling is also very traumatic.

You show such self awareness, OP. You've identified an issue, and are now working on addressing it.

You'll get there. Anyone accusing you of being a below par person simply doesn't understand what you went through. Just because your brother had a traumatic past, doesn't mean you weren't impacted by trauma as well.

You deserve to recover as well, and these feelings- and their resolution- are part of that.

Well, yes, I agree. My point was that people don’t have children, whether biologically or via adoption, for altruistic reasons.

So it's always selfish to have more than one child?

Comparing having biological children to adopting a child, especially an older child is ridiculous

I think it is

Fallingthroughclouds
So it's always selfish to have more than one child?

I think it is

I think you often raise very selfish people if you don't have more than one child. They often do not grow up to realise that others are just as important as they are.

Comparing having biological children to adopting a child, especially an older child is ridiculous.

How is it ridiculous?

I would have loved to have provided my daughter with a sibling, she is lonely without. It's is interesting to hear this point of view. Why do you think it's selfish?

I feel like this. To me, our relationship is a bit more like that of step-siblings. I know we’re not but age wise, that’s probably a bit closer to my experience.

@notquitesoyoung yes, 2 DC and a similar age gap to my brother and I. It has never crossed my mind that they will have the same relationship that my brother and I have. I assume they will have similar relationships to the ones my DH has with his sibling, my parents have with their siblings and my friends have with their siblings. I don’t think you can compare the two because they are so different.

It was difficult to see when you were a child yourself, but the person who made your life so hard was a young child suffering both a behavioural disorder and the trauma of adoption. Does taking that perspective as an adult make it easier to forgive him?

And his own baby is just an innocent baby. Don't drag them into this and add to the trauma!

It never once occurred to me as a child to see my cousins as competing for my grandparents' attention.