What Has Helped Me Thus Far

For a long time now, I've struggled with an off-and-on depression and anger that continuously gnaws at me. I attribute this anger and depression partly to the abuse I experienced at the hands of my siblings and partly to the helplessness brought on by my parents' failure to protect me. Sometimes I feel resentful at the resentment itself because it took away a lot of the good parts of my life. I entered my late adolescence and young adulthood not as a joyous, carefree young person, but as a very angry and closed off woman who spent a lot of time being angry at the world, walking around wanting to kill someone. 

Sometimes I would ask myself if this angry cloud would ever lift and I would see the sun again. Because every once in a while I would ask myself, "What if I feel like this for the rest of my life? Will I just be this angry for good?" 

I'm finding more and more that the answer is no. 

Within the past few months, I've noticed some changes within me. I don't feel angry as frequently anymore. And while there are still times when I lock myself in my room and beat the shit out of my mattress, those times don't happen as often as they used to. I was thinking about this recently and asking myself why this is. So I sat down and thought about it and came up with a list of reasons why.

This is what I think has helped me:

Time and Distance: Just getting away from my siblings for a while helped to clear some smoke out of the skies. I'd heard that "time heals all wounds" and I didn't want to believe it, because I thought that nothing as simple as "time" should be allowed to pardon my siblings. But the thing is. . .it did. And I'm glad that it did. Distance as well. I think that distance even more so than time can help heal wounds. Moving out of the house and limiting my contact with my siblings erased some of the painful memories. Distance can also be emotional as well as geographical. I cut off relationships with the two guilty siblings and that was a signal to them that I was punishing them for what they did. 

Expressing my feelings--but not to the guilty parties--was also a big help. In my teen years I wasted my time with a dumbass therapist who told me that all I needed to do was stand up for myself and that would be it. I would make my siblings treat me respectfully and I would no longer be in pain. Bullshit. Looking back, I can see now that I shouldn't have pressured myself so much about "standing up" to the oppressors, because it wouldn't have done anything. But what would have helped me would have been talking to supportive people (not my therapist) about how I was feeling. Whenever my friends sympathetically listened to me and offered support and encouragement, I felt at least ten times lighter. I know someone who also went through a difficult time as a child, and she told me one of the most helpful things she did was just getting all her feelings out, and talking about it. 

Learning about others' experiences: When I heard others' stories about dealing with abusive siblings and parents who were no help, this also helped to lighten my load. Not in a Schadenfraude type of way, but in an "I'm not alone" type of way. Witnessing many different types of people who have gone through these experiences, I learned that I was not to blame for what happened. I also learned that other people were also shouldering big emotional burdens, and this perspective helped to lighten my load in a weird way. 

Empowering myself: Something that I have noticed over and over again: my anger goes away when my helplessness goes away. Whenever I was able to do something that put power back in my own hands, I felt a lot better. This isn't always possible, but when you can find something you can control, take advantage of it. For me, empowering myself meant accepting the fact that my parents and I weren't going to see eye-to-eye about me attending my sibling's wedding, and not to waste time getting angry over them. It meant trusting my own common sense and judgment when I heard an adult using the "it takes two to tango" line in a situation that very clearly involved a guilty party. It meant many different things to me, and I encourage you to find what empowering yourself means to you. 

Fighting back: The few times I did it, I did think that giving my siblings a taste of their own medicine was helpful to me. It reaffirmed that what they did was unacceptable when I saw their reactions. It got rid of some of my anger. And it educated them on why I was mad at them. You can choose whether or not you want to do this. Some mental health experts would say not to. But in my opinion, giving bullies a taste of their own medicine is not necessarily a bad idea.

This blog: Writing a blog is a unique experience. When I kept a diary and recorded my thoughts there, it didn't help me because I felt like I was internalizing my feelings even more. But with a blog I get to write my thoughts publicly, and share them with other people who have had similar experiences. I get to give an issue a public voice, and hopefully educate people a little bit more about this issue. I get to get a conversation going. I get to offer others a chance to share their own personal stories if they desire. This blog has been empowering and has been a public track record of my growth through dealing with this horrible trauma. And I hope learning about my experiences has been empowering for you as well.

I also would like to share with you some things that don't help, and they are:
-anything that makes you feel more helpless
-invalidation (from friends who judge your feelings)
-not expressing your feelings; keeping everything inside

I hope that in time, you will find peace and get rid of the horrible monsters still plaguing you. You deserve to be happy, and I can tell you that in time you will also find the clouds are lifting. 

Why We Don't Talk about It

When I was a teenager, I was facing the worst emotional crisis I had ever faced in my life and (if my prediction comes true) probably ever will. I felt depressed, angry and helpless 90% of the time and just wanted to cut myself off from my family for good. The worst part of it was the fact that I felt like I was all alone in the world. I didn't talk about my problems to a single soul, and even though I desperately wanted help it felt like there was no one out there to help me. I just wasn't close to my friends, and I didn't think I could tell them about what was going on at home. I didn't know who I could turn to. So I suffered in silence, too afraid to come out of the closet about the fact that I was hurting very, very badly.

Right now I am slowly working my way out of what (I hope) was the darkest period in my life. But even now there are plenty of times where I feel very angry and sad, and I don't know what to do about it. So I started reflecting about my situation, and a thought occurred to me. What if I were to just . . .let it out? Tell someone? Not wait around for the right person to present themselves to me, but just let my problems out to someone I knew?

So I thought about that for a while, and then decided that I would reveal a little bit of my story to my friend, Rebecca during one of our get-togethers. Well, she and I spent a day in a park together, just walking around and chatting about random topics. Rebecca is a good friend of mine, and while we're not extremely close, her kindness has shown me that I can trust her to reveal some of the issues I've dealt with.

Well, we were chatting and walking and walking and chatting and . . . I never told her. Anything. I didn't let the tiniest sliver of my story come out to her.

Why did that happen? Why didn't I tell her anything? Why is it so hard to talk about our issues?

I think there are a few reasons why:

1. We're afraid of criticism: I've talked about my past to people in my life before, and sometimes they have been very critical of the things I've said. When we're expressing feelings like "I hate my sister!!," others often want to react with something along the lines of, "Don't say that! That's terrible!" Such invalidation shuts us up and makes us think resentfully to ourselves, You know what?! You'd be saying the EXACT SAME THING if she was your sibling! Better to not talk about it at all.  
2. People are condescending: Putting yourself in a vulnerable position can give the person you are speaking to a chance to give themselves a power trip. Even if she seems like she's being nice, often what comes out of Miss Condescension's mouth is a put-down in disguise. "Oh sweetie," she'll say, "All siblings fight with each other. Just don't let it bother you so much." Being treated like you're five years old and having someone downplay your problems is tough to handle. And this brings me to my third point. . .
3. People just don't get it:  "Oh but that's normal," is the common response from people we've talked about our experiences with. They don't understand that what happened to us was unacceptable, inexcusable, and has left lasting scars. Sometimes people think we're trying to bring the conversation around to birth order. We fear they'll respond to our problems with, "But what about all the shit that younger siblings do?" Or they'll turn the conversation back to themselves and say, "Well, I was the oldest child, and I had it really tough...." another topic that really, really irritates us.
4. We don't want to make others uncomfortable: What we've been through has not been pretty. This is especially true for survivors of physical and sexual abuse, but even stories about emotional abuse can make others cringe. We don't want our friends to be stuck in an awkward position where they don't know how to respond to something we've told them. So instead, we keep quiet.
5. We feel uncomfortable: Feeling vulnerable does not feel good to us. We don't want to seem weak to others or to ourselves. Hearing our emotions expressed out loud makes them very real for us, while previously we'd been able to pretend that they didn't exist. Reliving situations where a sibling humiliated you or beat you up, especially out loud, is not a pleasant experience. We would rather give help to others than be on the receiving end of help from others. To us, revealing our problems feels like we're making ourselves weaker.

Every once in a while I ask myself if I have any regrets about my experience with sibling abuse. To be honest, I don't really think I do. I don't think fighting back harder would have made a difference. I don't think explaining it to my parents would have made a difference. I don't think that anything I could have done would have stopped the abuse itself.

But I think that there's something I do regret. I regret not opening up about my feelings to the people in my life. I think my teenage years would have been ten times better had I talked to my friends about what I was going through. I can hear sixteen-year-old me saying, "Ha! Easier said than done!" And maybe that's true. But I used to think that a close friendship was something that happened to you, and now I see that it's something you create. I used to think you needed to wait for the right friend to come along for you to finally divulge deeper parts of yourself. But you don't, really. You don't need the absolute right moment to tell people how you're feeling--you just need a good enough moment.

The exception I think is with physical or sexual abuse. In those cases, in my opinion, you do need the right moment to finally reveal that information. And I think that moment can come along. I had a good friend reveal to me that she experienced physical abuse at the hands of an older sibling. In turn, I revealed to her some of my story. And it was a good experience for both of us.

Looking back, I realize that the only time I ever came out of the closet to someone was when they had revealed some of their personal struggles to me first. Hearing someone else's story made me feel safe to reveal mine, because I knew that they wouldn't criticize, belittle or judge me. And it makes me wonder how many other friends I had like me, who were waiting to reveal their story but wanted someone else to go first so that they could feel safe.

So I have a dare for you. Wait for a good enough moment, and then reveal at least part of your story to a friend of yours. Go first.  

My Reply to a Misguided Mom

Here is a note I found on this website titled "When Should I Intervene During Teasing?"

My 13-year-old son is constantly teasing his younger brother, who is 10. I never know when to intervene. On the one hand, I want to let them work it out themselves. On the other, I worry that my older son is going to think it's OK to be mean and my younger son is going to have some lasting emotional scars. What do I do?
- Janet

And here is my response:

Dear Janet,

You're a good mom. It sounds like you're involved in your kids' lives, and want the best for them. You want to do what's right and you follow the advice from experts, parenting books, and most likely the people in your life: children should be left alone to "work it out themselves."

But here's the thing: "Working it out themselves" is something that applies to your kids' conflicts with each other. If your sons are fighting about what to watch on T.V, or who stole whose skates and broke them, or which video game they want to play together, then they can be left alone to work it out themselves.

During a teasing situation, children should not be left alone to handle it. While conflicts can be dealt with by compromising, teasing is very different. In this situation, there's nothing to really "work out." We're dealing with misbehavior here. And when a child misbehaves, it is a parent's duty to step in.

Telling a teaser and a victim to "work it out themselves" is like telling a child running around a restaurant screaming his head off to "work it out himself." The restaurant-screaming child is not going to stop until an adult steps in and punishes him for misbehaving. The same goes for the teasing child.

You are absolutely right that your older son is learning that it's OK to be mean. The fact that you are worried and the fact that you wrote this letter both tell me that your intuition has given you the answer here. You know already that it's time for you to intervene.

And when do you intervene during teasing? If the teasing is constant, if it's meant to embarrass or dominate the victim, if one child is always teasing and the other always being teased, then you must step in and hold the aggressor accountable. You're worried that there's some sort of acceptable limit for teasing, and you shouldn't intervene until the teasing has surpassed that limit. What all parents should know is that the threshold is a lot closer than they think. If you can say "teasing is present in my house," then chances are the limit has already been reached.

Try your best to stamp out the teasing and let your older son know his power to be compassionate. Then it will no longer be necessary to intervene

Sincerely,

Spunky Sybil



 

A Fourth Reason: Insecurity

A year or two ago, the television show "Girls," was the next big thing everyone was talking about. Created by mid-twenty-something Lena Dunham, the show is often described as a modern version of "Sex and the City" for twenty-something women. I don't have HBO, and "Girls" isn't streaming on Netflix, so I never really got around to watching it. Recently, though, a friend told me about this website where you can watch a bunch of different television shows for free (illegally, of course), and "Girls" was on there. My curiosity got the best of me, and one night I sat down and binge-watched my way through the entire first season.

I don't like Lena Dunham (more on than later) so I was expecting to hate the show. But to be honest, I didn't feel that strongly about it. The characters were annoying and the dialogue was clearly contrived from eavesdropped Starbucks conversations, but nothing else really stood out to me. Except for one scene.

During one part of the first season's finale episode, Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham's character) and her roommate, Marnie have a fight. It begins with Marnie passively-aggressively insulting Hannah, and then spirals from there. The two begin attacking each other, and Marnie says at one point,"You judge everyone, and yet you ask them not to judge you!" And then Hannah responds with a line that made me reach a new level of clarity in my quest to understand sibling abuse:  

"That is because no one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself. Any mean thing someone's gonna think of to say about me, I've already said to me, about me, probably in the last half hour!"

Pause. Rewind.

Let me take you back to the year 2010, and introduce you to another, lesser known creation produced by Lena Dunham, "Tiny Furniture." This was the first feature-length film Dunham created, and tells the story of Dunham and her post-college graduation crisis. This film doesn't say much of anything--in fact, it's one of the most boring movies I've ever seen--but it does reveal a lot (at least in my opinion) about Dunham herself.

Fiction is always at least partly autobiographical, and "Tiny Furniture" is definitely a mini-autobiography of Dunham's life. Many people will notice many different things when they see the film, but one thing that certainly stood out to me when I watched it is the relationship Dunham has with her sister. What stood out to me the most was that Lena Dunham was an abusive older sibling, and her younger sister, Grace, sought revenge in her teen years. How do I know this?

As someone who has developed an eye for abusive sibling relationships, I can confidently tell you that "sibling abuse" is written all over the relationship Dunham has (or had) with her sister. One thing I dislike about Dunham is the fact that she always portrays herself as the innocent victim. In the very first scene of "Tiny Furniture," Grace starts being snarky to Lena, who then says to Grace, "You're being mean!" (Grace then quips back with, "And you're being over-sensitive!," a remark I'm sure was always leveled at her when she defended herself.)

That film made me dislike Lena Dunham (I have no tolerance for abusive older siblings, and even less for ones who think they're innocent), and "Girls" made me understand her. Why was Dunham mean to her sister? Because she was filled with insecurities, and picking on her sister made her feel better. What we see in that episode of "Girls" is not Hannah Horvath talking, it's Lena Dunham talking. And she's telling us about the hurt that pushed her to want to destroy others.

Insecurity in the abuser is another big reason for sibling abuse. For these abusers, the words they say out loud are reflections of the thoughts inside their minds. In a weird way, the abuser is also being abused--by their very self. And if we want to stamp out sibling abuse, we should focus on all of the abusers present, even the ones not visible.  

Victim Blaming

I was sitting on the couch in my therapist's office, trying hard to absorb what he had just said to me. I felt confused. It just didn't make any sense. We had been discussing my past with my siblings, and how this connected to the overwhelming depression and anger I had been feeling for the past few years. I wanted to get better, and was looking for answers. After a few sessions of listening to my problems, my therapist presented to me the reason why: it was all my fault. 

"I think that no matter who your siblings were, this would have been the outcome," he said. "Your personality invites it," he told me, referring to the bullying (and my nicey-nice temperament). At the time, I thought that since he was my therapist, he must have been right. So I ate his words, and said to him, "I guess if I had fought back, my sister would have stopped being mean to me."

"Oh I guarantee you she would have," he replied. 

Looking back on that conversation disgusts me. I do not believe, for one second, that what happened to me was my fault. As I've said before, there are many factors that contribute to sibling abuse. The victim him- or herself is not one of them. 

Victim blaming is a problem in discussions about sibling abuse. While my therapist is probably the most blatant example of the problem, I've seen it creep up in other resources too.

The parenting classic Siblings Without Rivalry trespasses into victim-blaming territory with its proposed solutions for bullying siblings. In the chapter "Siblings in Roles," the authors address bullying behavior in their subtopic "Freeing Children to Change." They use a little formula called, "No more 'victims,' no more 'bullies'." They show how this works with little cartoons where a parent can "free a bully to be compassionate and a victim to be strong." 

So that seems harmless enough, right? What's wrong with that approach? 

A couple of things. 

First of all, what the authors are proposing is the "don't use labels" approach. This has been used before in bullying prevention, but it has never been used--and isn't supposed to be used--as a main solution. Not calling the bully "a bully" and not calling the victim "a victim," is supposed to be one of many, many tactics that can be used to help prevent bullying. But it is not the panacea for ending bullying. And it is surprising to me that the authors of Siblings Without Rivalry present it as such. 

My second beef with this approach is the assumption the authors are making. They're assuming that if a child is being picked on, that child is weak. Throughout the book, not just in the chapter on sibling roles, the authors provide example after example of a bully picking on a sibling who is meek and mild. They're implying the bullying is happening because the victim is timid. Not a single anecdote is given for cases where the chosen victim fights back. 

And unlike what Faber and Mazlish have presented to us in their book, victims do fight back. In real families, sometimes the victim is timid, and sometimes the victim is tough. Sometimes the insults cause the victim to shrink back, and sometimes they make the victim lunge out. But in either case, the result is the same--the victim's reaction almost always has no effect on the attacker. I've seen many families experiencing sibling abuse. Whether the victim reacts passively, aggressively, or assertively, the bullying almost always continues. (This is why it's important for parents to understand that sibling abuse can exacerbate the fighting between siblings, and even if the two of them are fighting, it's important to get to the guilty party and hold that person accountable.) 

What does a victim have the power to do? They have the power to

• (Try to) avoid their sibling
• Tell their parents the bullying is bothering them
• Emotionally distance themselves from their sibling
• Stand up for themselves ("stop making fun of me," etc.)

I know children who have done all of these things, and still the bullying didn't stop. Ask people who were once victims of sibling abuse,and 99.999% of them will tell you, "I DID stand up for myself!!!....And it never worked." This is why "learned helplessness" is one of the long-term effects of sibling abuse. It's not that victims are "weak," it's that their attempts to protect themselves have very often failed. 

Within the family, children are not in charge of punishments. Those belong in Mom and Dad's territory. And as any parent will tell you, one of the first rules of parenting is to not nag and yell, but follow through with consequences. If a child misbehaves, that child gets one warning. If he doesn't comply, his action should be immediately followed with a consequence. So what if you're a kid, and you can't give out consequences? What happens then? 

Also, a parent saying "stop it" is very different from a child saying "stop it." Parents are the authority figures in the family, and are in charge of setting family rules and expectations. Unlike siblings, parents are not equal to their children. They hold power over their children, and are expected to make their children comply. Siblings simply do not have this power. 

This power dynamic shifts once the kids grow up. When you're an adult, you have the power to cut off a relationship with your sibling. This couldn't have happened before, when you were both living in the same house. But as an adult, you finally do have the power to provide consequences--in the form of taking away your sibling's privilege of having a relationship with you. This threat of "treat me respectfully, or else you'll lose me" is often enough to make the abuser comply. And if they don't, then the power is still in your hands, and you can finally punish your sibling--permanently. 

To my old therapist--I can guarantee fighting back would not have stopped my sibling. But more involved parents, family expectations implemented earlier, and consequences would have. In finding solutions for sibling abuse, pointing fingers at the victims will not empower them. Instead, let's hold the proper parties accountable, and take the burden of blame off the victims' shoulders. What happened to them is not their fault.  

My Story

To date, I have not yet shared my personal experience with you. A few snippets of "my story" have appeared in some of my other posts, but none of them have fully covered everything I went through. So brace yourself as I tell you all about how sibling abuse has affected me. (Fair warning: some of the following incidents may be triggering to some of you. I won't mind if you skip my story altogether and post your own in the comments below.)

So here goes. (deep breath)

I must first give you some family background. It is important to know that I come from a very large family. While I won't reveal the exact number, I will tell you that we're not quite Duggar-status, but we're enough to turn heads in public places. I am also not the very youngest child in my family, but I was still bullied by my two older siblings. They teased, taunted and tortured me with no mercy. The abuse was never physical or sexual in nature, but that doesn't mean it didn't traumatize me. To this day, I still feel angry whenever I remember what they did. 

After about a year of researching sibling abuse and bullying in general, I have come up with a couple of theories as to why it happened. One of the most important factors in my case was the fact that my parents were uninvolved. If you have not yet read my previous post on uninvolved parenting, I'll give you a brief synopsis of what it is. Parents who are uninvolved are parents who are essentially neglecting their children. They provide little supervision, interest, or involvement in their children's lives, and may not even adequately fulfill their children's needs. This was my family in a nutshell. 

My mother was constantly praised for parenting such a large family, and the other mothers would ask her in amazement how she "did it all." The fact was, she didn't do it all. She didn't even try to do it all. When I think back to my childhood, I think my mother thought that because it was impossible to give all of us the attention we needed, she didn't even have to try. Having a big family, to her, was an excuse to not try. And this lack of trying often meant neglect.

At my elementary school, we would gather outside in the courtyard every day for morning announcements before shuffling off to our classrooms. I remember being in second grade and freezing my ass off--because my mother never made sure I had a jacket on. I don't think I even had a jacket. I remember having a jacket at one point, a purple windbreaker, which was new (rare in my family), and which I wore religiously while it was still in my possession. But I lost it once, and my mom never found me a new one.

My clothes were all hand-me-downs (I honestly think that purple windbreaker was the single new piece of clothing I owned until at least middle school) and didn't fit me. I remember thinking, even as a young child, "When I grow up, my kids are going to have clothes that fit!" I was in high school before I had clothes that fit me. I went up to my mom one day early in my freshman year and told her, "Mom, all of my jeans are from fifth grade, we need to go shopping now." And we went. I still remember how good it felt, trying on pants in the store's dressing room. I was thinking to myself, "clothes that fit! Clothes that fit!" I was ecstatic.

Research has shown that my parents' style of uninvolvement will yield sibling emotional abuse in families. I believe that is exactly what caused the bullying in mine. Looking back, I think my two older sisters felt very insecure and dealt with these insecurities by taking them out on me (and later on, on my next younger siblings). One of my older sisters jumped at every opportunity to embarrass me. I was at a church potluck one day, and she, my mother and I were in line serving our plates. She gets to the beans, looks back at me, and says pretty loudly--and right in front of my mother--"Sybil, don't take any beans. They always make you fart." 

What did my mother say to this? Well first, she LAUGHED and then said, "Oh, guess who shares a room!" to the onlookers. This was a common theme with my parents: they never protected me, and never held the abusers accountable. If anything, they contributed to the bullying. Laughing about it was one of their favorite responses. (As well as saying "Stop fighting!" if I tried to stand up for myself.) 

As for my other older sibling, she was a different nutcase altogether. She was the very oldest in the family, and in addition to being mean, she was extremely self-centered. She knew how to get her way by forcefully bludgeoning others into bowing to her will. She twisted others into giving her what she wanted by using manipulation, humiliation and intimidation. Towards my teen years, I really started cutting her out of my life, and by the time I was in high school I hardly spoke to her at all. That didn't stop her from being mean to my younger siblings. 

Alex, one of my younger siblings, failed her driver's test the first time, and scheduled her next one a few months later. Alex's 17th birthday fell over winter break, when my oldest sister was home, and birthday traditions in our family always require an "interview session" of what has happened during the prior year in front of a camera. During her little interview, Alex said something along the lines of, "I'm taking my driver's test soon..." and then my oldest sibling interrupted and said, in her snarky way, "are you taking it or are you re-taking it?" I wanted to throttle her. 

All of this bullying affected me horribly in many different ways. The most horrible effect, I think, was the emotional damage inflicted upon me. In my teen years (which are never easy), I experienced the worst depression I believe I will ever experience in my life. It started when I was almost fifteen and continued until I was about nineteen, and was nothing short of awful. No, "awful" is not a strong enough word. To give you an impression of just how truly miserable those years were, let me tell you this: I calculated (okay, Googled) the hours there are in 3.5 years. It's about 30,681 hours. For me, that was 30,681 hours of either crying or holding back tears. I am not exaggerating. I think I cried myself to sleep almost every single night. 

And when the depression was over, the anger began. For about three years after the three awful years of depression, I walked around feeling very, very angry. Like wanting to kill people angry. I would clench my fists and bite the inside of my lips. I wanted to yell and scream at everyone, especially the people who abused me and the parents who didn't protect me.    

As I grew up, I really wanted to give my siblings a taste of their own medicine. And I did, just a little bit. My second oldest sister once made fun of me one Easter because of how I was wearing my hair. She said it made me look like a hooker. So, a few years later, when I caught her wearing her hair the same way, I went up to her and told her the exact same thing. "I love your hooker hair," I said. She looked at me sort of funny, and said, "This isn't hooker hair, it's just normal hair." I looked back at her and said, "Oh really? Because you thought mine was hooker hair whenever I wore my hair like that." It ended there, and I never again felt a pang of shame or anger when I wore that hairstyle. 

Another time, my oldest sister was making fun of the way my mom was driving (my mom is known for being a bit of a speed demon). Just a few days later, this same sister was driving equally badly, and I went up to her and said it to her face. "You're just as bad as Mom," I told her simply. It was as if I had slapped her. "What?!" she shouted. She looked extremely offended. "I'm better than you are!" she shouted at my retreating back as I walked away from her. This was further proof to me that my siblings really had crossed the line with their teasing, and my hatred of them was not just "super-sensitivity." I didn't even say anything that mean to you! I thought to myself, And you're blowing up at me! 

There were other problems that contributed to the abuse too, like my parents being in denial. Years later, in therapy, my father would admit, "You know, I've seen it, I've excused it, I've thought 'oh you know, a big family,' but no, no more." I felt a mixture of emotions after hearing that. I was glad my parents finally admitted that something was wrong. I was a little bit surprised to find out that they had known there was a problem. In my naive, childish mind I had thought that if my parents weren't saying anything about it, they didn't know it was going on. I felt validated. I knew that I wasn't going crazy after all, that other people had noticed there was a problem too. And I felt disappointed. All this time you knew there was a problem, and you didn't say anything about it, I thought to myself.

Today, I am picking up the pieces. My second oldest sister and I are slowly rebuilding our relationship. She apologized a few years ago, and has shown true remorse for what she did. Once on Facebook, Alex posted a selfie with the same hairstyle that my second oldest sister had made fun of me for. This sister wrote in a reply, "Alex, can you guess what that hairstyle has written all over it? _O_K_R!" In a comment below that, she posted, "Looker! (Not 'hooker!')." That's what's made me happy about that sibling. She has found different ways to apologize. 

My oldest sibling is a different story. She apologized...ish. But her actions never matched her words. Even after "apologizing," she continued to bully my siblings. I eventually decided that enough was enough. She has been unfriended and blocked on my Facebook for over a year, and I no longer speak to her. She will be getting married soon, and I have already told both her and my parents that I am not going to the wedding. I told her recently that I no longer trust her or love her, and that years of having been abused by her has made her lose a relationship with me. 

I started this blog in January of 2013 because I felt like this topic was in serious need of discussion. Many, many children are suffering at the hands of their brothers and sisters, and many, many parents are not doing a thing about it. I hope that in sharing my story I can shed some light on this issue and inspire you to share yours.

So what's your story? What has brought you to War on Sibling Abuse? Please comment below... 
          
  

And Yet Another Reason: Uninvolved Parenting

In these three posts I've so far written (which I'm now making into a series) about the reasons why siblings become abusive, I've not yet talked about one of the most important factors: uninvolved parenting. I've mentioned once or twice before that uninvolved parenting is the surefire way to ensure a family will experience sibling abuse. Regardless of the children's personalities. Even if the children born contain the least jealous, most flexibile, most confident, and generally nicest genes children can possess, if the parents are uninvolved, the older one--or the more aggressive or powerful one--will become an abuser. In other words: uninvolved parenting = sibling abuse, guaranteed. But what is uninvolved parenting? How do I know that parental uninvolvement is the key to creating sibling abuse? And, most importantly, why does parental uninvolvement cause sibling abuse? 

These are wonderful questions that I am happy to answer. So first, let's define uninvolved parenting: This online article gives a nice summary of what it is. But if you didn't click on the link, I'll provide a nice summary for you. Uninvolved parents: 

•  are emotionally distant from their children
• provide little supervision for their children
• show little affection
• have few demands and low to no expectations for behavior
• are being neglectful
• are generally absent from their children's lives--don't attend parent-teacher conferences, school events, etc.
• may intentionally avoid their children
• can be too caught up in their own problems to pay attention to their children

As to why such parenting results in sibling abuse, there are several possible answers. The first one is that uninvolved parenting often yields insecurity in children, and children with low self-esteem are more likely to pick on others in order to build themselves up. But that's not the entire answer. I have seen a few different families where the parents were uninvolved, and the abusive sibling was not always insecure.

One of the ways in which I found my uninvolved parenting=sibling abuse formula was by observing one of my close friends, Maria and her interactions with her younger sister, Sasha. I met Maria when she and I were in elementary school. Maria was a lot like me; shy, quiet, friendly, and above all, nice. If you observed her in the classroom, on the playground, on the bus, with her friends, with her teachers, and with other classmates, you would never, ever, ever suspect that she was a bully at home. Ever. She, like me, was one of those good little girls in school. Always following the rules. Never speaking out of turn. Never doing anything at all to upset anyone. 

She was quite a different way at home.

Before I get into that, however, I should tell you more about her life at home. I didn't suspect it then, but when I look back on our childhood together, I can spot some signs that Maria came from a home of uninvolved parents. Maria often came to school in mismatched clothing that fit her poorly. At our middle school, if a girl was caught wearing spaghetti straps, the administration would make her sport the oh-so-stylish, baggy, ugly "Drug Free" T-shirt from our school's version of the D.A.R.E. program for the rest of the day. We all owned some copy of this shirt at home, and Maria frequently wore it. Not because she was being punished. Because she had nothing else to wear. 

I remember one weekend, Maria and I had made plans to see a PG-13 movie at our local movie theater. It was a big deal for us, because we were in either seventh or eighth grade and had just turned thirteen. When my mom dropped me off at the theater, I was surprised to see both Maria and Sasha standing in the movie theater lobby. Alone. No Mom in sight. Their mother had simply used Maria's and my get-together as an opportunity to get rid of both her daughters for two hours. What's more, Sasha is five years younger than Maria. At the age of eight, she was much too young to be seeing a PG-13 movie with us.

When I saw Maria and Sasha together, I often saw Maria picking on Sasha. For no good reason. I still remember how angry I felt whenever I saw Maria teasing Sasha and then Sasha recoiling in fear. She's not doing anything to you! I would think to myself. Why are you picking on her? 

Maria and Sasha fit the textbook definition of sibling abuse: Sasha was always the victim, was frightened of Maria, and Maria was always the aggressor, always attacking with no provocation.

Was Maria insecure? Not even. I would say she was a little bit quiet, but she never gave off an aura of self-loathing like a lot of insecure people I know (and I am very good at reading people). No, Maria was a normal girl with average self-esteem. It wasn't self-hatred that drove her to pick on her (much younger, much smaller) sister.

So what was it then? What drove Maria to become an abuser? What did her uninvolved parents have to do with it? 

I believe that when parents are uninvolved, they open the doors to an evil little monster lurking in all of us, and especially in children: the power-hungry ego. When children are almost completely unsupervised, when there are no consequences for their actions, when their parents are hardly ever home, there is nothing stopping their power-hungry egos from bursting out. When they see someone younger and smaller than they are, it is just too tempting to exert their power over this defenseless creature. Power feels good, after all. As I've said before, there is almost nothing we like better than having our egos stroked. And when there are practically zero repercussions for making ourselves powerful in a negative way, we go ahead and do it. Because, especially to a small child, if it feels good, it means they should do it.

Now, in this case, there actually were repercussions. Sasha grew up. And she was angry. And she dished back to Maria everything Maria had ever served to her. And (to both my satisfaction and frustration), Maria protested loudly. At one point, I remember her saying to Sasha, "You verbally abuse me!" Oh does she? I remember thinking to myself, I wonder where she learned it from. 

Today, the sisters have burned their old bridges and built new ones. And now they're best friends. I don't know the story behind what made them get to where they are today, but I'd like to think that Maria learned the errors of her ways, and apologized for them. I'd like to think that Sasha stomped her power-hungry ego to the ground, and then Maria closed the gates to the evil monster herself. If parents leave those gates wide open, something else will come along to teach the child to shut them.