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.

@pickledandpuzzled thank you

@JustEatTheOneInTheBallPit I’m so sorry to hear this. I desperately don’t want my brother to ever feel like this about me.

@Fallingthroughclouds I have one child by choice and knew even when I found myself unexpectedly pregnant that I would only have one. My son has never been lonely, is very independent and popular. I've been able to invest my resources in him alone. I don't see how having any more children if I'd wanted them would have benefitted him at all.

I have a friend who had a 5th child when her eldest was 18. The child has profound disabilities. In moments of honesty she berates herself as she knows her other children will have to care for the youngest. Another of her children is starting to struggle at school which she believes is caused by the situation at home. It was a selfish decision which now impacts the other children.

@narniabusiness thank you. I agree with what you’ve said about adoptive families not always sharing the truth of how difficult they are finding things. We made connections with lots of families who had adopted and often there were struggles going on behind closed doors.

Just another observation: my eldest daughter is now just a little bit older than my brother was when we adopted him and reflecting on how much she has experienced, seen, learnt etc makes me so sad that for all of those years, he didn’t know what it felt like to be loved and cherished. No wonder he struggled growing up.

Let me be clear, I am so glad that he was able to escape the horrendous things he lived through as a young child but I wish it wasn’t my family that had to suffer for it and I wish I didn’t have to be linked to him for the rest of my life. Somehow, him now becoming a father makes it feel as though we are all even more interlinked. Not sure why.

Well, they won’t necessarily. They may experience one another as drains on limited parental resources/attention, they may resent the roles they are ‘cast’ in by you and one another (‘golden child’, ‘rebel’, ‘indulged youngest’ etc), they may develop behaviours or disabilities that have an adverse impact on family life. These things can also happen in the case of biological siblings — don’t assume they can’t. My best friend’s severe anorexia had a huge negative impact on her younger brother’s early life, for example. He hates her now they’re both in their 40s. From his POV, his childhood was eaten by her self-starvation, her frequent hospitalisations, their parents’ worry, and he’s cross that, as he sees it, her success in adulthood still garners undue attention (she’s also still ill ).

My parents are terribly sad their children aren’t close, but don’t understand it’s as a direct result of childhood overcrowding and scarcity, that we experience one another as triggering in adulthood. I wouldn’t say we don’t love each other in some way, but we never seek one another out. I would certainly have been likely to have had a better life as an only child.

Having subsequent children is always a throw of the dice. A child who is adopted older is more likely to have at least the traumas of removal and potentially multiple foster placements, if not also neglect or abuse.

The reality is your brother will be very aware that he’s adopted and that his child won’t be your parents biological grandchild. He may even be worried himself that they/you won’t treat his child the same as you would if you were biologically related.

You are the one in the position of privilege, the child will also know as they grow that their grandparents are not their biological grandparents and that may (or may not) cause allot of anxiety for them.

You could have had a biological sibling who did exactly the same things, in fact it could have been worse. ADHD massively impacts impulse control, people with ADHD also have issues with emotional regulation and are very prone to addictions. He had so much against him, the fact that he’s functioning, and a stable relationship is wonderful, and I’m sure in no small part due to your family.

I would try and see it from a position of empathy, if you can’t be happy for him.

That said, you shouldn’t dismiss your own feelings, get some support, work through your issues. I have a complicated family myself so you have my sympathy, I’m sorry you have struggled so much.

Ten years from now you could have a good relationship with him, or you could still be holding on to the past.

if his behaviour now is poor then of course you need to create distance, for your own and your family’s sake. It seems like he’s turned things around though.

Good luck!

I think I would talk to your parents about this OP as it sounds like you had to mature fast at an early age and placate everyone around you. In their mind they probably think everything has turned out hunky-dory so I think it would help you process your trauma if you put across your version of events to them. Then if you still feel like you want to keep a distance whilst you go for counselling, they would understand a bit better. You've bottled things up for so long that it's turned into rage by triggering circumstances.

He's their child so , difficult or not , if they wanted to leave equal shares they should ?
Did you mean the adopted child shouldn't get anything?

Just want to say that you're doing the right thing by acknowledging your feelings and seeking counselling. What you went through was also traumatic, and so you shouldn't feel bad if your trauma response to this isn't entirely reasonable.

It's not nice but I understand the resentment, especially when the other sibling has had so much attention and support. I wonder whether you're worried that your parents will completely turn their attention to your brother and his new family, leaving yours behind a bit? No where near comparable to your situation, but my sibling (biological) has as a child and an adult always needed far more support and attention from my parents. I have never resented it really, until I had a DC and it started impacting the time that my parents had with DC. Now we're at a good place, but I know that I would also feel a bit resentful if sibling had a baby as they would expect and demand my parents to be far more invovled, which would inevitably take time away from my DC. In my case without all the past trauma, I would just go with it. But for you, you'd be watching the person who you think ruined your childhood now potentially impact your DCs.

If I were you I would do my absolute best to keep being part of the family. Maybe try and reframe the situation: your brother may not have been a positive addition to your childhood, but now he and his family can be positive additions to your own DCs childhoods. He is not stealing their grandparents, he is giving them the lovely opportunity to be part of a wider family with cousins too. Your DC will benefit from those added loving relationships, and from seeing a strong multigenerational family around them that has their backs no matter what, and that will still be there the other side of whatever shit hapens to them in their lives. That's a real positive!

@angie6147 you’ll just have to accept my lives experience on this one.

Do you say how old your brother was when adopted?
The earlier (or younger) the age, the better.
However, do you always have to see your parents and brother's family together?
Why can't you see your DP without him?

As for being consulted about the adoption; I was asked if I wanted a brother or sister and I would go through the booklets of children they were sent and felt like part of the choosing process. I knew that they wanted another child: I’d seen the impact of a stillbirth that my mum had when I was 6 or 7 so I hardly felt that I could say no. Even then I didn’t want a sibling and so the rest feels a bit like a self fulfilling prophecy.
There's too little consultation, and there's too much ...
I noticed that in your OP you wrote "we adopted", as if you were the adopter. What your parents did seems almost more unfair than not being consulted, making it seem as if it was your choice, when it very obviously wasn't. It wasn't up to you; it was your parents' decision alone to have another child. And whether adopted or not, we don't get to choose our family. All we can decide is whether we want to keep in touch as adults, and to what extent. You can decide that now just like any other person with a sibling.

When I was 9 my mother remarried. I wasn't "consulted" on that but I do remember her coming up to me one day uncharacteristically emotionally and asking "You do LIKE [stepdad], don't you?" I remember thinking "A bit late to ask that and you're hardly going to chuck him out if I don't". And I thought it would probably be nicer of me to say yes, so I did. I hadn't actually given it a moment's thought! As it turned out, he was a great choice. But I remember being pissed off in that moment, being made to feel as if I had a choice when I clearly did not! It has stuck in my mind for almost 50 years.

Get yourself some therapy.

I totally understand where your coming from. The fact is though your parents choice to adopt and it could have equally turned out to be the most fantastic decision and you had a really lovely relationships with him as a child. No one can go back on that choice they made. You have since built a relationship and you either choose to forgive and forget and look to the future or not. I have no contact for lots of reasons with any of my family ( except my DB)
and it works for me . If that works for you better than do that. Cut ties. Life is too short to be bitter and angry but equally too short to have people in your life who don’t deserve to be.
best wishes

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.

so don’t; cut yourself a bit of slack, don’t go. It’s easy for the majority of replies urging you to be a saint and overlook your ( perfectly justified) feelings. I wonder how many of them have had to cope with anything like your ruined adolescence.

You had a traumatic experience as well, lasting for many years. Yes, of course your brother experienced early years’ trauma , but that doesn’t mean that your experience is invalid.

I don’t know whether it would be possible for you and your family to pay a ‘flying visit’ over Christmas, just an hour or two to coo over the baby and then bugger off home. That would seem to be the most diplomatic solution.

I am putting on my hazmat suit and saying “ you don’t know how this is going to turn out. I read with my jaw dropping the adverse reactions of many men to the arrival of a baby who requires a great deal of their partner’s attention. Don’t get sucked into that drama, OP. Put on your own life jacket, and those of your children’.

xxxx

As an adopted person, this makes me very sad. While your honesty is admirable, my first reaction to reading your posts is that I'm very glad you're not my sibling. Sorry, but that's the way I feel.

You felt bad about getting a present as you felt like a brat for wanting one.
You describe your anger as "awfully, disgustingly unreasonable" and your behaviour as "acting like a total spoilt brat".

When your children want your attention, you don't think they are brats, do you.

I agree with talking to your parents. I think your adoptive brothers behaviour is a smokescreen to another underlying issue.

There is a lot of unresolved emotions in how you talk about the decision to adopt and your feelings about this and the stillbirth. How you were made to feel like your wanted a sibling because of your parents desperate need for another child. Then not only did he come along and you had to share him but he blew your life up in a huge way.

now his child is forcing your children to go through exactly the same.

I don’t think it is an apology from your brother you crave. I think you recognise none of this was his fault or decision and actually it comes across that you do have positive emotions towards him

I agree wholeheartedly with this, and I expect a large part of the reason the OP struggled so much was because she was an only child for so much of her formative years.

My biological brother experienced trauma as a young child and went onto terrorise myself and DM through teenage years. He levelled out in his 30s. I simply don't understand all this naval gazing from the OP so late on in life. Just reduce contact to as much or as little as you like so it doesn't stir up these feelings of jealousy. You don't need to fake a love that isn't there.

She's not a child though.

Exactly this.

This. You need therapy to process your rage. Or it will eat you up. Adopted children can have so many issues in childhood. It is testament to your parents kindness and commitment to your brother that he reached adulthood and is managing to make a life for himself. Get help.

OP describes feeling as if she was a brat when she was a child. I'm encouraging her to be kinder to herself in retrospect. It helps no-one if she sees herself as awful or disgusting for having feelings today, either. She's grown up with very complicated feelings in a complicated and unfortunate situation for everyone, and needs to look into it with a professional rather than sitting there feeling ashamed.

Fair enough. I thought she was talking about her behaviour now.

Have you told your parents how you feel? In their eyes they did a good thing, but did they ever consider the impact of their actions on you? I think they are to blame for your feelings, what they viewed as an unselfish act was selfish, thoughtless and uncaring. How much effort did they put into shielding you from the consequences of their actions? Your anger is directed wrongly, your brother is not really to blame, your parents are wholly culpable.