My parents continued to insist on family meals and events even when they almost inevitable devolved into fights between gfgbro and my parents. I can remember praying desperately to have just one time where there wasn't a fight. I used to go sit and cry and rock and hold my cat for HOURS after a meal like that. By high school I mostly just refused to be home so that I couldn't be forced to have to deal with it. It honestly felt that my parents chose him and his awful behavior over me.
I have a very vivid memory of being out shopping with my mom and running into a classmate and her mom. The moms talked and commented on how if they didn't have a difficult child (classmate was a difficult child) then life would be really boring because the difficult child was the only thing that kept life interesting. That hurt like you cannot even imagine. I worked so HARD to get good grades, to make good choices, to be educated and to be a good person and daughter. My mom and I did a lot together and I thought we enjoyed doing things together. To hear that she had to have my bro around because I was boring as all get out because I did what my parents asked and expected and because I made good choices? it was a knife in the heart that twisted and left a lot of poison. When I asked my mom she gave some BS about how she only said that to make the other mom feel good. I say it was BS because I could always tell when she was lying. She wasn't lying to the other mom, but she was to me. I could not believe she got offended wehn I asked her questions about this statement. How dare she! WHen I told her that it hurt me, she told me that I was hypersensitive and that it was annoying and boring. gee, and I thought that she didn't mean it that I was boring and my bro HAD to act out to compensate for my boringness. She then got REALLY angry. It was the first time I walked away from ehr while she was chewing me out for something. I just got out of the car at a stoplight and walked away. She never said another word about it, no apology, nothing.
THIS is how your pcs feel when the difficult children have to be included on all family events. The difficult child gets to act out, to use, to flaunt their defiance of all rules and family standards. for this they get you going out of your way to do things with them. For our rule following we get more responsibility and expectations, less time with you, feelings that we are not good enough no matter what we do, and feelings that difficult child is the only one who really matters or is loved by our parents. Even if your easy child won't tell you these things, they are there. I have been in MANY alanon meetings with siblings of addicts and this is a universal theme that we all seem to feel very strongly. We just don't tell our parents because either it will hurt you or you won't care. We generally don't know which one we fear the most.
Some family gatherings are okay, but you are fooling yourselves if you think your difficult children are not high. Most who are truly addicts are high every minute or else they are sick. You don't get them well behaved at a gathering when they are sober, not if they are active addicts. Unless they are in recovery, they are NOT sober when they are with you. Generally they feel a lot of guilt and pressure around you, and getting high is how they deal with that. with-o the substance, their bodies cannot function in any way approaching normal. S o if you want them to be 'normal' around you, they ahve to be high. Regardless of waht they tell you, don't lie to yourselves and think they are sober/clean/unhigh when they are at a family meal/gathering/function/spending time with you.