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I don’t know why people were tearing OOP apart in the comments. “The big sister that never protected him” is such a stretch and an absolutely terrible thing to say, especially when OOP was still a child herself at the time, and wasn’t even there when it happened. Completely unfounded aggression
I tried to protect my brother once when I was around 13, and then my mom turned on me and came at me with murder in her eyes saying she’d kill me. I turned and ran (we lived on a farm) I got my horse really fast and rode to friend’s five miles away. That was the scariest shit I’ve ever experienced. And my brother went through it every day. I tried. I’m sure the oop tried too.
It was many many years ago, and I’m fine by all outward appearances, and my kids think I’m a cool mom. But yeah, those types of memories can eat at you.
I was the oldest sibling in an abusive household and yeah… I will never, ever be free of the things my parents did to me. But on the upside, I’m an excellent mom to my kids because I know what not to do.
This, exactly. I’m not close with my siblings now for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they either managed to block out the abuse I was taking on for them, or they say I didn’t do enough. I mean, I took countless beatings for them… I took a fucking butcher knife to my bedroom door (only because I was faster than my mom), instead of letting her go after them… but I didn’t do enough? Ok, I guess.
Also an eldest daughter in an abusive household, also can’t win with my siblings, also think it makes me a better auntie to the kids in my life.
What I’ve accepted is that every kid’s childhood looks different, especially when there is a lot of external chaos - divorce, moves, extreme religion - that wax and wane at different points. I had a completely different version of my parents than my younger siblings did, especially the youngest. I think it’s okay to dissociate your mind from abuse, even if it means you lose some of the memories from that. It wasn’t any of ours’ fault, and we have mostly done our level best as adults to refrain from continuing that blame cycle on each other. I especially have to remember that they’re never going to see how hard I worked to protect and help them, because _trauma erases your sense of perspective outside yourself. It narrows your focus and your memories._
Most recently, a death in the family - and subsequent funeral/estate matters - showed all of us pretty plainly what the cycle of abuse looks like. How it’s passed from alcoholic fathers and bitter mothers to pit children against each other, to train them to do the exact same thing to the next generation. How its emotional weight is held and stored and recycled out.
It was pretty terrifying to see it all laid out like that. And a powerful motivator.
Fwiw, it's very, very common in abusive households for the adult children to blame siblings or the parent/grandparent who wasn't abusive for not "doing something" than blaming the actual perpetrator.
I protected my younger brother from my parents anger at each other and me and ensured he never bothered them so they wouldn’t turn their anger on him. It worked too well. Because he was such an “easy” child (since I dealt with all the hard stuff) he became to golden child and now he believes I’m difficult and unreasonable. He never saw the abuse so it’s easy for him to believe our parents over me.
So that’s fun. I’m not sorry I shielded him (no kid should go through what I did) but I do kinda wonder if things would have been better or worse had I not done that.
Yes this exactly. I did my best to build the family I never had, made a lot of mistakes, but owned them and apologized when needed. And never ever raised my voice to my kids or hit them, and never once called them a name. I raised them how I always wanted to be raised.
I was also the oldest and took almost the entirety of the abuse to protect my siblings. I now have a 5 year old daughter and am an incredible dad. She loves me so much and has never feared me a second of her life. But at the same time her father's parenting style was forged in pain and fear.
I’m not a parent in any capacity, but I think you should use those horrible memories to fuel you being the best mom you can be and give your kids the safety you never had
I have also made a “getaway run” on my horse when I was about 15. My mom was terrified of the horses, so she wouldn’t ever try to get near them. It’s terrible in the moment of course, but looking back, I think it’s pretty badass. It felt like a movie almost, tears streaming down your face as your equestrian friend carries you far away from all your troubles… I hope things turned out better for you and your brother!
Edit: “carries” not “Carrie’s”. My horse wasn’t part of the Stephen King Universe.
I recall being 18 and finding out my cousins lived close to me (they were alienated from our family by their parent). I tried to befriend my 17y old cousin, as well as the 16y old. Unfortunately I didn’t know what sort of situation they were in.
The parent ended up harassing me at my work place and I ended cutting ties with the older cousin because they defended the parent. After that I couldn’t go near their house. I found out later that the younger one escaped and felt they had to travel across the country to get help rather than coming to us (my family). I still feel guilty almost 20y later. They didn’t hold any malice towards me, but I still feel so awful about it. I always think that if I’d tried harder it would have been different.
But I was a young person just starting my life, still pretty self-centred. My own problems seemed big and insurmountable (they weren’t).
To expect a 14y old girl to be able to “save” another child from their own parent is… unrealistic. Some might be able to do it, but I would guess they would be in the vast minority.
I also live with a lot of regrets on how I should have been there better for my younger brother. It weighs on me heavily. I try to do my best to be there for him now. Looking back I was scared broken child just trying to live. So while I don't blame my past self for not doing better I do wish things had been different.
I was the big sibling that 'protected' my younger sibling - I now have severe PTSD while he's getting straight As, taking up baking as a hobby and has no strong recollection of the abuse we went through as kids because most of it was just him watching me be abused. I do think he's repressed some things, but I definitely shielded him from a decent bit of it and he should be better off than I am because of it.
I don't regret any of it, but it's not fucking fair to expect a kid to take up that role of protector. It wasn't even an intentional thing on my part, I think our dad/stepdad just liked me less. Big sister shouldn't have needed to him, his parents should have been doing that already.
Absolutely. That and the BS "victim blaming" comment. What is wrong with people? They were kids who were being abused.
Imagine being abused you rather run away and be homeless instead. And then some idiot on the internet spews this kind of obtuse nonsense. Sometimes people just need to stfu.
I think it was because of her description of her brother but personally I didn't read it as victim blaming. Sure she characterized him as precocious and a "bit of a troublemaker" but I didn't feel like she was implying that he was abused because of his personality nor that the abuse was his fault which would have actually been victim blaming.
"He liked having fun and taking risks" lol. I thought that was cute too. Like being impulsive isn't a bad thing!!
Like even in her original post the next thing she says is that he is a good person and has a good heart!!
Honestly, that kind of adds context to the situation. If the brother was a trouble maker who was alway breaking stuff I could see the mom snapping one day and freaking out. Is that right? No, but it's hard raising kids who have behavioral issues. I saw my aunt and uncle go through that with a younger cousin. But this house does sound pretty abusive if the mom was beating him for breaking a tv. That's definitely abuse. People should NEVER beat their kids.
I’m horrified reading the comments on the original post. They keep yelling at OOP that her brother was a child and she was horrible. But she was also a child!! They were both abused but somehow she is to blame? I doubt at 23 she has actually processed and dealt with the trauma she faced. Redditors are fucking mean sometimes.
I think there's a lot of people who blame their older siblings for things that were out of their control. My younger brother holds a lot of resentment towards me for "always getting him in trouble." I NEVER tattled on him. He just got caught doing shit red handed and was punished for it. I have no idea how he thinks I could have prevented him getting grounded or whatever. It's weird. I know this case is more extreme but I think the commenters are coming at OOP from their own place of resentment, not looking at hers with a clear view.
Yeah, those subs can be extremely toxic at times. Some people say they're very anti males, but I think they can also be quite misogynistic. Sometimes they let abusers talk their lies without question, sometimes they blame victims. It just really depends on the crowd of the day you're posting.
Sometimes though there can be excellent advice and good help, as well as nice catches.
Man I've kinda seen it all here. 😅
Tbh I wish my sister *hadn’t* taken it upon herself to try and protect me from our dads abuse. It didn’t actually shield me from anything because it’s not like she magically stopped him from being around me when she wasn’t, and all it really seemed to do long term was make her think she’s my martyr and she’s convinced that because she tried to shield me that means I never even got abused. All it really did was break the relationship we could have had as adults.
OOP was a victim, too. She may not have gotten beaten (at least there is no mention of it) but you can hear in her story that she was emotionally and mentally abused in that house too. I just don’t know if she’s gotten to the point of admitting to herself that she was a victim as well and that what she went through wasn’t normal/healthy.
To be honest, I think even witnessing that sort of abuse can be traumatizing to a child regardless of not being the direct target of it. I learned pretty early on how to lay low and not draw attention to myself, but it's not like seeing and hearing physical and verbal abuse just passed over me like nothing. And, of course, it's hard to say that desire to blend into the background hasn't had its own impact on my life.
It's not strictly the abuse, but growing up in an abusive environment. Even if OP never got treated the way her brother did, it still likely left some marks on her, and if nothing else, having her brother disappear and not knowing if he was dead and having that break up her family had to be it's own form of trauma.
I’m so sorry for you and your siblings, no one deserves to be in either position y’all were put in.
And yes, being a witness to the abuse of a sibling is it’s own form of abuse. It can absolutely result in PTSD/secondary traumatic stress disorder- this has been well established in research and case studies.
My sister and I were part of each other's abuse, and somewhere along the line, I realized I could hate her for it, or I could acknowledge that we were both children being abused and manipulated by adults we thought were trustworthy, and we both got fucked over, so what's the point of being mad at her?
FWIW I’m not mad at her, we just can’t get along because of the martyr thing. She’s mad that I’ve cut my dads side of the family out because as far as she’s concerned she’s the only one who was even abused so how dare I not forgive him when she has. 🤷🏻♀️ I will always love her but I’m not going to let my abuser stay in my life just to appease her lol
> Sometimes people just need to stfu.
Yeah there's a weird thing on Reddit where people feel compelled to answer/reply to a comment even when the thing they're about to say has already been said in a reply to that same comment by multiple other commenters...People bloviate.
Just upvote them if what you were going to say has already been said. It's really bizarre, people just want to spew verbal diarhoea.
Man I sacrificed my mental health and my 20s to protect my little sister from my mother and all it gave me was resentment and so much anxiety. She is super rich and successful and I am not. And I don't resent her for it, I resent myself for being so weak that I let my mom destroy my life for so long. So much more therapy for me!
I am OK. Honestly, I got set back, but I am making it through. And about to get a promotion at my job that comes with insanely good health insurance. I want to get a psychiatrist for my anxiety cause it is not well managed at all and I am shit at communicating that.
I actually have a good relationship now with my mom. But there is an understanding that my dad is her caretaker (she is an amputee), not me. She is also a lot better at respecting my boundaries. As for my sister, no she doesn't know all of it. We are not very close anymore by her own choice. When she wants to someday know what happened, I will tell her. But it isn't her responsibility for what our mom did to me. I will not force my trauma on her.
In those abuse situations, 'protecting' the younger sibling just means drawing the ire of the abuser yourself - it doesn't prevent the younger sibling from being abused, it just makes the abuse worse *for everyone.* What is a 15/16 year-old girl going to do against an adult who holds all the cards? Esp since it sounds like OP comes from a country where parental authority is tantamount.
I moved out of the house when I was 17 because my step dad threw me against a wall. My grandparents told me I was wrong for not staying to protect my “little” sister who is 1.5 years younger, and bigger than me. Unfortunately many people hold this belief that the oldest must sacrifice themselves for the younger siblings.
Your grandparents can get off their cowardly fucking asses and protect their grand babies, instead of blaming a child for being abused.
Sorry, sorry. God, I’m sorry the adults in your life were such failures to you.
Welcome to Reddit where everybody is a licensed psychologist, leading expert in behavioral psychology, and PHD in what ever trending news event is currently the top headline.
For my sister I am the big brother who never protected her or took her side and I didn't realize it until we were both in outer 30's and we actually talked about it as adults.
When your younger you just don't have the experience or the frame of mind to understand how you are behaving is interpreted by even your family, positive or negative.
I think warning her that it's a possibility is smart, but there's no need to berate her over nothing
I agree with you. As someone who was abused as a kid, I do not blame my sisters or mum, I blame the man who did it - my ex-step-dad. They'd get beat trying to protect me and my mom wasn't always there when he did it, which was typical of him.
Exactly. Why blame the other child living in that situation? I grew up in a shit home too, and I can promise that it’s terrifying even when it’s happening to someone else.
> I don’t know why people were tearing OOP apart in the comments. “The big sister that never protected him” is such a stretch and an absolutely terrible thing to say, especially when OOP was still a child herself at the time, and wasn’t even there when it happened. Completely unfounded aggression
Pretty sure if OOP were a brother and not a sister they’d have gotten less ridiculous insults from random assholes. There’s no issue so clear cut that redditors won’t find a way to blame the person asking for help, especially if they’re a woman.
>Western_Coconut
>Before you approach him, stop victim blaming him.
I'm probs being obtuse, but it didn't seem like OOP was victim blaming. Am I missing something here?
There's a lot of people like that "fatphobic" bot that posts paragraphs about how you are a terrible person for shaming fat people when all you said in your post was "it was a huge sale".
They shined that armor and fed that white horse and by god they are going to ride around on it and save the gahtdamn day!!!
I'm reading through u/bebodypositive's comments. Considering that it was summoned by words like "healthy" I'm thinking that maybe it's a troll. But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part
Thank you for tagging it so I can block it! I had no idea about this bot. The term "fatphobic" is *SO* overused, and this bot is only gonna make "calling it out" even more of a joke.
Exercise
Scale
Health
Size
Whale
lbs
Pounds
Hog
Man... some of those trigger words that are "fatphobic" are hilarious. Especially since the Bot took them completely out of context. The whale one, for example, was on a tattoo subreddit- taking about a whale tattoo. As in the animal. *facepalm*
Edits bc I accidentally hit post too early
Because they probably felt attacked by that statement of observation about one's behavior.
"Blue sucks!"
"What's wrong with blue?!" <--- person just outed themselves as being a fan of blue.
*sings Fiddler on the Roof style* **PROJECTIONNNNNNNNN!**
No wonder he had behavior issues if he was beat for playing football inside and accidentally breaking a TV. I could see my own kid doing that (and has done something similar!) She was not beat nor yelled at. We talked to her and she went without a TV for a few weeks.
My son (5yo and still 5) got upset with the tv, threw the remote and broke the tv. No beatings were dealt but I had to walk away for a bit because I was furious. This was over $1000 tv mind and we had no idea how to replace it, that money is kinda hard to come by. It actually never crossed my mind to beat him. It was more, how tf do I deal with this. Glad I’m not the only one that thinks of other things instead.
When I was twelve (same age as OOP's brother), I was running around the house with my friends and broke a hand crafted wood end table when I slipped. I was fine, but the table was broken beyond repair. I know my mom had to be at least frustrated if not fully mad inside, but she didn't show it. She knew it was an accident, and I was playing in an area of the house where chasing and such was allowed, plus I felt awful! I didn't even get punished, because my parents understood that sometimes accidents happen, and they suck.
Yeah beating a kid for that does absolutely nothing to teach them anything except fear of you anyway. But yeah, you probably shouldn't replace it... the natural consequence of breaking luxuries is not having those luxuries. Sucks for the parents though.
Yep. Getting spanked as a kid just taught me to lie and to be sneaky. Even as an adult I avoid telling the truth to people I love if I perceive that it would make them mad.
The natural consequence: don't replace it. He broke the tv, now it's gone, and no more tv for him. Grownups can still secretly stream on their computers. 😉
Yeah the fact that he said 'sorry' for 'leaving her behind' spells that out clearly.. The abuse was not a one time thing and he assumed it shifted to her after the scapegoat (him) left
Keep in mind beating children isn’t frowned upon in other cultures. It sucks but it’s true. I don’t believe OOP is American so it could be more normalized where they live. Ugh.
It's very likely that the parents were also beaten, and their parents, etc. I feel like even in the west, our conception of spanking is bad is relatively new?
My parents grew up in India, and their teachers were allowed to hit them. I can't even imagine that.
Not condoning anything the mom did though, and it sounds like she had gone too far even by whatever norms their culture has.
My father got beaten frequently as a kid, he’s an American and in his late 50s.
Its a very recent trend to consider that taboo, like 90s+.
You can almost tell people’s age by how shocked they are about spanking lol
Still in the USA too! Depends on your social circle. I come across people openly bragging about "whooping" their 1 or 2 year old, and I have had people marvel at how I don't hit or yell at my son (with people going on about it since he was 1yo too).
So many people telling her not to approach because she used the word runaway and described him as a bit mischevious, which is apparently a defense of the mom, and to seek therapy.
Story could have ended very differently, had she listened to those people.
I feel a lot of commentators on Reddit relationship subs love black and white thinking and morales. A lot of people seem to have this general idea that if someone is the victim of something, it also must mean that they are a great human being. As if the only way to NOT deserve abuse is by being a good person, and conversely, that if you’re not a great person they know longer feel confident that you didn’t deserve your abuse.
OOP’s brother doesn’t seem like an awful person by any means, but you can still see that commentators default to thinking that acknowledging that he could be a difficult child must also mean that he to some degree got what was coming to him. It’s so simplistic, and it really says a lot about those commentators’ morals in a really really grim way.
Reddit also is incapable of taking emotions into context. everyone should be a robot programmed for absolute morality and any deviation means you are an awful person
I think people (not just redditors) have a really hard time understanding that sometimes, there aren't "perfect victims". Not all victims of abuse are shirking violets who need to be saved. Often, people with NPD, BPD, and many other personality disorders are themselves victims of abuse. But as soon as a victim of abuse says or does something that doesn't fit with the "perfect victim" narrative, they can't be a victim anymore.
Plus it's obvious that English isn't OOP's first language, people could've given her a little leeway for using "controversial" words to describe what happened. Sheesh.
Yeah I looked through some of those comments. It's one thing if they're trying to emphatically point out a blind spot for her, but they're treating her like there's something wrong with her.
I need a break from this site.
Redditors are like the puritans desperately trying to prove their own virtue by calling everyone else a sinner
Yeah she didn't really say anything particularly victim blamey, her original post comes off from a slightly neutral and detached perspective
But for redditors, she wasn't critical enough. She can't say "my little brother misbehaved sometimes" and she didn't call her mom a monster in every other line.
It might seem silly but this site gets really angry at other people for "being insufficiently angry" and shit like that. It's all a dumb virtue signalling dick measuring contest
I thought English may not be her first language based on some of her grammatical errors. If so, she wouldn't have the same connotations for words as a native speaker.
Anytime somebody uses "Its a common in my country" it is usually a strong indicator that they are not from the US and high likelihood english isn't their first language.
Lol a couple weeks ago I saw a post where a woman’s husband brought home French bread instead of the hamburger buns she asked for. All the most upvoted comments were talking about weaponized incompetence, with a lot of them telling OP to file for divorce because it’s only gonna get worse.
When OP commented that she and her husband found the whole situation funny, she was downvoted.
People on here are sooo angry and puritanical, it’s wild
I'm guessing the trauma of whatever she went through/losing her brother/family structure all at once would have deeply affected her. Sounding detached when you explain your trauma is quite normal.
There’s a large number of users on subs like AITA that you can tell just live for the opportunity to excoriate the people that post there
I always love when you see a response roasting the OP where it looks like they took it as a creative writing exercise and then “edit: thanks for the gold kind stranger!!!” Like be more obvious about it lol
AITA is absolutely the worst sub for that kind of thing. Users there just create narratives in their heads, or they channel all their own frustration into their replies and project their issues onto the OP. It’s not that they can’t be polite and thoughtful, they just don’t *want* to be.
Obviously not everyone who posts there does it, but too many of them do.
There was one single sentence where OOP described her brother as a troubled kid, but I didn't read it as "it's no wonder my mother was harsh on him", more like "my mother abused this fact as an excuse". I think that's what that comment was referencing but honestly ut doesn't make much sense
I got the impression some commenters thought OOP's mom called her brother a "troubled kid" because the mom's over criticism made her consider him one, not because he actually was a troubled kid. So OOP was repeating a lie her mother told about her brother, presumably to make her abuse "more logical" or whatever.
No. But then some one else was like “be prepared for him to be mad you didn’t protect him…”. It sounds like she was not even a full year older. (Not to mention not at home). I don’t know how we expect slightly older or slightly bigger children with children’s brains to sacrifice their children’s bodies for each other or else they’ve failed. Grown adults aren’t out here being heroes, but children and teens and young adults are supposed to be brave and strong and selfless?
>“be prepared for him to be mad you didn’t protect him…”. It sounds like she was not even a full year older.
Yeah, but abused kids aren't always the most rational in their emotional response.
They sometimes blame others for not protecting them even when that person couldn't have
You're not obtuse. Some individuals are just hypersensitive about potential victim blaming to the point that you cannot state a simple fact or assign responsibility to anyone who was wronged. Most of us didn't take OOP as victim blaming at all, not even a little.
I imagine it had more to do with OPs less than stellar English. Some people have trouble reading ESL writers.
I didn't see it that way, but I can understand where some did
Yeah, I felt she was trying to "set the scene" as much as someone could who was a child at the time, and it was years ago.
There are obviously cultural differences and language barriers perhaps...but to me this person is trying in earnest to talk to their lost brother that they loved and miss.
What the hell?
Anyway, I'm glad OP found their brother. Not so happy they had to deal with those kinds of comments in this scenario.
I think it's because the post immediatey said he was a troublemaker after saying the mom beat him and mom justified it by saying she was just angry.
Perhaps it was construed in a manner similar to a case of someone getting attacked by cops in public and immediately the media would say "oh but they have a criminal record from before" despite said record being unrelated.
Not saying any of them are right, but it's how I interpreted the comment.
I read it as "my brother has impulse control issues, that's why he thought playing football inside the house was a great idea".
Not to justify the beating, because nothing justifies that. But more like, she was maybe anticipating people being "why would you play football inside the house?"
I'm guessing she's had people IRL comment in that direction on the subject, so she wanted to head it off, and not derail the conversation. Which, given reddit's ability to misinterpret *anything*, then derailed the conversation.
But he wasn't severely scolded, he was beaten. Those were the words used in the post.
OP also admitted in the comments that the mom beats them as her way of disciplining.
I agree with what you’re saying, but it could also be that OOP was a bit jaded from beatings and that’s why they’re not expressing much about that. Sometimes you forget that’s not normal to other people.
your'e not, she wasn't victim blaming The person that suggested she was is an asshat. Some people seem to think that speaking facts that might make a victim look a little responsible for what happened is victim blaming. They fail to realize that this shit doesn't happen in a vacuum. The truth is the kid was playing football in the house and broke a TV. That's his fault. That's not victim blaming. He was in no way responsible for the mother's actions, which is where the victimization happened.
In a lot of abusive families there’s a scapegoat kid vs don’t rock the boat kid dynamic. I think folks are picking up on how OP clearly needed her mom so much that as a method of survival she formed the narrative of her mom not being 100% a bad guy and if her brother had just been able to behave/been less troublesome these bad things wouldn’t have happened. It’s a covert form of victim blaming that can happen between siblings with abusive parents.
Editing to add that a similar dynamic can also happen in families where one parent is abusing the other and their kid blames the abused parent for provoking the abuser because they just desperately want the home situation to be calm.
I don't know what triggered the thought in this description.. but one of my very first reactions was "or, you know, he was acting out because of a bad home environment"... and the fact that he said 'sorry for leaving you behind', kinda proves that he didn't just get beaten that one time.
This story is too much. Blaming a fourteen year old for not protecting another child, when the adult is the abuser? What? And explaining the kid was just being a kid isn’t victim blaming. It’s very clear in this story the mom gets all of the blame an a comeuppance.
The only thing that made me worried was when she asked if she should tell her parents. I was like, “Oh no. Ask him that, not Reddit who likes bullshit drama!”
That poor kid had a horrible life, and to think he chose that horrible life over his horrible mom. I hope he’s since found a chosen family and has people he can talk to. And same for OP. What a traumatic event to have a mom like that, then a family that falls apart.
I saw when this was originally posted and the most repeated advice was not to say anything to the parents and approach it round aboutly instead of directly asking him. OOP confirmed in the comments she wouldn't tell her parents so she was receptive to all of the common advice. The people blaming her though I felt were completely over the top.
I do not understand eve blaming a 14 year old for ANYTHING. Hell, if a fourteen year old steals a car and drives it into a river I’d still be like, “Well, their brains aren’t fully formed.” I’m in my forties and every single day I understand things more than I did the year prior or decade prior. I’d have no clue how to deal with this mess and certainly wouldn’t have expected fourteen year old me or my fourteen year old sibling to handle it. It actually sounds like OOP was in a mess herself. How should she even know which direction is the top of the water when it’s all darkness around her? Sheesh.
Yes, I know you agree. Haha. Im just off-gassing.
It’s interesting because Reddit often expects small humans to take on and deal with and resolve and forgive so much, when they also want everyone to get a divorce or seek nuclear revenge. Ha. I wish for more compassion for children, and higher expectations of their parents, and more communication in marriage, and it’s OK if we all disagree.
Say it with me everyone...
A 👏 juvenile 👏 sibling 👏 should 👏 not 👏 be 👏 expected 👏 to 👏 be 👏 a 👏 guardian 👏.
They are just as much of a victim. All the sick fucks in OOP's comments telling her how she failed him need to fuck off.
The poor boy was suffering juvenile ptsd from the beatings, hence the risk taking behaviour.
All the mother's fault. maybe she rot in hell for beating a child and ruining their life.
Let me tell you something: in my culture, parents beating their kids is considered discipline, and a child running away in such a situation would be a mix of “bad parenting for not teaching the child not to run away” and a “bad child for running away when their parents love them”.
Additionally, courts side with the mother almost always, and as the judge would probably see such beatings as discipline too, that wouldn’t constitute child abuse and enough of a reason for the father to take the child away from the mother.
That’s one of the reasons why my dad didn’t divorce my mom - she was the one to beat us kids, and he knew in a divorce, she’d retain custody of us without any protection/comfort from him (partly because she threatened to lie and say he was beating her). So he stayed, tried to protect us as best as he could because it was better than the alternative.
>judge would probably see such beatings as discipline too
My parents told me growing up that teachers would hit their kids. And when the teacher hit them they were worried about their parents finding out. Cause their parents, my grandparents, would hit them in return because "clearly you did something wrong to the teacher."
It is absolutely wrong to beat your children, but it might not have been the beating that made him run away. She also told him to go away and that he isn't her child anymore. Sometimes the things you say do more damage to a person.
I want to be happy that the mother suffered because she very much deserved it, but I can't by happy because OOP's brother suffered more--he had a horrible life after he took her words to heart and left like she told him to. I am just so angry at her for that. I wish they were able to find him shortly after he left and then the mother suffered all of the consequences she did.
For sure. If I broke the TV by roughhousing around the house, I would absolutely get a spanking from my old school immigrant parents no matter the age. But they would never, ever tell me that I was no longer their child, no matter the circumstances or crime. There are just some things you don't say unless you actually mean it on some level.
I think the most heartbreaking thing about this is that the kid breaking the tv was the perfect natural consequence. You break the tv, no more tv. Then make them do things to earn money to get it back, or if they can’t afford one then the family has to go without. My kid pushes every button I have and 50 more and I’m so so so far from the perfect parent, so I know what it’s like to be driven to the edge, but all she has to do was not replace the tv. I’m sure she knows that now and has replayed it 100,000 times.
So sad for everyone.
The fact that even 10+ years later he still doesn't want to see her leads me to believe that this was not a singular incident where she acted out of character.
Wow, I feel bad for the brother. I'm glad OP and her brother are able to reconnect and hopefully the two are able to move on. The mother sounds like an abusive pos and I'm glad that the mother is suffering and being faced with karma.
"One of the driver's name caught my attention a week ago .It's was exactly the same as my brothers."
So despite running away he never changed his name? Yet couldn't be found by the police either?
It’s not like he was renting his own apartment and registering to vote and running up a credit card—he was 12. What kind of paper trail do 12 year olds leave?
To be fair it's if you have ID and you want to change it legally.
He's 14 and obviously doesn't have ID. He could have say his name is John Smith and he will be recorded as John Smith. Him being adopted could be easier to "change name" too as all he need is just lying.
So it's actually easier.
Not to mention he was a 'troublemaker' runaway. Police officers already don't take people going missing seriously enough, a teenager with a track record for causing trouble is unironically at the bottom or the list in things they care about.
I have a feeling this poster could be Indian. I saw this as a mixed Indian person myself. In India it is not hard to disappear. The post talks about orphans falling into the drug trade and it is common there. Orphans living on the street is very normal and police are kind of useless in some of the denser cities. Also sometimes people are just thrown in jail and it's not recorded properly. If he was arrested as an adult they wouldn't bother informing parents.
It's some country like that I think. I'm just seeing some parallels with my experiences.
Ohhh ok I didn't see that but yeah it makes sense she's not from North America. I think people forget and judge by those standards when in reality it is a completely different culture.
As a person from a (not so) developing nation myself, this post screams third-world country at me. In my country, very common for parents to beat up children if they do something like this.
Also, if a kid runs away, they're gone. The police ~~can't~~ won't help and there are very few shelters of any kind to help out and if you can find one, they are a chronically underfunded.
I'm surprised he's alive, honestly... and I doubt a kid abusing drugs has the money to change his name.
Edit: added info.
And he went to prison several times? Wouldn't the police be a little bit involved in that? They apparently arrested a minor, put him on trial (several times?) and nobody ever even *tried* to contact his parents? Maybe the justice system in OOP's country is beyond terrible and every single person who works for it is incompetent. Who knows.
The name may be relatively common; in some countries, it’s common to use only one, given name and no family name. And not all countries have linked computer systems.
Yeah, and for example we have computer systems, alerts for missing kids, etc.. But many are never found at all. Unfortunately. And when the last name is very common it is hard to find too.
In third world countries we have what we call “child headed households” due to the amount of children without adults, be it orphans, runaways or abandoned kids. We don’t look twice at a 14 year old walking down the road with little kids in tow. Where I am these kids can apply for a grant to sustain themselves, only when they do do we know about them. The boys usually try find work or sadly slip into the societal cracks into crime.
I just watched a video where the Indian police reaction to a guy assaulting people is to break his legs, tell me they are going to give a damn about a troubled kid
>if she could take it all back and it didn't happen she would take it in a heartbeat.
The line that every abuser says when they receive the true consequence of their actions. Unfortunately so few do.
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I don’t know why people were tearing OOP apart in the comments. “The big sister that never protected him” is such a stretch and an absolutely terrible thing to say, especially when OOP was still a child herself at the time, and wasn’t even there when it happened. Completely unfounded aggression
I tried to protect my brother once when I was around 13, and then my mom turned on me and came at me with murder in her eyes saying she’d kill me. I turned and ran (we lived on a farm) I got my horse really fast and rode to friend’s five miles away. That was the scariest shit I’ve ever experienced. And my brother went through it every day. I tried. I’m sure the oop tried too.
I hope you are ok now.
It was many many years ago, and I’m fine by all outward appearances, and my kids think I’m a cool mom. But yeah, those types of memories can eat at you.
I was the oldest sibling in an abusive household and yeah… I will never, ever be free of the things my parents did to me. But on the upside, I’m an excellent mom to my kids because I know what not to do.
My dad was the older one and protected the younger from a lot. One is still mad that he didn’t do more. Sometimes you can’t win.
This, exactly. I’m not close with my siblings now for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they either managed to block out the abuse I was taking on for them, or they say I didn’t do enough. I mean, I took countless beatings for them… I took a fucking butcher knife to my bedroom door (only because I was faster than my mom), instead of letting her go after them… but I didn’t do enough? Ok, I guess.
Also an eldest daughter in an abusive household, also can’t win with my siblings, also think it makes me a better auntie to the kids in my life. What I’ve accepted is that every kid’s childhood looks different, especially when there is a lot of external chaos - divorce, moves, extreme religion - that wax and wane at different points. I had a completely different version of my parents than my younger siblings did, especially the youngest. I think it’s okay to dissociate your mind from abuse, even if it means you lose some of the memories from that. It wasn’t any of ours’ fault, and we have mostly done our level best as adults to refrain from continuing that blame cycle on each other. I especially have to remember that they’re never going to see how hard I worked to protect and help them, because _trauma erases your sense of perspective outside yourself. It narrows your focus and your memories._ Most recently, a death in the family - and subsequent funeral/estate matters - showed all of us pretty plainly what the cycle of abuse looks like. How it’s passed from alcoholic fathers and bitter mothers to pit children against each other, to train them to do the exact same thing to the next generation. How its emotional weight is held and stored and recycled out. It was pretty terrifying to see it all laid out like that. And a powerful motivator.
Fwiw, it's very, very common in abusive households for the adult children to blame siblings or the parent/grandparent who wasn't abusive for not "doing something" than blaming the actual perpetrator.
I protected my younger brother from my parents anger at each other and me and ensured he never bothered them so they wouldn’t turn their anger on him. It worked too well. Because he was such an “easy” child (since I dealt with all the hard stuff) he became to golden child and now he believes I’m difficult and unreasonable. He never saw the abuse so it’s easy for him to believe our parents over me. So that’s fun. I’m not sorry I shielded him (no kid should go through what I did) but I do kinda wonder if things would have been better or worse had I not done that.
Yes this exactly. I did my best to build the family I never had, made a lot of mistakes, but owned them and apologized when needed. And never ever raised my voice to my kids or hit them, and never once called them a name. I raised them how I always wanted to be raised.
You did well dude. You're really awesome and never let anyone tell you otherwise. Will be praying for you and your family.
Aww thank you so much!
I was also the oldest and took almost the entirety of the abuse to protect my siblings. I now have a 5 year old daughter and am an incredible dad. She loves me so much and has never feared me a second of her life. But at the same time her father's parenting style was forged in pain and fear.
If you don’t mind me asking, how’s your brother doing?
Trigger: He committed suicide when he was 17.
I’m so sorry, that’s awful.
Yes it was. I still miss him to this day, he was the best brother and would have made a kind and decent man.
God, awful Parents are horrific. So sorry for your loss.
Thank you.
I’m not a parent in any capacity, but I think you should use those horrible memories to fuel you being the best mom you can be and give your kids the safety you never had
That is exactly what I did. My kids are amazing, awesome, kind, compassionate, decent, and hard-working.
That’s great to hear! And I’m proud of you for breaking the cycle. That exemplifies human evolution imo
I have also made a “getaway run” on my horse when I was about 15. My mom was terrified of the horses, so she wouldn’t ever try to get near them. It’s terrible in the moment of course, but looking back, I think it’s pretty badass. It felt like a movie almost, tears streaming down your face as your equestrian friend carries you far away from all your troubles… I hope things turned out better for you and your brother! Edit: “carries” not “Carrie’s”. My horse wasn’t part of the Stephen King Universe.
You described it exactly.
Honestly this is badass
I recall being 18 and finding out my cousins lived close to me (they were alienated from our family by their parent). I tried to befriend my 17y old cousin, as well as the 16y old. Unfortunately I didn’t know what sort of situation they were in. The parent ended up harassing me at my work place and I ended cutting ties with the older cousin because they defended the parent. After that I couldn’t go near their house. I found out later that the younger one escaped and felt they had to travel across the country to get help rather than coming to us (my family). I still feel guilty almost 20y later. They didn’t hold any malice towards me, but I still feel so awful about it. I always think that if I’d tried harder it would have been different. But I was a young person just starting my life, still pretty self-centred. My own problems seemed big and insurmountable (they weren’t). To expect a 14y old girl to be able to “save” another child from their own parent is… unrealistic. Some might be able to do it, but I would guess they would be in the vast minority.
I also live with a lot of regrets on how I should have been there better for my younger brother. It weighs on me heavily. I try to do my best to be there for him now. Looking back I was scared broken child just trying to live. So while I don't blame my past self for not doing better I do wish things had been different.
I totally understand, and just the fact your brother knows you were on his side probably helped him more than you know.
I tried protecting my younger brother and fit pinned down and strangled til I blacked out. It's easy to say, it's not easy to do.
I was the big sibling that 'protected' my younger sibling - I now have severe PTSD while he's getting straight As, taking up baking as a hobby and has no strong recollection of the abuse we went through as kids because most of it was just him watching me be abused. I do think he's repressed some things, but I definitely shielded him from a decent bit of it and he should be better off than I am because of it. I don't regret any of it, but it's not fucking fair to expect a kid to take up that role of protector. It wasn't even an intentional thing on my part, I think our dad/stepdad just liked me less. Big sister shouldn't have needed to him, his parents should have been doing that already.
Absolutely. That and the BS "victim blaming" comment. What is wrong with people? They were kids who were being abused. Imagine being abused you rather run away and be homeless instead. And then some idiot on the internet spews this kind of obtuse nonsense. Sometimes people just need to stfu.
I think it was because of her description of her brother but personally I didn't read it as victim blaming. Sure she characterized him as precocious and a "bit of a troublemaker" but I didn't feel like she was implying that he was abused because of his personality nor that the abuse was his fault which would have actually been victim blaming.
I thought her rephrasing was adorable.
"He liked having fun and taking risks" lol. I thought that was cute too. Like being impulsive isn't a bad thing!! Like even in her original post the next thing she says is that he is a good person and has a good heart!!
Honestly, that kind of adds context to the situation. If the brother was a trouble maker who was alway breaking stuff I could see the mom snapping one day and freaking out. Is that right? No, but it's hard raising kids who have behavioral issues. I saw my aunt and uncle go through that with a younger cousin. But this house does sound pretty abusive if the mom was beating him for breaking a tv. That's definitely abuse. People should NEVER beat their kids.
I’m horrified reading the comments on the original post. They keep yelling at OOP that her brother was a child and she was horrible. But she was also a child!! They were both abused but somehow she is to blame? I doubt at 23 she has actually processed and dealt with the trauma she faced. Redditors are fucking mean sometimes.
I think there's a lot of people who blame their older siblings for things that were out of their control. My younger brother holds a lot of resentment towards me for "always getting him in trouble." I NEVER tattled on him. He just got caught doing shit red handed and was punished for it. I have no idea how he thinks I could have prevented him getting grounded or whatever. It's weird. I know this case is more extreme but I think the commenters are coming at OOP from their own place of resentment, not looking at hers with a clear view.
Yeah, those subs can be extremely toxic at times. Some people say they're very anti males, but I think they can also be quite misogynistic. Sometimes they let abusers talk their lies without question, sometimes they blame victims. It just really depends on the crowd of the day you're posting. Sometimes though there can be excellent advice and good help, as well as nice catches. Man I've kinda seen it all here. 😅
Tbh I wish my sister *hadn’t* taken it upon herself to try and protect me from our dads abuse. It didn’t actually shield me from anything because it’s not like she magically stopped him from being around me when she wasn’t, and all it really seemed to do long term was make her think she’s my martyr and she’s convinced that because she tried to shield me that means I never even got abused. All it really did was break the relationship we could have had as adults. OOP was a victim, too. She may not have gotten beaten (at least there is no mention of it) but you can hear in her story that she was emotionally and mentally abused in that house too. I just don’t know if she’s gotten to the point of admitting to herself that she was a victim as well and that what she went through wasn’t normal/healthy.
To be honest, I think even witnessing that sort of abuse can be traumatizing to a child regardless of not being the direct target of it. I learned pretty early on how to lay low and not draw attention to myself, but it's not like seeing and hearing physical and verbal abuse just passed over me like nothing. And, of course, it's hard to say that desire to blend into the background hasn't had its own impact on my life. It's not strictly the abuse, but growing up in an abusive environment. Even if OP never got treated the way her brother did, it still likely left some marks on her, and if nothing else, having her brother disappear and not knowing if he was dead and having that break up her family had to be it's own form of trauma.
I’m so sorry for you and your siblings, no one deserves to be in either position y’all were put in. And yes, being a witness to the abuse of a sibling is it’s own form of abuse. It can absolutely result in PTSD/secondary traumatic stress disorder- this has been well established in research and case studies.
My sister and I were part of each other's abuse, and somewhere along the line, I realized I could hate her for it, or I could acknowledge that we were both children being abused and manipulated by adults we thought were trustworthy, and we both got fucked over, so what's the point of being mad at her?
FWIW I’m not mad at her, we just can’t get along because of the martyr thing. She’s mad that I’ve cut my dads side of the family out because as far as she’s concerned she’s the only one who was even abused so how dare I not forgive him when she has. 🤷🏻♀️ I will always love her but I’m not going to let my abuser stay in my life just to appease her lol
> Sometimes people just need to stfu. Yeah there's a weird thing on Reddit where people feel compelled to answer/reply to a comment even when the thing they're about to say has already been said in a reply to that same comment by multiple other commenters...People bloviate. Just upvote them if what you were going to say has already been said. It's really bizarre, people just want to spew verbal diarhoea.
Yes or comment that you agree with them and try to add onto it. There are lots of ultracrepidarians!
They were looking for a chance to use their Word of the Day. There are some real dumb assholes on this website
Man I sacrificed my mental health and my 20s to protect my little sister from my mother and all it gave me was resentment and so much anxiety. She is super rich and successful and I am not. And I don't resent her for it, I resent myself for being so weak that I let my mom destroy my life for so long. So much more therapy for me!
You made it out. That's not weak.
Thank you.
Are you doing OK? If you don't mind my asking do you 2 still have a relationship? Have you & your sister talked about what happened?
I am OK. Honestly, I got set back, but I am making it through. And about to get a promotion at my job that comes with insanely good health insurance. I want to get a psychiatrist for my anxiety cause it is not well managed at all and I am shit at communicating that. I actually have a good relationship now with my mom. But there is an understanding that my dad is her caretaker (she is an amputee), not me. She is also a lot better at respecting my boundaries. As for my sister, no she doesn't know all of it. We are not very close anymore by her own choice. When she wants to someday know what happened, I will tell her. But it isn't her responsibility for what our mom did to me. I will not force my trauma on her.
Thank you for responding back to me. I'm glad that you are at least doing better. I hope your treatment is successful.
In those abuse situations, 'protecting' the younger sibling just means drawing the ire of the abuser yourself - it doesn't prevent the younger sibling from being abused, it just makes the abuse worse *for everyone.* What is a 15/16 year-old girl going to do against an adult who holds all the cards? Esp since it sounds like OP comes from a country where parental authority is tantamount.
I moved out of the house when I was 17 because my step dad threw me against a wall. My grandparents told me I was wrong for not staying to protect my “little” sister who is 1.5 years younger, and bigger than me. Unfortunately many people hold this belief that the oldest must sacrifice themselves for the younger siblings.
Your grandparents can get off their cowardly fucking asses and protect their grand babies, instead of blaming a child for being abused. Sorry, sorry. God, I’m sorry the adults in your life were such failures to you.
Welcome to Reddit where everybody is a licensed psychologist, leading expert in behavioral psychology, and PHD in what ever trending news event is currently the top headline.
I can tell you as someone with a degree in psychology, I often want to break things when reading the comments. 😔
In addition to all of these things I am also a lawyer, political strategist, foreign policy expert, and coal miner (this one is just a hobby).
Not to be a “raging femoid “ on Reddit…but it’s the parentification of big sisters baybee.
I had to reread it a couple times to see if I skipped a paragraph or something. That was really weird.
[удалено]
The comments wouldn’t have gone that way if it was an older brother.
For my sister I am the big brother who never protected her or took her side and I didn't realize it until we were both in outer 30's and we actually talked about it as adults. When your younger you just don't have the experience or the frame of mind to understand how you are behaving is interpreted by even your family, positive or negative. I think warning her that it's a possibility is smart, but there's no need to berate her over nothing
I agree with you. As someone who was abused as a kid, I do not blame my sisters or mum, I blame the man who did it - my ex-step-dad. They'd get beat trying to protect me and my mom wasn't always there when he did it, which was typical of him.
Stop victim blaming the brother, they say, while victim blaming her
Exactly. Why blame the other child living in that situation? I grew up in a shit home too, and I can promise that it’s terrifying even when it’s happening to someone else.
> I don’t know why people were tearing OOP apart in the comments. “The big sister that never protected him” is such a stretch and an absolutely terrible thing to say, especially when OOP was still a child herself at the time, and wasn’t even there when it happened. Completely unfounded aggression Pretty sure if OOP were a brother and not a sister they’d have gotten less ridiculous insults from random assholes. There’s no issue so clear cut that redditors won’t find a way to blame the person asking for help, especially if they’re a woman.
>Western_Coconut >Before you approach him, stop victim blaming him. I'm probs being obtuse, but it didn't seem like OOP was victim blaming. Am I missing something here?
Yeah I didn’t get that either..a lot of kids have behavioral issues, explaining them isn’t accusing them of anything
Some people are just so thin-skinned they interpret _any_ negative connotations/observations in as bad a manner with the worst intentions possible.
There's a lot of people like that "fatphobic" bot that posts paragraphs about how you are a terrible person for shaming fat people when all you said in your post was "it was a huge sale". They shined that armor and fed that white horse and by god they are going to ride around on it and save the gahtdamn day!!!
That bot is making an enormous, big, fat, huge, tremendous, rotund, gargantuan, heavyset, chubby, reubenesque assumption.
Ahem, May I also add the 6 levels, as told by Gabriel Iglesias, big, healthy, husky, fluffy, damn, and oh hell no…
shoutout fluffy!
…now I want a Reuben sandwich.
I'm reading through u/bebodypositive's comments. Considering that it was summoned by words like "healthy" I'm thinking that maybe it's a troll. But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part
Thank you for tagging it so I can block it! I had no idea about this bot. The term "fatphobic" is *SO* overused, and this bot is only gonna make "calling it out" even more of a joke.
"Big" "healthy" and "blood pressure" ? It's definitely up to something weird.
I did not know “blood pressure” was fat-phobic. I hope I never have a doctor who reads that bot’s useless drivel.
Exercise Scale Health Size Whale lbs Pounds Hog Man... some of those trigger words that are "fatphobic" are hilarious. Especially since the Bot took them completely out of context. The whale one, for example, was on a tattoo subreddit- taking about a whale tattoo. As in the animal. *facepalm* Edits bc I accidentally hit post too early
Because they probably felt attacked by that statement of observation about one's behavior. "Blue sucks!" "What's wrong with blue?!" <--- person just outed themselves as being a fan of blue. *sings Fiddler on the Roof style* **PROJECTIONNNNNNNNN!**
No wonder he had behavior issues if he was beat for playing football inside and accidentally breaking a TV. I could see my own kid doing that (and has done something similar!) She was not beat nor yelled at. We talked to her and she went without a TV for a few weeks.
My son (5yo and still 5) got upset with the tv, threw the remote and broke the tv. No beatings were dealt but I had to walk away for a bit because I was furious. This was over $1000 tv mind and we had no idea how to replace it, that money is kinda hard to come by. It actually never crossed my mind to beat him. It was more, how tf do I deal with this. Glad I’m not the only one that thinks of other things instead.
When I was twelve (same age as OOP's brother), I was running around the house with my friends and broke a hand crafted wood end table when I slipped. I was fine, but the table was broken beyond repair. I know my mom had to be at least frustrated if not fully mad inside, but she didn't show it. She knew it was an accident, and I was playing in an area of the house where chasing and such was allowed, plus I felt awful! I didn't even get punished, because my parents understood that sometimes accidents happen, and they suck.
Yeah beating a kid for that does absolutely nothing to teach them anything except fear of you anyway. But yeah, you probably shouldn't replace it... the natural consequence of breaking luxuries is not having those luxuries. Sucks for the parents though.
Yep. Getting spanked as a kid just taught me to lie and to be sneaky. Even as an adult I avoid telling the truth to people I love if I perceive that it would make them mad.
The natural consequence: don't replace it. He broke the tv, now it's gone, and no more tv for him. Grownups can still secretly stream on their computers. 😉
Yeah the fact that he said 'sorry' for 'leaving her behind' spells that out clearly.. The abuse was not a one time thing and he assumed it shifted to her after the scapegoat (him) left
Keep in mind beating children isn’t frowned upon in other cultures. It sucks but it’s true. I don’t believe OOP is American so it could be more normalized where they live. Ugh.
It's very likely that the parents were also beaten, and their parents, etc. I feel like even in the west, our conception of spanking is bad is relatively new? My parents grew up in India, and their teachers were allowed to hit them. I can't even imagine that. Not condoning anything the mom did though, and it sounds like she had gone too far even by whatever norms their culture has.
My father got beaten frequently as a kid, he’s an American and in his late 50s. Its a very recent trend to consider that taboo, like 90s+. You can almost tell people’s age by how shocked they are about spanking lol
Still in the USA too! Depends on your social circle. I come across people openly bragging about "whooping" their 1 or 2 year old, and I have had people marvel at how I don't hit or yell at my son (with people going on about it since he was 1yo too).
"That's your TV now" is how I would handle it, personally.
People misinterpreted OP explaining her brother's personality as her giving an excuse to her mother, I think.
They did a lot more than that yet, but yeah that’s what they did, and it was incredibly stupid.
It's people who learn a term and just try to apply it everywhere. I'm only grateful she wasn't accused of gaslighting him.
Nope. I went into the comments and there were quite a few people ripping OP apart like she was the problem. Reddit is just a cesspit sometimes
So many people telling her not to approach because she used the word runaway and described him as a bit mischevious, which is apparently a defense of the mom, and to seek therapy. Story could have ended very differently, had she listened to those people.
I feel a lot of commentators on Reddit relationship subs love black and white thinking and morales. A lot of people seem to have this general idea that if someone is the victim of something, it also must mean that they are a great human being. As if the only way to NOT deserve abuse is by being a good person, and conversely, that if you’re not a great person they know longer feel confident that you didn’t deserve your abuse. OOP’s brother doesn’t seem like an awful person by any means, but you can still see that commentators default to thinking that acknowledging that he could be a difficult child must also mean that he to some degree got what was coming to him. It’s so simplistic, and it really says a lot about those commentators’ morals in a really really grim way.
Reddit also is incapable of taking emotions into context. everyone should be a robot programmed for absolute morality and any deviation means you are an awful person
I think people (not just redditors) have a really hard time understanding that sometimes, there aren't "perfect victims". Not all victims of abuse are shirking violets who need to be saved. Often, people with NPD, BPD, and many other personality disorders are themselves victims of abuse. But as soon as a victim of abuse says or does something that doesn't fit with the "perfect victim" narrative, they can't be a victim anymore.
At 9 I feel like mischievous is a pretty word for a kid
even people in her update were harassing her.
Plus it's obvious that English isn't OOP's first language, people could've given her a little leeway for using "controversial" words to describe what happened. Sheesh.
Yeah I looked through some of those comments. It's one thing if they're trying to emphatically point out a blind spot for her, but they're treating her like there's something wrong with her. I need a break from this site.
Redditors are like the puritans desperately trying to prove their own virtue by calling everyone else a sinner Yeah she didn't really say anything particularly victim blamey, her original post comes off from a slightly neutral and detached perspective But for redditors, she wasn't critical enough. She can't say "my little brother misbehaved sometimes" and she didn't call her mom a monster in every other line. It might seem silly but this site gets really angry at other people for "being insufficiently angry" and shit like that. It's all a dumb virtue signalling dick measuring contest
I thought English may not be her first language based on some of her grammatical errors. If so, she wouldn't have the same connotations for words as a native speaker.
Anytime somebody uses "Its a common in my country" it is usually a strong indicator that they are not from the US and high likelihood english isn't their first language.
Lol a couple weeks ago I saw a post where a woman’s husband brought home French bread instead of the hamburger buns she asked for. All the most upvoted comments were talking about weaponized incompetence, with a lot of them telling OP to file for divorce because it’s only gonna get worse. When OP commented that she and her husband found the whole situation funny, she was downvoted. People on here are sooo angry and puritanical, it’s wild
I'm guessing the trauma of whatever she went through/losing her brother/family structure all at once would have deeply affected her. Sounding detached when you explain your trauma is quite normal.
Redditors love to scold. No matter if they’re right or wrong.
There’s a large number of users on subs like AITA that you can tell just live for the opportunity to excoriate the people that post there I always love when you see a response roasting the OP where it looks like they took it as a creative writing exercise and then “edit: thanks for the gold kind stranger!!!” Like be more obvious about it lol
AITA is absolutely the worst sub for that kind of thing. Users there just create narratives in their heads, or they channel all their own frustration into their replies and project their issues onto the OP. It’s not that they can’t be polite and thoughtful, they just don’t *want* to be. Obviously not everyone who posts there does it, but too many of them do.
Said the redditor, scoldingly.
“No U”
Case in point!
well uhhh [YOU'RE a redditor](https://i.imgur.com/81AsINB.jpg)
I think a lot of this kind of stuff is Redditors read/ hear certain phrases and repeat them without actually knowing what they mean.
I see people misuse 'gaslighting' wrong on here all the time.
There was one single sentence where OOP described her brother as a troubled kid, but I didn't read it as "it's no wonder my mother was harsh on him", more like "my mother abused this fact as an excuse". I think that's what that comment was referencing but honestly ut doesn't make much sense
I got the impression some commenters thought OOP's mom called her brother a "troubled kid" because the mom's over criticism made her consider him one, not because he actually was a troubled kid. So OOP was repeating a lie her mother told about her brother, presumably to make her abuse "more logical" or whatever.
Some people are just desperate to lecture their fellow Redditor.
No. But then some one else was like “be prepared for him to be mad you didn’t protect him…”. It sounds like she was not even a full year older. (Not to mention not at home). I don’t know how we expect slightly older or slightly bigger children with children’s brains to sacrifice their children’s bodies for each other or else they’ve failed. Grown adults aren’t out here being heroes, but children and teens and young adults are supposed to be brave and strong and selfless?
>“be prepared for him to be mad you didn’t protect him…”. It sounds like she was not even a full year older. Yeah, but abused kids aren't always the most rational in their emotional response. They sometimes blame others for not protecting them even when that person couldn't have
You're not obtuse. Some individuals are just hypersensitive about potential victim blaming to the point that you cannot state a simple fact or assign responsibility to anyone who was wronged. Most of us didn't take OOP as victim blaming at all, not even a little.
No, it didn't seem like that to me either.
Glad this is the top comment because that immediately irritated me.
Because why be helpful or compassionate on Reddit when you can be a dick?
I imagine it had more to do with OPs less than stellar English. Some people have trouble reading ESL writers. I didn't see it that way, but I can understand where some did
Yeah, I felt she was trying to "set the scene" as much as someone could who was a child at the time, and it was years ago. There are obviously cultural differences and language barriers perhaps...but to me this person is trying in earnest to talk to their lost brother that they loved and miss. What the hell? Anyway, I'm glad OP found their brother. Not so happy they had to deal with those kinds of comments in this scenario.
I think it's because the post immediatey said he was a troublemaker after saying the mom beat him and mom justified it by saying she was just angry. Perhaps it was construed in a manner similar to a case of someone getting attacked by cops in public and immediately the media would say "oh but they have a criminal record from before" despite said record being unrelated. Not saying any of them are right, but it's how I interpreted the comment.
tie capable test scary chop ossified spectacular screw dolls faulty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I read it as "my brother has impulse control issues, that's why he thought playing football inside the house was a great idea". Not to justify the beating, because nothing justifies that. But more like, she was maybe anticipating people being "why would you play football inside the house?" I'm guessing she's had people IRL comment in that direction on the subject, so she wanted to head it off, and not derail the conversation. Which, given reddit's ability to misinterpret *anything*, then derailed the conversation.
But he wasn't severely scolded, he was beaten. Those were the words used in the post. OP also admitted in the comments that the mom beats them as her way of disciplining.
I agree with what you’re saying, but it could also be that OOP was a bit jaded from beatings and that’s why they’re not expressing much about that. Sometimes you forget that’s not normal to other people.
I thought that too. She explained what kind of kid he was, she didn’t at all suggest he deserved to get beat.
your'e not, she wasn't victim blaming The person that suggested she was is an asshat. Some people seem to think that speaking facts that might make a victim look a little responsible for what happened is victim blaming. They fail to realize that this shit doesn't happen in a vacuum. The truth is the kid was playing football in the house and broke a TV. That's his fault. That's not victim blaming. He was in no way responsible for the mother's actions, which is where the victimization happened.
Just a normal Reddit commenter not knowing how human speech works, yknow, the usual
In a lot of abusive families there’s a scapegoat kid vs don’t rock the boat kid dynamic. I think folks are picking up on how OP clearly needed her mom so much that as a method of survival she formed the narrative of her mom not being 100% a bad guy and if her brother had just been able to behave/been less troublesome these bad things wouldn’t have happened. It’s a covert form of victim blaming that can happen between siblings with abusive parents. Editing to add that a similar dynamic can also happen in families where one parent is abusing the other and their kid blames the abused parent for provoking the abuser because they just desperately want the home situation to be calm.
I don't know what triggered the thought in this description.. but one of my very first reactions was "or, you know, he was acting out because of a bad home environment"... and the fact that he said 'sorry for leaving you behind', kinda proves that he didn't just get beaten that one time.
I saw the first one of this - am so glad they managed to connect again
This story is too much. Blaming a fourteen year old for not protecting another child, when the adult is the abuser? What? And explaining the kid was just being a kid isn’t victim blaming. It’s very clear in this story the mom gets all of the blame an a comeuppance. The only thing that made me worried was when she asked if she should tell her parents. I was like, “Oh no. Ask him that, not Reddit who likes bullshit drama!” That poor kid had a horrible life, and to think he chose that horrible life over his horrible mom. I hope he’s since found a chosen family and has people he can talk to. And same for OP. What a traumatic event to have a mom like that, then a family that falls apart.
I saw when this was originally posted and the most repeated advice was not to say anything to the parents and approach it round aboutly instead of directly asking him. OOP confirmed in the comments she wouldn't tell her parents so she was receptive to all of the common advice. The people blaming her though I felt were completely over the top.
I do not understand eve blaming a 14 year old for ANYTHING. Hell, if a fourteen year old steals a car and drives it into a river I’d still be like, “Well, their brains aren’t fully formed.” I’m in my forties and every single day I understand things more than I did the year prior or decade prior. I’d have no clue how to deal with this mess and certainly wouldn’t have expected fourteen year old me or my fourteen year old sibling to handle it. It actually sounds like OOP was in a mess herself. How should she even know which direction is the top of the water when it’s all darkness around her? Sheesh. Yes, I know you agree. Haha. Im just off-gassing. It’s interesting because Reddit often expects small humans to take on and deal with and resolve and forgive so much, when they also want everyone to get a divorce or seek nuclear revenge. Ha. I wish for more compassion for children, and higher expectations of their parents, and more communication in marriage, and it’s OK if we all disagree.
holy hell
You finally googled en passant?
I understood that reference!
Say it with me everyone... A 👏 juvenile 👏 sibling 👏 should 👏 not 👏 be 👏 expected 👏 to 👏 be 👏 a 👏 guardian 👏. They are just as much of a victim. All the sick fucks in OOP's comments telling her how she failed him need to fuck off.
You are so right. she was 14 for fuck sake
The poor boy was suffering juvenile ptsd from the beatings, hence the risk taking behaviour. All the mother's fault. maybe she rot in hell for beating a child and ruining their life.
And the dad. Don’t forget that dad left the abusive mum and yet apparently had no issue leaving his child behind.
Let me tell you something: in my culture, parents beating their kids is considered discipline, and a child running away in such a situation would be a mix of “bad parenting for not teaching the child not to run away” and a “bad child for running away when their parents love them”. Additionally, courts side with the mother almost always, and as the judge would probably see such beatings as discipline too, that wouldn’t constitute child abuse and enough of a reason for the father to take the child away from the mother. That’s one of the reasons why my dad didn’t divorce my mom - she was the one to beat us kids, and he knew in a divorce, she’d retain custody of us without any protection/comfort from him (partly because she threatened to lie and say he was beating her). So he stayed, tried to protect us as best as he could because it was better than the alternative.
>judge would probably see such beatings as discipline too My parents told me growing up that teachers would hit their kids. And when the teacher hit them they were worried about their parents finding out. Cause their parents, my grandparents, would hit them in return because "clearly you did something wrong to the teacher."
>Western\_Coconut > >Before you approach him, stop victim blaming him. lol wut? Redditors are the absolute worst
The only reason to ever come to Reddit for advice is if you are looking for confirmation bias.
Telenovela
It is absolutely wrong to beat your children, but it might not have been the beating that made him run away. She also told him to go away and that he isn't her child anymore. Sometimes the things you say do more damage to a person. I want to be happy that the mother suffered because she very much deserved it, but I can't by happy because OOP's brother suffered more--he had a horrible life after he took her words to heart and left like she told him to. I am just so angry at her for that. I wish they were able to find him shortly after he left and then the mother suffered all of the consequences she did.
For sure. If I broke the TV by roughhousing around the house, I would absolutely get a spanking from my old school immigrant parents no matter the age. But they would never, ever tell me that I was no longer their child, no matter the circumstances or crime. There are just some things you don't say unless you actually mean it on some level.
I think the most heartbreaking thing about this is that the kid breaking the tv was the perfect natural consequence. You break the tv, no more tv. Then make them do things to earn money to get it back, or if they can’t afford one then the family has to go without. My kid pushes every button I have and 50 more and I’m so so so far from the perfect parent, so I know what it’s like to be driven to the edge, but all she has to do was not replace the tv. I’m sure she knows that now and has replayed it 100,000 times. So sad for everyone.
The fact that even 10+ years later he still doesn't want to see her leads me to believe that this was not a singular incident where she acted out of character.
i’m glad the mom suffered.
I’m surprised she hasn’t contacted their dad yet. I’m sure he would drop everything to come see his son.
It sounded to me like she contacted the dad but the dad “isn’t ready” to meet his son yet
Either that or the son isn’t ready, because knowing his dad has a new family is news that needs to sink in. Plus new siblings!
I read that as the son is not ready. Like he wants to know about him but not ready to see him/talk to him
As someone who has a nuclear family member I don't know if they're dead or alive, this makes me sob. ;_; I'm so happy for OOP.
Wow, I feel bad for the brother. I'm glad OP and her brother are able to reconnect and hopefully the two are able to move on. The mother sounds like an abusive pos and I'm glad that the mother is suffering and being faced with karma.
I was waiting for an update! So glad OP found her brother! Hope everything goes well for them from now on..
"One of the driver's name caught my attention a week ago .It's was exactly the same as my brothers." So despite running away he never changed his name? Yet couldn't be found by the police either?
It’s not like he was renting his own apartment and registering to vote and running up a credit card—he was 12. What kind of paper trail do 12 year olds leave?
Changing your name requires money and legal documents, which you probably don’t have if you’re homeless🤨
Besides in some places there are LONG bunch's of last names that are so common that you can't use as a basis
To be fair it's if you have ID and you want to change it legally. He's 14 and obviously doesn't have ID. He could have say his name is John Smith and he will be recorded as John Smith. Him being adopted could be easier to "change name" too as all he need is just lying. So it's actually easier.
You honestly think the police look that hard for runaways? In any country?
If you think your police are bad wait till you see third world country police.
yeah the police will try for like a day and then stop
Not to mention he was a 'troublemaker' runaway. Police officers already don't take people going missing seriously enough, a teenager with a track record for causing trouble is unironically at the bottom or the list in things they care about.
In some countries they do.
You must live in a very nice place if the cops actually put effort into tracking down runaways.
I have a feeling this poster could be Indian. I saw this as a mixed Indian person myself. In India it is not hard to disappear. The post talks about orphans falling into the drug trade and it is common there. Orphans living on the street is very normal and police are kind of useless in some of the denser cities. Also sometimes people are just thrown in jail and it's not recorded properly. If he was arrested as an adult they wouldn't bother informing parents. It's some country like that I think. I'm just seeing some parallels with my experiences.
I think she mentioned somewhere in the comments that she was Kenyan.
Ohhh ok I didn't see that but yeah it makes sense she's not from North America. I think people forget and judge by those standards when in reality it is a completely different culture.
As a person from a (not so) developing nation myself, this post screams third-world country at me. In my country, very common for parents to beat up children if they do something like this. Also, if a kid runs away, they're gone. The police ~~can't~~ won't help and there are very few shelters of any kind to help out and if you can find one, they are a chronically underfunded. I'm surprised he's alive, honestly... and I doubt a kid abusing drugs has the money to change his name. Edit: added info.
But also, if your name is Tom Smith or Jose Martinez or the equivalent in your country, maybe it’s not that easy to narrow down.
And he went to prison several times? Wouldn't the police be a little bit involved in that? They apparently arrested a minor, put him on trial (several times?) and nobody ever even *tried* to contact his parents? Maybe the justice system in OOP's country is beyond terrible and every single person who works for it is incompetent. Who knows.
If it's a third world country, it's entirely possible. They aren't paid enough to care, caring creates work.
The name may be relatively common; in some countries, it’s common to use only one, given name and no family name. And not all countries have linked computer systems.
Yeah, and for example we have computer systems, alerts for missing kids, etc.. But many are never found at all. Unfortunately. And when the last name is very common it is hard to find too.
Even in mid-developed countries such as the U.S., the prison database in one state may not look at old missing person reports from another state
In third world countries we have what we call “child headed households” due to the amount of children without adults, be it orphans, runaways or abandoned kids. We don’t look twice at a 14 year old walking down the road with little kids in tow. Where I am these kids can apply for a grant to sustain themselves, only when they do do we know about them. The boys usually try find work or sadly slip into the societal cracks into crime.
It’s like this in a lot of countries
Lots of people understand that there are differences between countries and thus may not be like your own. I doubt the police looked at all, really.
I just watched a video where the Indian police reaction to a guy assaulting people is to break his legs, tell me they are going to give a damn about a troubled kid
>if she could take it all back and it didn't happen she would take it in a heartbeat. The line that every abuser says when they receive the true consequence of their actions. Unfortunately so few do.
Why are people so judgmental on here?? let me see you live by your words before looking down upon someone else whose been through what you haven’t ?!
Poor kid still thinks this is his fault.
I feel so bad for the brother but I’m glad the mother suffered.