Teen burdened by younger sibling

[Anonymous]

Expect the older sibling to distance themself from the family when they are out of high school and college.

We saw this dynamic and with a friend's family.
Son got ulcerative colitis. Major drama for 5 years. Son was going to die. Son was depressed. Son had multiple surgeries. Son was suicidal. etc. 100% of the focus was on the son and the drama. The daughter was forgotten.

Daughter got engaged and she did not want her brother or her father at the wedding since the focus was always on the brother. Mother had to do major negotiations with the daughter to get the brother and father invited to the wedding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:f your younger child gets riled up by someone sticking their tongue out at them after they just tantrumed and caused a ruckus it’s an issue with your younger child and you.

It’s a natural consequence of acting poorly. You act poorly and others are going to treat you poorly. The older siblings sees there are zero consequences for the younger child exploding at the entire family and being out of control, yet when the older sibling sticks their tongue out which is so minor you ground them and make this huge deal out it even if you later take it back.

Stop excusing this behavior by saying ADHD and “growing out of it”. Being explosive and having major meltdowns isnt a symptom of ADHD.

To outsiders hearing your take on things it is truly puzzling why you can’t see how ridiculous it is that you are concentrating on finding fault with your older child instead of explaining to your younger child how their behavior is upsetting to others. And acknowledging out loud to your older child that it is frustrating and upsetting to be in their position so instead of sticking out their tongue please write down how you are feeling so we know what’s going on amd we can help address it or ask to go in a walk or car ride to talk about it.

You spend your time walking on eggshells around younger child and eventually your older child won’t spend much time at home. I have a high school age DD who has a friend in a similar situation. We’ve seen the past 7 years how her parents spend most of their time and money on another sibling.

Over the last couple of years she has been spending more and more time over at our house. In the summer we took her on a one week vacation and one afternoon we told her it was her turn to pick where we go for dinner and the activity afterward. She was speechless and didn’t say anything. We explained we take turns and she’s part of the family vacation so we really wanted her to choose wherever she wanted to go. She did and we all went and had a great time. At the end of the night driving back to the resort she started crying and when she composed herself she said she rarely gets to pick and then when she does the meal/activity is always ruined or changed to appease the sibling.

When we got back my child asked if we could set up another bed in her room for her friend. We did and she now seems to spend most of her time at our house.

I love this answer. And thank you for helping your daughter's friend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no such thing as "hyperfocus" ADHD. There's hyperactive, inattentive and mixed-type ADHD (meaning displaying both hyperactive and inattentive).

The explosive temper and the hyperfocus are red flags for autism. The immense majority of autistic kids also have ADHD. So your youngest might actually have a pretty typical ASD/ADHD profile.

I say this in case you haven't looked at ABA or CBT therapy and used specific narration and other socialization practices for ASD kids.

To answer your question, it's because the teen is still a child, and can also have impulsive and childish moments. We all have our moments, OP. Your teen is not perfect and you should not expect them to be perfect! Indeed, since you have one kid with impulsivity issues (ADHD is, at its core, a disorder of attention regulation, which means impulsivity is always at issue), it means your entire family may have tendencies towards ADHD. All these disorders are genetically inheritable, OP. Your teen may be slightly more impulsive than average, or may just have responded instinctively, because they're a kid and it was that kind of day.

That one episode is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. You should to try to diagnose or otherwise interpret this departure from your teen's usually good behavior. And please do not punish them.

I have no idea whether OP’s younger child has HFA (which often is not diagnosed in early childhood), but I wanted to dispel some of the assertions in your post.

Hyper focus is associated with ADHD as well as autism. People with ADHD can and do hyper focus on preferred activities or things they feel are highly important or urgent in the moment. ADHD doesn’t prevent them from doing a deep dive into things they enjoy; it’s really the inability to maintain focus on anything that isn’t interesting to them personally/pleasurable/urgent and time sensitive. They have no problem focusing for long periods on things that light up the pleasure center of the brain.

People, most especially children, with ADHD also suffer from emotional dysregulation. Here in the US, emotional dysregulation is considered an “associated feature” of ADHD, but newer research shows how common it is in people with ADHD. In Europe emotional dysregulation is now considered one of the 6 fundamental features of ADHD in adults, so of course it would be expected in children with ADHD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:f your younger child gets riled up by someone sticking their tongue out at them after they just tantrumed and caused a ruckus it’s an issue with your younger child and you.

It’s a natural consequence of acting poorly. You act poorly and others are going to treat you poorly. The older siblings sees there are zero consequences for the younger child exploding at the entire family and being out of control, yet when the older sibling sticks their tongue out which is so minor you ground them and make this huge deal out it even if you later take it back.

Stop excusing this behavior by saying ADHD and “growing out of it”. Being explosive and having major meltdowns isnt a symptom of ADHD.

To outsiders hearing your take on things it is truly puzzling why you can’t see how ridiculous it is that you are concentrating on finding fault with your older child instead of explaining to your younger child how their behavior is upsetting to others. And acknowledging out loud to your older child that it is frustrating and upsetting to be in their position so instead of sticking out their tongue please write down how you are feeling so we know what’s going on amd we can help address it or ask to go in a walk or car ride to talk about it.

You spend your time walking on eggshells around younger child and eventually your older child won’t spend much time at home. I have a high school age DD who has a friend in a similar situation. We’ve seen the past 7 years how her parents spend most of their time and money on another sibling.

Over the last couple of years she has been spending more and more time over at our house. In the summer we took her on a one week vacation and one afternoon we told her it was her turn to pick where we go for dinner and the activity afterward. She was speechless and didn’t say anything. We explained we take turns and she’s part of the family vacation so we really wanted her to choose wherever she wanted to go. She did and we all went and had a great time. At the end of the night driving back to the resort she started crying and when she composed herself she said she rarely gets to pick and then when she does the meal/activity is always ruined or changed to appease the sibling.

When we got back my child asked if we could set up another bed in her room for her friend. We did and she now seems to spend most of her time at our house.

I love this answer. And thank you for helping your daughter's friend.

+1. What a lovely gesture. That continues.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think it’s deep. Their younger sibling annoys them and they don’t like them. Therefore, they want to inflict anger and annoy younger sibling. They aren’t thinking about YOU and how you will have to deal with the ensuing meltdown (again). They get to go to their room and shut their door. Not their problem

[Anonymous]

the teenager is behaving age appropriately. The younger sibling is annoying and this is how a teenager would treat an annoying classmate.

stop being so accommodating to the younger sibling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s deep. Their younger sibling annoys them and they don’t like them. Therefore, they want to inflict anger and annoy younger sibling. They aren’t thinking about YOU and how you will have to deal with the ensuing meltdown (again). They get to go to their room and shut their door. Not their problem

This! Maybe they’ll get a small rise out the sib losing it again “like a baby”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Maybe they are pissed because a disproportionate amount of time and energy goes to the sibling while they have to hold it together.

Op here. I want to negate this by saying, I watched a movie with this teen on Friday. It was really fun. I took them shopping for Hoco even though I had a busy day. I bought them an expensive item/gear for their sport today. Like we’ve been talking about it for months, and finally did it this morning. And they got to go out with friends from 6-midnight last night (break from us, fun time out).

This isn’t me explaining why they should be ok, but more like.. what else could you want as for attention?

Are you freaking serious? You think one nice weekend makes up for the chaos and concessions that come with living with an explosive sibling?
Out of curiosity what type of punishment does your explosive child get?

For 110% clarity, you didn’t answer m my original Q. The purpose in sharing her otherwise good weekend is that it’s not “attention-seeking.” The child has positive attention. It’s a sort of typical weekend to talk and spend time together and to have friends around.

Aside from attention, what do you think it was? Please answer my question bc that gives me understanding.

She doesn’t want one good weekend you’ve been “talking about for months” she wants consistent, positive attention that doesn’t get disrupted and explained away because sibling has adhd

Find where I said we’ve been talking about a nice weekend for months. We do this almost every weekend
The expensive equipment purchase was done this weekend. Something we have been searching/shopping for for months.
I’m saying, this child is not short of attention.

So bearing this in mind, is it just dumb sinking stuff for the tongue sticking out? I can accept it.

But it got the adhd child riled up after effort to bring him down. It was upsetting. Is it just pure anger at him? Not thinking?

Why is your youngest child the only one allowed to be impulsive? Your eldest is a teen. Still impulsive.
FFS I can tell by the post you begrudge your eldest acting like a child, which they are, and then you coddle the F6^& out of your youngest. Youll twist yourself in a pretzel becaus the youngest has a diagnosis . Guess what? Your eldest does too, its called being a teenager without a developed PFC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's hard but that's your child too and they probably don't like having to always be understanding and probably make sacrifices.

You have my empathy, I would probably scream at older DC for this. Not that it's right, but that's what I'd probably do, out of pure frustration.

Manage this carefully. I have family with this dynamic. Two of my cousins - one with mental issues that impacted the home dynamic a lot and another who was also there. I say it that way because that is how it felt to her. Her parents were consistently asking her to bend to accommodate the other sibling. Her needs were always second tier. She is estranged from them now, and I honestly don’t blame her. My aunt is still worried about what this means for her other child - that the siblings don’t talk. It did not need to be this way. I see other families with a SN child and the NT sibling is very supportive and protective. I see that the parents in those cases still prioritize the NT sibling and set expectations for the SN sibling.

[Anonymous]

Yikes that it's this hard to understand and empathize with your neurotypical child.