r/siblingsupport

He will not brush his teeth unless we insist, and then he’ll just brush his front two teeth for about 10 seconds and call it good. I’ve watched him do this, and when asked if he really brushed each tooth and his tongue, he’ll lie and say ‘I did! I always do!’ He eats probably 4x the recommended amount of sugar per day too, and as a result has a mouth full of plaque that the dentists have to chip off in big pieces and has recently had to get rotting molars pulled out.

He will not take a shower unless we insist, and when he comes out he still reeks from head to foot of BO, pee and poop. I don’t know what he does in there but it is obviously not at all effective. He admitted that sometimes he simply stands outside the shower and sticks his head under the water briefly to get it wet so that it looks like he took a shower because he’s annoyed by our mom nagging him. It’s infuriating. He is pretty good about using spray-on deodorant, but that’s useless unless he has first gotten clean, which he never does.

He’ll put on dirty clothes after a ‘shower’ without a second thought. His clean and dirty clothes always end up mixed together. He’ll wear the same underwear, socks, pants, and shirt for a week unless we make him change. Again, what’s the use of deodorant if he just goes and puts filthy clothes on a filthy body?

He will not wash his hands unless we insist, and if we’re not standing by him and instructing him he will run his hands briefly under the water without any soap or scrubbing. He doesn’t even put his entire hand in the water, just the tips of his fingers. I’ve watched him do this so many times. ‘Are you using soap and rubbing your hands together?’ ‘Yes I am!’

He has toenail fungus from wearing the same socks all the time and his toenails are huge and orange and have now grown over and around his toes.

And the worst, and hardest to enforce now that he’s 32, is never wiping. He simply does not wipe. He pees/takes a BM and immediately stands up and puts his underwear back on.

He is intelligent, sociable, charismatic, and I believe fully capable of doing all of these things if it was enforced early, which obviously it was not. Now he’s 32, I’m 27, they’re in their late 60’s and we’re all frustrated. He gets defensive and angry whenever we try to address these things. He has had many violent outbursts over the years and on some level we are all a little bit afraid of him. He still lives at home. My parents deserve better than this, so does he!

Any advice for me, for my parents?

*I do not live at home anymore but I visit often enough to witness what I’ve described, and I talk to my mom often and she fills me in on his daily hygiene struggles*

Okay so I'm a 12 year old female and my brother who's a 13 year old male. So I've always been told I had to do something or look out for my brother because he's different,and so that naturally meant that I had to grow up faster and make sure he's okay all the time. He doesn't listen to me and screams at me. One time he got extremely mad at me and hit me so hard he left bruises. Also when I was in third grade I kept seeing him watch me while I was changing,I naturally told my parents and they told me I was lying and the fifth time I told them they "talked" to him and he kept doing that one time they actually caught him and they didn't do anything. He gets away with everything like I'm lactose intolerant so I can't eat anything really dairy because after I eat it I begin to have extreme pain,well the only thing my family eats is dairy so I can't get anything they make. Well my brother has some texture issues and my parents make sure that they avoid that all the time,but when it comes to me I have to eat it or pretend I'm not hungry,and when my brother sees this he just laughs at me and my parents do nothing. He was also friends with someone who choked me out and he knew about it and chose not to believe me,so our relationship isn't good. Today he was supposed to take a shower and I was going to take one after him. My mom told him no about something and she was overwhelmed so she yelled it well he started crying and freaking out because he couldn't do the thing he wanted to,so he stormed in the bathroom and threw a tablet at my mom and stormed back in the bathroom and went in the shower crying. He proceeded to bang himself against the shower walls,stomp his feet,throw stuff,and scream/cry for 2 hours. Well after his cries turned normal my mom went to comfort him and he ran to the other side of the shower every single time she got close which made her upset and she started saying it was all her fault. Well right now he's throwing stuff and knocking stuff down and screaming/crying and I'm kinda scared I told my mom that I was scared and she told me to deal with it until he clams down. Also I hate him because he watched me get changed knowing it was wrong,tried to kiss me multiple times over the years,and tried to make me undress while he was holding a knife when my parents left us alone, he's abused me over the years, laughed at me and told me he'd wish I'd die,and snuck into my room at night when he thought I was asleep to do other things I don't feel like sharing rn. I was just giving an example that happened today thanks for listening.

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I’m a sibling to a little brother with a disability, and I just feel like my parents don’t notice me as much. Every conversation is centered around my younger brother and his current issues to the point where that is his whole identity in a conversation-literally sometimes it can be a ten minute conversation over his medical appointments. I have struggled differently as well-mentally instead of physically but when I have been low I have been responded with shouting and told to ‘get on with it’ and ‘toughen up’. It feels very unfair that my brother’s disability buys him the privilege of hugs and encouragement whenever he is upset. I often feel like my achievements and existence is drowned out by his medical struggles to the point where I am a side character in my parents life. I feel like I have to be the strong one, the tough ‘normal’ older sibling, the academic one to compensate for him-do all of the things he can’t. Punishment is another thing-when I was his age and did wrong things, I got punished accordingly, but when he does similar things, my parents rarely punish him and almost excuse it due to his disability. I know he can’t help all of it but it still seems so unfair that I got parented in a harsher way while he never gets punished for wrong doings because he has ‘a-lot else going on at the moment in terms of medical appointments which is punishment enough’. love my little brother a lot, but I can’t help feeling jealously and frustration at the seemingly ‘favoritism’ parenting he receives.

my brother is a 20yr Male and he struggles with autism and depression. He has started to go down mentally after being bullied in highschool for trying to protect me and someone who is close to me. Then after our father abandoned him leaving his stuff over in a different state which is another story that’s long to explain.

my brother keeps getting aggressive and closing himself off and running away for hours on end, leaving his wallet and phone, and He doesn’t normally like to be outside either—he’s a homebody who plays video games since he was little.

He switches on and off from being optimistic to pessimistic, first saying that he wants to try and get a job or make friends then believing that there’s no hope for him. he‘ll ask us for help then get aggressive and say that we never help him.

My brother is Extremely sweet when he’s not in one of his episode but when he’s like this it’s so hard to help him, because he gets so angry and aggressive and we don’t know if he’s going to hurt someone or our pet. he has ran out again and we have no way of contacting him.

We also can’t put him in job corp because the person who bullied my brother so badly is there.

any advice on how to help him?

i've never written a post before, so i apologise if im not clear enough here.

im 15 years old, and i have 3 siblings, all with autism. my sister is mild, my first brother severe and my second brother in the middle of the two of them if that makes sense.

my life is constantly just noise because of them, not just because they stim loud or have tantrums. just include that with two very stressed out parents whose form of getting them to quiet down is to make more noise. every single day, all i hear is my mam shouting at them to stop doing something or to get out of a room, loud. and my dad? he's even louder.

for instance, my sister hasn't had a day of her life where she isn't SCREAMING her lungs out, usually because she wants some toy online. she's always screaming down the stairs at night when the younger two are asleep and it sets literally everyone off. she'll do it in the mornings when getting ready for school too. when she does, my dad snaps and SHOUTS at her, then he's shouting at everything. everytime he does it my heart drops, it's just so loud and you'd think someone is getting hurt or something?? no, its just him, screaming at her to shut up.

so there's that, and then there's my brothers. the youngest is honestly the most okay out of all of them, he can be loud and energetic, and that would be fine if he was just one kid, but theres four in this house. the oldest brother though, he is HEAVILY reliant on ipads. seriously. if he doesnt have an ipad to stim with he sets everyone off because he is screaming, crying, biting, and just stressing my parents out. the ipads are loud. both of my brothers use them, theyre usually on full volume. also, say we have a day where the power cuts, its mayhem.

which brings me to my next point, i got woken up at 6:00AM recently, would be normal if i was going to school, but im not. im on summer holidays. still, whatever, right? i had my parents knocking on my door, and i came out of my room all tired and i was called to the kitchen. turns out, last night i had unplugged something that was charging all the ipads for the house and i forgot to plug it back in, they charge for the night so obviously the oldest brothers ipad was half charged and i apparently caused chaos. i probably did, i made a mistake obviously.

they confronted me about it and i apologised multiple times, and my dad was being the quiet he usually is when he wants to snap. my mam then started going on about how stressed out we make her and i turned to her and wanted to punch something.

see, my parents treat me like im their 'normal' child, and i was for most of my life, but i was diagnosed with autism in winter. they were more gentle to me for a week at most, and then treated me like im their only 'normal' child once more, just because im not as severe as my siblings. my mam always goes on about how im so good and im mature like a 20 year old, but that just comes from having to be independent most of my life because they are too busy with my siblings, as per.

so, my mam says we ALL stress her out all the time, and i get i caused something because of my mistake i made, but im just upset. i always get good grades, like always and i never cause trouble ever. like, im never out drinking, vaping, messing around with boys, asking to go to discos. thats the norm for girls my age, but i dont, because i wouldnt like to do that, and also because if i were to do that, i would stress my parents out. so maybe thats why im upset.

i always try my best to be good, i swear. the worst i do is just piss off my sister because good god she annoys me. but seriously, i do one small thing wrong and everyones mad at me. my sister screams abuse at my parents all day and night, my brothers batter them and overwhelm everyone, but its forgotten about.

but when i make one mistake or do one thing wrong, suddenly im useless and im a bitch and im this, that and the third. its just annoying.

theres one more thing. i like a group, BIGBANG and the closest concert to me is in london in september. they probably wont do any sort of performances together after this considering its their 20th anniversary, so obviously i want to go.

my birthday is a couple days before the concert. i proposed the idea, saying that it could be worth literally two years of a birthday present since i understand the hassle of having to fly to london and get tickets and get a hotel, etc. i also have the money for half of the expenses of the trip too. but i cant go. why? my siblings. i get it, leaving either my mam or dad alone with the three would be crazy stressful, but you have to understand me, i never ask for anything like this. i genuinely feel sick at the thought of asking my parents for a fiver. i asked to go to KATSEYE in may since theyd be in my country and we just couldnt get tickets, that was the last time i asked for anything 'big'.

i know going to london to see BIGBANG would probably be a lot, but again, i rarely ask for these things. ive never been on a plane, we havent gone on a family holiday since i was like 8, and the family holiday is just going to an amusement park and maybe staying in a hotel near it, still in the same country. last time i left my country was when i was a baby.

i know my parents arent made of money and i know i have to suck it up and deal with it. i get most people cant enjoy these things too, but for a teenage girl who has friends who go on holidays every summer and never have to feel embarrassed to invite friends over or just speak about having a good relationship with all of their family, it kinda hurts. ive been jealous of everyone my entire life, ever since my siblings were born.

i just want to know what life would feel like if my parents weren't stressed all the time. i dont know if this is genuinely horrible of me to say, and im sorry if it is, but because of all of this and more, i just cant look at my siblings with an ounce of love. they havent done anything for me.

okay, im done. maybe someone can understand this lol. im sorry if i just sound like an upset teenager complaining about nothing, i understand this is my life now, i just need atleast someone to understand.

update: yea so today i just got woke up at 5:45AM because i apparently left the bathroom door open last night because the oldest brother got into the main bathroom in our house and when he does that he plays around in the water and its just shit. this time, i can say i didnt do ANYTHING. i literally swore on my life i didnt do it and to that i just got a 'everyone says "it wasnt me" when this happens'...bro?? i left it open at night once weeks ago and i owned up to it. now this? im seriously done. then, after i went back into my room sobbing because obviously im gonna cry if this shit keeps happening, i got called right back out, in trouble again. why? because they couldnt see if i left my phone and ipad in the kitchen for the night because im not allowed have them at night. sure whatever. i show them theyre in there and i go back to my room even more annoyed and then i hear my parents mocking me for crying. what do they even want from me bruh oh my god

(Posting from a throwaway account for brother's privacy.)

I believe my 46 year old brother fell through the cracks of autism diagnosis and treatment. My parents are around 80 and there is no care plan in place. He lives with them and has no other meaningful relationships outside of them. He asks them how to do every basic thing all day like he's a child. There's no other family to help, and I can't move where he lives (~90 minutes away.) As things stand he would be completely alone when they're gone.

He is on disability and does not work or drive. He's reasonably smart and was able to complete a college degree with extreme involvement from my mom, but was never able to hold a job. I'm 6 years older, so well remember his childhood and how he never initiated social interactions or had friends outside of arranged playdates, always had flat affect and had terrible meltdowns when he couldn't get his way, as well as a lot of "lining things up" type hobbies.

My brother has never seen any specialist in neurodivergence for assessment or autism-specific therapy. When I ask my dad about diagnosis he just says "it's complex" or he'll say "OCD and maybe Aspergers." My parents enforced a "we don't talk about troubling things" atmosphere so I don't think my brother has any sense of his diagnosis or why things are so hard for him. They put him on "off-label" risperdone decades ago, which helped the meltdowns but he has terrible insulin resistance now and recently had to go to the hospital for blood sugar issues which was super traumatic for him.

I know we shouldn't diagnose others but my parents are refusing to get him assessed so I'm forced to go with my best judgement, which is that this looks like level 2 autism to me. I really want to get supports in place before my parents are no longer able to help, but my initial attempts to broach the subject were "you're crazy he has a degree so he can't be level 2", "there are no supports for people like him", and "you're too into the autism thing." My brother himself is extremely oppositional and volatile and my parents would kill me if I tried to speak to him directly about this, since it would blow back on them in the form of extreme behavioral issues that they would have to deal with. He only really trusts my dad, so I think if my dad encouraged him to get assessed he would.

Any advice is welcome! We're in the US if that makes a difference for advice. I really think he could have a much better life than this. Thank you for reading!

I’m using a throwaway because if I got caught asking the internet for advice I would not see the end of it. Please forgive me, I don’t really use Reddit often. My brother is in his early 20s and very autistic, I don’t know the correct terminology for it so I just say he has a lot of it. He has always had tantrums/meltdowns ever since he was young, but it’s not often, maybe 2-4 times a year. I’m pretty sure he used to be on medication when he really young but my parents said he “wasn’t himself” when he took them (very sedated).

That was a little bit of background, but he’s usually a really sweet boy. Lately though, for like the past 2 months, give or take, he’s been in a really odd phase. He has been really hyper, to the point of screaming, slamming doors, and blasting really loud music outside. He has also been talking about some concerning and disturbing stuff, such as murder, suicide, car crashes, and dying multiple times a day every day. He had a really bad tantrum about a month ago which was really traumatic. Ever since that meltdown, his behavior has gotten worse. He even wakes up really hyper everyday and it’s hard to calm him down.

I genuinely do not know what to do. We have already requested psychiatry support through his social worker, but nothing has come up. He was offered group therapy, but he is too hyper for it. My parents are older and I’m going off to college soon, so I am worried about them handling his behavior on their own. Any advice is welcome, but please refrain from leaving ableist comments. We live in Michigan so any location specific advice or support you know of is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

I have two older twin brothers that have cerebral palsy (GMFCS5). My whole life they have had this condition and my entire up bringing has been about them. Everything I do is about them. Cant go out places too far just incase I must come home quickly to support them. Cant do sleepovers or anything remotely like it because of them. I have to care for them constantly and I hate them so much for it before anyone says this isn't there faut I know that its just so tiring day and day out I cant do much because of them.

So my boyfriend was the “caretaker” of his sister when his mom would be at work or wanted to do something without her. Now that I am in the picture and we moved out, his sister has automatically moved out with us. She is constantly moving into our home and then sometimes being with his mom and then dropped back off. Once she was practically living with us. I never exactly had this discussion with my boyfriend I just assumed she wouldn’t be living here. His mom has told us that we first moved it would be temporary and she would be living on her own in an apartment and she would help her out there. However that was a year ago when she said that. I’m frustrated because his sister is like. 10 year with a 16 year olds attitude. She is autistic but makes everything about her. She said at the hospital while I was miscarrying, what about my cramps (her period is the end of the world you know) I’ve become resentful but I wonder sometimes if boundaries would have prevented this. Any thoughts about this? Don’t be rude please. I was nice in the beginning but every time I did something nice she would treat me like shit. She does that to everyone. We will be moving in the future and I just don’t want this to happen. His mom is very controlling, doesnt ask just does. Says “she’ll be there this day or this time” when she was unmedicated her behavior was terrible and we couldn’t have time together cause she would be wanting to send her back home within 3 hours, even if she said she would take her for the whole weekend, shed be trying to send her back Friday night. I’m sorry for the people who might be upset or offended. I was in a long distance relationship and had 10 years independence before I moved in with him (I hardly have family myself anymore) so I might be easily frustrated with the situation or biased. I used to like her but she burned me out quickly with her behavior and how her mom acts. She was in a day program but only went 2 days a week and complained non stop about it. What do you think I should do?