This is the kind of koi that I'm talking about

[greenrene]

I've mentioned before about difficult child's jealousy and her propensity to pick at her brother relentlessly. She can be just so MEAN and cruel - I see personality disorder red flags.

A close friend of ours died unexpectedly yesterday. husband and this friend were as close as brothers. He was hard on his luck and lived with us for 8 months last year, so my kids spent a lot of time around him. He lived modestly, loved dogs and children, and was especially close to my children - he saw them as his own since he never married or had kids.

So what does difficult child do? She decides to try to make easy child 1 cry by talking about our friend and going on and on saying that he loved her more than he loved him, etc.

I am just so... I don't know even how to express how that makes me feel. I am absolutely disgusted and appalled that she would use this as an opportunity to try to make easy child 1 upset. I mean, how low can you stoop?

 

[Bunny]

I'm sorry for your loss. Death makes kids do very strange things because they just don't always know how to deal with it.

Not that I'm making any excuses for her, but could she be doing this as a mean of hiding her own feeling about your friend's death? How did she react after hearing of his death.

 

[Liahona]

difficult child 1 will be really mean verbally to his sibs if we let him. (He also has a history of violence towards them.) What we do is separate them. If he can't be nice to siblings he doesn't get to be around them. It has preserved the sibling relationship. His siblings love him and want to be around him. It has taken a lot of work on my part to insure their safety and sometimes I don't do a good enough job. They know he has serious issues. Some of them have had therapy and went through times they didn't want him to come home. We kept up the siblings is a privilege. I think that is the natural consequence of being mean to someone; they don't want to be around you.

 

[Bunny]

I think that is the natural consequence of being mean to someone; they don't want to be around you.

We are trying to get difficult child to understand this. easy child doesn't want to be around difficult child at times and it's because difficult child can be so mean to him. difficult child turns it aroun and says that easy child doesn't want to be around him because easy child doesn't love him.

Being the sibling of a difficult child is really hard. After watching my kids in action, I think that it's alot harder than being the parent of a difficult child!

 

[keista]

((((HUGS)))) So sorry for your family's loss.

Please allow me to play devil's advocate. *Maybe*, just maybe difficult child was not trying to make easy child 1 cry but was trying to make herself feel better. Yes, it's the other side of the same coin. But this is her defect - she can only feel better is someone else is getting cut down. Of course the ideal is to correct this behavior in her, but until (if ever) this is corrected, you and easy child 1 and everyone else must see her behavior for what it is. Not so much putting others down, but trying to build herself up. If you all refuse to get put down, then she'll have to find a different method (or at least maybe she'll give up because it takes too much effort)

It's hard enough to ignore a bully. Harder still if the bully is in your house, but in my opinion if you ignore or respond with matter-of-factness to her attempts, at the very least you will save yourselves some heart ache.

 

[greenrene]

This is her MO. She makes low blows in a direct or indirect attempt to make someone upset. She has also told her cousins that her life was just wonderful and grand before they moved down here, that they messed her life up by moving here.

There are times when it seems that everything out of her mouth is an attempt at manipulation, ****-stirring, or hurting.

She seemed to take the news of our friend's death pretty well. Another thing she did (which in retrospect, we should have nipped in the bud) was to tell easy child 1 about our friend's death before we told him.

We do the separation thing as well. The first WHIFF of being mean gets her sent to her room. Of course she tries a lot of her koi when adults are out of earshot.

It just seems so LOW that she would use a loved one's death as a means to hurt. Bottom of the barrel low.

 

[greenrene]

I crossposted with you, kiesta. I do get that she's trying to make herself feel better. And if she's doing it to an adult, that's one thing. I'm a big girl, I can take it. But her brother (her favorite target other than me) is only almost 9 years old. He handles it pretty well, but I just hate that he has to put up with this sort of **** when he's just a young kid. It's not fair.

 

[keista]

I crossposted with you, kiesta. I do get that she's trying to make herself feel better. And if she's doing it to an adult, that's one thing. I'm a big girl, I can take it. But her brother (her favorite target other than me) is only almost 9 years old. He handles it pretty well, but I just hate that he has to put up with this sort of **** when he's just a young kid. It's not fair.

((((HUGS)))) But life isn't fair, is it? If it were, i bet none of us would have difficult children because we are just so awesome and don't deserve to have to deal with difficult children.

On the flip side, easy child 1 gets to practice and hone some very valuable life long skills at a young age. We cannot change anyone else, we can only change the way we respond to them.

I do get the fact that it totally hoovers, and you just came here to vent. And I hope easy child 1 is OK and doesn't take difficult child's words to heart.

 

[TerryJ2]

I am so sorry. He sounded like such a nice guy.

I am also sorry for difficult child's verbal abuse of your son. He has no way of understanding that, and it cuts to the core. It will ruin his relationship with-her if she continues.

In regard to playing the devil's advocate, I saw John Elder Robison speak a cpl wks ago at the College of Wm and Mary in VA. He said something that really, really grabbed me, one of those "I've-always-wanted-to-know-why" things. Somebody was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was younger. When he was told, he remembers smiling. His family of course (and in particular, his mother) insisted he was a sociopath and a would-be serial killer.
Why did he smile? After all these yrs, he was able to explain his relief that no one in his own family was hurt.

Not sure what your daughter was thinking, but I *do* think she was trying to make herself feel better, in her socially inept, cruel way. Please sit down with her, alone, and explain to her how much it hurts other people when she does things like that. She really may not know. Or what little pleasure she gets from it will in no way balance out the hurt she has caused. She needs someone to spell it out, just like learning the alphabet. It will take all the patience and objectivity you have, and it will not be easy not to scream at her, but at this age, that is all you can do. Once she's 21 and out of the house, then it's out of your hands.

I don't know how much your son can absorb, in regard to how abnormal his sister's behavior is. But you can only try. Separately, of course.

Many hugs. It is so hard to lose someone through death, and then to lose your child piece by piece as you create walls through anger.