One of my earliest memories is

[Prudence69]

my brother lying on top of me, rubbing his body frantically against mine. He must have been five. I would have been about three. This only happened maybe ten times and stopped before I was perhaps four or five.

From the age of seven or so, he started to profess such hatred for me. He would write to Jim'll Fix It to ask for an AK-47 to gun me down. He would chain my bike up and refuse to let me use it. He would say I would go nowhere and end up pregnant at 16. I was capable of fighting back with a sharp tongue and physically defending myself if I had to but it was all so unpleasant and vicious and looking back, so weird.

He has since got his own family - he's devoted to them. I've never seen anything other than great dad behaviour.

I'm in a bit of a state about all this. Why would a small child of five have sexual urges? Was he himself abused? Why did he have such hatred of me? Was it guilt of what he did to me? He was a child. I can hardly have blame.

This hatred eased as I hit my twenties and I think he realised it wasn't really acceptable to talk to your sister like that especially when she has boyfriends!

He and his wife are decidedly chilly towards me. I don't really mind this but sometimes I get very sad and angry and want to tell him what an effing arsehole he was and he'd better do well by his daughter.

I could never ever tell anyone this in RL not least my DH who would go mental and it would cause such family disruptions and for what? For me to spill my guts. But I feel wretched about it all. I am angry with my brother for being so vile. I don't imagine I was an angel - far from it - but I do remember feeling perplexed and being acutely aware that I felt I knew more than other kids about sex from a young age.

What can I do to progress from this? I lurch from hating my brother to thinking how vulnerable he must have been with also dealing with our parents' vicious divorce.

It honestly all sounds fairly normal.

An erect penis to a five year old feels nice but it is no way sexual to them.

It is also quite normal for brothers and sisters to hate each other.

My bother (38 now) would have known all the names of guns, tanks, warships etc at 7 years old. It was very normal then.

At times he hated his annoying sister (me) and could ignore me for days on end. He also hit me (one of my teeth fell out), farted in my face, wiped bogies on me, yadda yadda. He could also be lovely to me.

This was all in the days before dishwashers, automatic washing machines, microwaves etc. Most mums were far too busy to properly supervise us and most siblings main source of entertainment was to wind each other up.

He would have written the letter to Jim'll Fix It because he would have known it would have got a massive reaction from you. And, boy did it work, because you still remember it now?

You do, however, need to speak to someone professionally trained to talk though these issues.

Would come at this from a slightly different tack.

I think you were and remain affected by your parents vicious divorce and this may actually also be why your relationship now with your brother now is not close.

How do you both get on with your parents these days?.

Were you "requested" by your parents to take sides at this young age?. Do you think he could have felt that you were somehow more favoured?. All that may be reasons for his anger towards you. Not excusing him at all btw (you did feel uncomfortable with his behaviour) but there are reasons as to why he behaved as his did towards you particularly when he was a teenager (is shouting at you something that your Dad did towards your Mum?).

I think you need to talk to your brother about family life when growing up.

I would also seek counselling for your own self.

Whilst I do not think it is 'normal', I think this is much more common than people imagine. I don't believe this is sexual, more 'if I do that it makes me feel funny'.
That would be at age 5.
At age 7, something could have triggered the knowledge that this wasn't quite the right thing to have done.
And then you have a very confused boy and part of that confusion may have shown itself in this horrible behaviour towards his sister. From what OP said, their childhood was not without problems caused by their parents' divorce.
He may very well still suffer feelings of guilt, shame, anger, confusion. He himself may question whether he abused his sister or may be living in fear that she feels he abused her.
OP should take some counselling herself before doing anything to get her own mind straight on whether she feels this is abuse, or if confused children make mistakes sometimes. Then she will be in the best position to decide whether she needs to confront her brother, if she can accept what happened and have a semi-distant relationship with her brother and his family, or indeed if she needs to back away permanently for her own good.
It is possible to get to a point where you can say 'we had loads of weirdness in our childhood, but that's behind us. I am going to phone you once a month to hear you and your wife and your children's news and to give you my news and I will see you a couple of times a year'.

I would seek counselling before you try and talk to your brother.

I think you both had a hard time as children.

RIMOD: and your mother looked on and let it happen.

Broken Britain indeed.

So just because mums were so busy with the household is not an excuse for neglect of parental responsibility. Maybe stop popping them out when you can't supervise/educate them..

Snoopy, I think you must have been very isolated from the normal rough and tumble of family life. I hope it has not given you unrealistic expectations of your own children but I think you should hesitate before proclaiming a 5yr old an abuser. IMHO you could cause untold harm by being pedantic about your views in the face of views to the contrary from many other posters.

I don't like the turn this thread is taking. Almost as much as I dislike sudden attacks of bleedingheartitus.

I am one of 5 children and we knocked seven sorts of shit out of each other during the 70s and 80s.

Never, never in my life have I doubted their love for me, and they don't doubt mine. They continue to be my deepest and dearest support.

at snoopy

And by the way, My Mother (god rest her) had far more pressing issues to concern herself with in the 70s, such as how to put some food on the table to feed the 5 kids, how to get us the best education possible to allow us to make all the choices she had been denied as a young woman growing up in the war. How to teach us to keep ourselves safe in the big bad world outside our home.
Funny, isn't that just the sort of thing the pundits are saying our children are lacking?

I think, to be fair, there are a couple of ways of looking at this.

Sibling rivalry, fighting, rough and tumble etc. is a pretty normal part of most sibling relationships. Certainly I and my bro used to knock seven bells out of each other (um, he even ended up in hospital after an 'aeroplane' stunt went a little wrong). Ditto, the verbal sparring. But we were and remain best friends. This seems to be true of most sibling relationships - antagonism but underlying love.

But, there are clearly sibling relationships where whilst there is antagonism there isn't underlying love or affection. One of my best friends and his sister really did not get on at all. At this point the fighting, rough and tumble and verbal sparring has a more unpleasant aspect. He'd take a level of pleasure in hurting her, and she'd take a level of pleasure in hurting him (despite, incidentally, both being lovely people in their own right). Today, they continue to have a difficult relationship.

I guess my point is that the nature of the actions doesn't determine what's right or wrong, but rather the spirit in which they're delivered and received.

SpringLamb said: Whilst I do not think it is 'normal',

That's a huge statement. Please can you tell me what qualifies you to say what is and isn't normal - beyond your own personal belief/opinion that it might not be normal that is. Have you conducted extensive, peer reviewed research?

Here is an interesting question, to nobody in particular: What would you do if you saw your children behaving in the same ways?

I would say "excuse me, that's a bit rude" and leave it at that.

I would sit my son down and explain that that is innapropriate behaviour. hopefully explain that those sort of cuddles are for someone special but not until he is much older and do my very best to not make him or my daughter feel ashamed or embarassed by it - thereby granting them the freedom to trust that they can talk to me without fear of retribution about anything they see fit - which i hope to god is the relationship my boy and i have, which i worked hard for. I used to try and run my sisters down with my toy car. Which was a motorised one. The fact is siblings can be brutal. I also play acted out what we saw in films etc with friends and my sisters and i used to kiss bears - from about age six up, although it is different for everyone. My four year old is fascinated by our dogs humping the table leg, which recently started. The fact is that it is normal unless nto normalified. sometimes these days we are so quick to jump on the abuse bandwagon and i have an intense dislike of five year olds being given such a label when they are quite frankly incapable of making the decision required to be abusive. Abused children can act out what is happening to them as they dont understand what is wrong. This does not make them abusers, it makes them victims incapable of knowing any different, due entirely to their age. TO say anything else is scaremongering and wrong. Now what i would like to know if op is around is where your parents were during this - kids scrap and are brutal - particularly disturbed children from backgrounds of great upheaval. I dont know how old you are but twenty years or so ago there was massive stigma and little support for divorcign families and it was rarely handled well. You do seem to have issues with your brother and i suspect he is picking up on that and is quite possible embarassed by it but there is no reason at all to suspect he was doing anything other than childhood experimentation. did you tell your mother at the time - how were you treated. This is obviosuly a massive deal to you and i think you need professional help, as i said before to deal with it.

To the woman who made such an awful flippant comment about parenting abilities - this is a non judgemental site for the sharing of opinions and experiences in order to help one another. Please think carefully before sharing views obviosuly intended to cause offence - this is a very serious thread and it isnt appropriate. If you wish to air your thoughts about parenting styles in earlier decades post in parenting not on someone elses cry for assistance.

OP let us know how you are getting on.

Accio don't try no confrontational shit on me.

Read the post - "Whilst I do not think it is 'normal'".

I do not consider it the norm. Or to put it another way: I do not consider it to be true that the majority of persons engaged in a sibling relationship will have had an experience such as this.

It is not appropriate for me to list my professional qualifications (or otherwise as the case may be) unless you wish to enter into a professional relationship with me.

Views were sought. Views were given.

I am quite shocked at this. Admittedly I did not have siblings growing up, had I thought my kids might treat each other in a manner that the op has experienced I might have thought again about having more than 1 kid myself.

I dont feel in a position to offer advice because of my lack of experience (fortunately DS and DD are currently very loving and gentle towards each other). You have my empathy tho' OP it must be confusing to remember stuff like this.