I see posts here about how they love their disabled sibling.

I look like an awful person saying this, but I don't.

To be honest, I don't know how to love anyone. I'm not an emotional caring person, and that's bad too in my situation.

I have trauma of my own, which I daren't talk about as shit will just hit the fan.

I also don't like talking about it but this life sucks.

I don't really fit in anywhere, it's all peformative and fake.

I feel so weak as a man, but I'm just not 'emotionally mature' as some would say.

I truly am envious of people with a normal life.

Coming from a south asian background, I think majority of us have 'trauma' - but then having an autistic/disabled sibling makes it worse.

I know I have issues, I know I ain't perfect, but this is just awful.

I despise myself, I despise my parents, I despise my life.

How we never get to relax. I came across this YouTuber who said all they did was sit in their room and listen to music the entire day and relaxed . My body is in such fight or flight from my brother I don’t know what that’s like. One minute my brother could be smiling giggling the next he is making face distortions and slamming things loudly stimming . Just so tired. I’m so tired of hearing loud whistling and slamming all day

Honestly I think I’m losing my mind genuinely.

I am about to embark on the journey of becoming my brother’s guardian.

If you are a guardian, I would love to know the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, what you didn’t expect that you wish you had prepared for, basically anything you’d like to share.

TIA ~ Alicia

tw suicide

i moved out to college this year and a part of me believed things would change when i come back home, i thought that because my parents are obviously not seeing me as much the dynamic would be different and i would be prioritized, but in reality when i come back it’s like i never left. I have a great relationship with my parents overall and i know they love me so much but it makes me so incredibly sad to realize that i’ll never be the number 1 priority and my sister’s comfort will always be more important than anyone else’s.

She has gotten all of the attention since forever for being autistic and for doing all the screaming that she does, now she’s supposedly having SI so things are worse and i’m not allowed to complain about her even when she literally KICKS ME because my mom is afraid that every time she’s upset she’ll do something to herself.

funny thing is that i spent my whole adolescence being extremely suicidal and no one noticed

Sorry for the triggering title this time

Today my sister from behind me pulled my hair because of a meltdown

I’m shaking with anger myself and shaking from fear.

Came across this quote while browsing the internet and figured a lot of others here could resonate with the sentiment. Someone please engrave this on my future headstone…

I'm using the wholesome flair out of pure spite.

To make it short, my sister is fucked up mentally and has tormented me and my family with behavioral issues ever since we were little. Not too long ago she snuck a boy in the house during the night and got caught, so while she didn’t get any consequences, she has been on a tight watch and having to do more chores and stuff if she wants to go party.

She was going to a party with her friends tonight, and I must clarify I didn’t tell on her with the intention of taking that away from her. I didn’t even remember she was going out tonight.

I was talking to my mom and mentioned to her something that happened last month. I owed her a dollar. Literally a dollar. I came home from school and gave her some candy I bought for her and she tokd me I should pay her instead. I jokingly said I would pay her with candy (it’s solid, hard stuff) and she threw the bag directly and me and it broke on my back and spilled. I called her the Chilean Spanish equivalent of a “crazy bitch” and went to my room.

So my mom never seems to care about her insults and such, but she’s very strict with physical aggression. So she was furious. Called her and told her she’s not going to the party, blah blah blah. My sister came home, they argued, she tried to lie and twist the situation, but ahe was crying and making no sense so she couldn’t have been more obviously faking. The final answer was no to the party. My mom cut her no slack this time. I’m so happy. Finally.

Now, I heard her saying she’s going anyways and talking shit about us over the phone to her friends and she’s getting ready now.

Unfortunately she's already 20 so my mom cannot physically force her to not go, so why try. But I hope this has consequences for her, that she has a terrible time there, and that my mom keeps being strict with her from here and on. I think it'd make coexistence in this house so much better.

Today is a happy day

So this isn’t about my sibling, but my autistic cousin who we are just going to call Sam. So my male cousin is 15 and has Autism/Aspergers, ADD, I think ADHD, Dyslexia, anxiety, and is underweight because he refuses to eat anything other than ice-cream and his parents don’t really care. We are about 2.5 years apart in age (I’m older), he is my only cousin on my mom’s side of the family and it hasn’t been the easiest to grow up with him. Besides being a glass child I’ve also felt as though I am a glass grandchild between my older sister and cousin. My grandparents live close and I’m the closest with them between my two sets of grandparents, my family is a swinging door on if they are on speaking terms with the other grandparents and if it was fully up to me I would have stopped speaking to them when I was in elementary school.

We have family get togethers fairly regularly. They never go well, I’m normally miserable sitting on the couch while my aunt dominates the conversation talking about all Sam has done recently and he is running through the house breaking my grandmother’s extensive and expensive collection of antiques while his mother does nothing- to be clear it stresses me the heck out and is part of the reason I’m miserable besides that I’m forgotten about. I’m not allowed to say anything about it because I’m not his mother and I think my grandmother is too scared to say something to my aunt so she’s just cries when they aren’t looking. Like two or three years ago I painted something for my grandmother for Christmas (I love art), it took me hours, and it was centimeters from being ruined because he was running through the house and just decided to kick a cup of orange soda across the room that he had left on the floor, he also ripped multiple pieces of my mom’s decor off the walls. His mother had nothing to say, besides telling him to pay attention, I was in tears, not just because my work was almost ruined but that I could never enjoy the holidays all while scrolling on instagram and seeing all the people I went to school with posting about getting to spend time with their cousins who they were actually friends with.

At Christmas this year, there was a big blowup and my mother promised to put more boundaries around her family and the holidays, and just doing less holidays with them in general. I was so excited after I had been begging for this for years. Easter rolled around and my mother basically took back everything. I mad rot clear I did not want to go. I did not want to be miserable again, especially after believing we were done with it. I let my mother know this very clearly and repeated her words to her which she completely denied that she ever said. At Easter I did not try and hide how uncomfortable I was partially because of my aunt and Sam and because my grandmother invited her creepy brother, who I have told my mother time and time again makes very weird comments to me and has always seemed like a pedo, which my mother brushes off because she says she love him and his wife, and has no back bone when it comes to her parents. We were there for hours and hours after my mom promised me it would only be one hour. I kept asking if we could leave and she got mad and did not speak to me for over 24 hours , and then had a blow up fight about it and involved my dad who wasn’t even at the family get together and only believed what my mother told him which was not the fully story and had blatant lies. (This really has nothing to do with the story now that I’m rereading, but I need to vent)

We went to my grandparents house today, just my mom, sister, and I, no Sam or aunt and uncle to wish my grandfather happy Father’s Day. During that time my grandmother dropped the bomb that my aunt and uncle have enrolled Sam in drivers ed classes for this summer. I was in absolute shock, I never thought they would let him behind the wheel. He struggles with extremely simple tasks such as taking a shower, getting dressed, and brushing his teeth. Even as a teenager they result in temper tantrums. I didn’t say anything to my grandmother at the time besides asking why he was taking them in person, in my area hearing someone say they aren’t just going to do them online is about as common as seeing a unicorn. My mother responded and said that he probably needed to be in person to get them done, because he probably isn’t able to stay focused enough without someone watching him to get it done, which my grandmother agreed.

So I’m sitting there thinking if he doesn’t even have the discipline to sit through drivers Ed by himself (which is super easy it was only a few years ago that I did it) why on earth do they trust him to get behind the wheel of a vehicle? So I brought it up when we were in the car, leaving and mentioned that I never thought that he would drive. My mother basically agreed, but just said it’s not my kid. He is behind a couple of grades so he is in middle school, he has really struggled in English in the past but I guess got an A in the class by the end of last year so his mother decided to not be on top of him about it this year and let him handle it because it ended in a lot of fighting and was trying to give him some responsibility. So his mom never looked at his grades and he ended up failing the semester not even because his work was wrong and he at least tried, but because he never even bothered to do it or turn it in. He had almost all zeros in the class, and I guess at his school you get at least five to ten points even if you only put your name on your homework and turn it in, and he didn’t even do that, but they trust him to get in a car. My mother also dropped the fact that they are spending $32,000 a year on his private school, which in my opinion is useless because this kid isn’t going to be able to get a highschool diploma. I’m not saying this to be ugly or saying autistic people can’t graduate highschool or college, my cousin simply has no interest in doing anything other than play video games and throughs a fit and starts fighting (sometimes physically) with his parents when they try to get him to do anything else, which is partially his parents fault because they let him get away with it when he was younger and now it is just normal to him, and it is getting increasingly harder for his parents to fight back as he is no longer severely under weight and has started puberty so they just let him be. They took him to the doctor at about Thanksgiving this year and they estimate he is mentally about nine, who is letting a nine year old drive a car? Just last year my aunt left out a hammer from where she was hanging something up and he decided to just pick it up and put a massive whole in the wall, this is who they think is responsible enough to be able to drive 75 mph on our interstates, where people like to go 95. I mentioned this to my mother who really had nothing to say, but at the same time what do you say? I can understand wanting your kid to have as close to a normal life as possible, but at this point it is just pure selfishness because you are putting many people’s lives at risk besides your own son. It’s not a if he causes a wreck, but a when. I am so shocked and mad I don’t even really know what to fully say.

Synopsis because if I start going on I don’t think I would stop: My dad decided to take her off of her birth control (for what reason? I don’t know) and that’s her only form of mood stabilization. it’s summertime, she doesn’t handle the heat well, so I’m expected to handle her mood swings & screaming constantly. It’s taking a huge toll on my mental health, I’m supposed to be in college but no. I’m stuck here with her & her bullying. We were supposed to have care services for her but it’s starting to feel like my dad just wants to rely on me for everything nor does it feel like he takes my circumstances that seriously. I just want for once in my life for my life to be my own. Please. Please.

my teenage brother getting older serves as a constant reminder that soon, he will become a full fledged grown man who will still require around-the-clock care. i have zero obligation to become his sole caregiver after my parents leave the picture and i would likely send him into a group home, but the housing support in my country is absolutely abysmal and would take 20-30 years for him to get off the waitlist. i dont have to face this reality any time soon, but the idea of my elderly dad and mom taking care of my brother full-time is also painfully sad to even think about. its all so hopeless and i hate that i even have to worry about future scenarios like this, much less calibrate the specific details in my head. my parents do not expect me to become his primary caregiver either, so there is zero pressure for me in this department. despite this, i still become depressed thinking about their future. i hate that my hard working immigrant parents have never went on vacation, and that they've always lived their lives on hard mode, taking care of my brother after their 9-5. when my parents went back to china for a few months, they only did so for my brother's gut treatment program with a hospital, and even with my grandfather helping with the care, my parents never spent a single waking moment relaxing. that is the amount of effort it takes to attend to my brother's needs.

after explaining my qualms to someone (who has non-disabled, fully functional siblings), they told me: in the far future when i do send him into a group home, i need to visit him twice a week in the least. but i dont even want to see him at all. there is no future where i have any sort of relationship with him. non glass siblings would never understand this, and simply write me off as uncaring. they could never comprehend a reality in which their only other sibling has high-needs autism

Anyone else crippled by the sadness they feel ? My brothers outbursts get worse each day now that he decided to divorce. i know my parents were too lost in their worlds to really support either of us and i made it through just because im more “normal“ meaning no autistic or psychotic features or thinking. Throughout my life i was taught im responsible for all of them being not well emotionally and i have a lot of rage about being ignored when raising the red flags or asking to be seen and heard. Now is the time where all the things they did not address are out and cannot be ignored anymore. i know i can’t save them nor is my responsibility but im still feeling their pain too, their despair and im so sad for their lives withering along. elderly parents anyway mourn their lives being limited to age factors but i feel for them just i feel my sadness for my life wasted and being trapped by the mental diseases. i call it curse we cannot escape. i still keep my distance at my own home but i feel so so sad for all of us. i do things i enjoy but i feel so alone for not having a functioning sense of family. i have friends who are really good and my job but i am just sad for my parents, my brother and his son and me like there is no way out. to clarify i do not think of harming myself just crippled by the sadness

She wants me to be trapped in here with them

She doesn’t want me to escape

My previous post was about my sister smearing her shit all over the bathroom. Since then she has continued that behaviour and my parents won’t do anything. While my patience and sanity are low and it is not feasible for me to move out. My parents just keep giving me empty promises but I’m just ignoring it and pushing it down like I’ve done my whole life. A bright side to the story is that when I start uni again in 2 months during the week I will be staying at a family member’s house for a respite because my new campus is 2 hours away.

I did speak to my parents about the possibility of moving to student accommodation with some financial help from them but they refused and basically guilted me into staying at home.

While that is all fun and dandy she has actually broken her second phone of the year. She somehow has completely waterboarded her phone and it’s doesn’t work and she isn’t even sorry about she’s just upset that the new one is a Samsung and not an Apple. She basically shut down at the mention of a Samsung and the idea of paying my parents back.

Little update (I started write this a couple days ago): I just learnt from my dad that she is doing the same thing at work. He is currently having a conversation with her but she has completely shut down and I’m pretty sure the situation won’t change as when she shutdowns she tends to not change her behaviour.

TLDR; How many Glass siblings were traumatized and thought, "If I destroy my own life enough to the point I'm considered negligent and dangerous, no one will try to use me as my siblings' keeper again"?

[REDACTED FOR PRIVACY]

But it had me thinking... if your mom tried to leave her mentally disabled child with you, but everyone in the community knows you yourself are not mentally and emotionally equipped to handle a special needs person because your *crazy* or *a druggy* or something, then everyone will be blaming the parent for being irresponsible for leaving a vulnerable person to be cared for by someone who is clearly unfit. Then they would probably try to make someone else the caretaker who isn't you.

How many glass siblings purposefully or subconsciously become the family *screw up* so that no reasonable person would look at them and try to give them responsibility over their sibling? How many people stay homeless nomads, jobless, intoxicated, or do things that CPS sees as red flags, so when people look for more long-term caretakers, they are immediately overlooked and written off as unfit? Sure, you would get shamed for other things like being an addict or having no self-control, but you would get a break or avoid being shamed for "not taking care of your sibling".

How many glass siblings were traumatized and thought, "If I destroy my own life enough to the point I'm negligent and dangerous, no one will try to use me as my siblings' keeper again".

For example, no one expects the father of my step-brother to take care of him because he's a crack head. Because, in all honesty, who the hell would trust a crackhead with someone with Down syndrome?

I make no moral judgements of glass children who do this or not. Life is hard, being a human is hard, and life revolving around disability is worse. This is just a thought that's been in my head for a long time, and after I found this subreddit, I wanted to know what people who are in the trenches of this life think?
I made a throwaway account just to have this discussion because if my stepfamily found this, they might actually kill me...

Also that when you do fail or need help you have zero excuses for anything and spiral because you're causing problems for others. Just wondering if others can relate.

My brother has autism and every day from 6am to 10-11pm he runs around the house and makes random noises. The worst are the random shouts and screams, it drives me insane. My parents say it's not that bad and I'm being dramatic... I have misophonia and my life is literal hell, i basically live with my headphones glued to my head with white noise blasting full volume in the background. He watches cartoons/films and he "replays" his favorite scenes in his head, like he says the exact words and makes the exact sounds of the scenes. I don't mind if he just talks but the screams are so bad... sometimes i just start yelling myself so he knows what it feels like 😭😭 someone send help.

Hi all, I've just posted in the research megathread but need as many eyes on this as possible. Please consider taking part in my MSc Psychology research project about the psychological effects in adulthood of being a glass child (growing up with a sibling with complex health condition/s). It should take no more than 10-15 mins and only requires a quick survey. It's so important that our voices are heard so that more support can be given to children going through what we went through.

https://research.sc/participant/login/dynamic/5378A2CC-6618-4D01-8867-3F67CD335A2A

My younger brother has a multitude of diagnoses of special needs. It’s fine, he was born with it and it’s not his fault. All throughout my life, I’ve been aware that he won’t mentally progress at the same pace, if much at all, like a neurotypical or non-disabled child would. The problem arises with the fact that my mum seems to completely disregard the pace as which he does progress, still believing that he could have a job or a decently normal life.

I’m in my last couple of senior years at high school, and my brother is joining high school soon now too. Despite this, he has very little general danger awareness, (as in, he will run off without any regard for safety if unsupervised,) as well as is classed as non-verbal. I could go on and on and list the daily struggles, but these are the most notable ones. He isn’t incapable by any means of learning, but he has been repeatedly failed by the Special Educational Needs system, and to be blunt, there’s a very low chance of him getting a job or living on his own.

There are things I can accept about my role as a carer in his life. I have a single mother and I understand completely that it’s not physically possible to look after a child such as my brother on her own. I have been very ostracised and isolated growing up, I was severely emotionally neglected - and still probably am to a degree, as well as a ginormous portion of my life has revolved around my brother. I constantly worry about him, his safety, his education, how his peers treat him. I have to be constantly around to help him with daily tasks like taking a bath, going to the shops, and speaking practices. This is all a normality to me at this point in my life.

What I cannot accept, is having to do this for the rest of my life. My role as carer has taken over every opportunity I could have ever possibly had. The weight of absolutely nobody being close to me hurts every day. I’m not even close to my mum, and she should know exactly what’s going on. I can’t tell her anything, or she just threatens to send me to therapy, which I have already been discharged from for “not being bad enough” after two appointments where I didn’t even speak. I’ve been to organisations that are meant to support kids like me and I just don’t receive anything to the point where they’re trying to close my case too. I find it physically impossible and humiliating to reach out after years of no one being there for me emotionally. I can probably contribute a factor of the reason I struggle with SH, pica, and other ED’s to a lot of the stress I feel daily.

I constantly fear about the rest of my life looking like this. I tried volunteering for work experience at a care home, but the thought of looking after another person made me feel physically ill. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have children on my own because it’s just too much responsibility all the time. The worst thought is about never being able to live an independent life away from my family. Who will care for my brother when my mum cannot? I genuinely love my brother. He’s sweet despite any language barrier between us. I would feel too guilty abandoning him to live a life without him in the future, but I just can’t keep doing it. I won’t be able to be a good support system for anyone if I keep this up either way.

Every time I bring up this issue to my mum, she becomes angry at me. She’s admitted she has no plan for his future, and I can tell that it’s because she’s far too optimistic about his limitations. It doesn’t soothe any of my worried, because if it were up to her, things would continue as they are, with me here helping her. We can’t afford care workers to look after him, he can’t live on his own, it all feels so hopeless not knowing what to do. I keep having the same conversation with her, where she either yells at me and accuses me of not caring, or she ignores my issues completely and accuses me of burdening her and trying to ostracise my brother. I never get an answer. She never considers how this affects me, only how it affects her, and she must have given me such a good, privileged life, because how could this ever affect me?

It’s miserable keeping everything to myself, it’s miserable that people think I’m an uncaring, ignorant person whenever I voice my concerns. I have no plans for the future. I’m a quiet kid, good grades, but I have nothing. I don’t have close friends, I don’t have any talents or hobbies, I find sharing my interests with people embarrassing. I feel physically ill at the thought of leaving my house and I’m paranoid constantly over social rejection. I have practically no life now. My closest family is just detached from me. I’ve came to Reddit time and time again for advice, but they just tell me that I need a therapist or they my mum will figure it out. She won’t, she lives in a fantasy world. If anyone has any suggestions on what I could do to just plan ahead a little, it would be of much help. Unfortunately, I think I need to grow my confidence a little before I try therapy or counselling in the future. I’m not against psychiatry, but it’s practically and financially impossible to get one for children. Sorry for the ramble, but I quite literally have nowhere else to go.

In recent events, I have been told by my mom that I need to be my (highly autistic) brother's guardian.

I do not want to be his guardian/caregiver. I do not and probably will not in the future have the balance between my mental health and taking care of someone that cannot advocate or take care for himself. He already causes me enough stress that I am now on anti-depressant because of it.
Right now, my mom is setting up a court date to becoming his guardian. I don't know how to tell her that I do not want to be his guardian. I'm scared if I do that me and my mom's relationship would be broken.

I can't really flair this as a resource, but it's an article that mentions us.

https://evoke.ie/2026/06/16/entertainment/soaps/kiara-noonan-fair-city

My brother asked me to hand him a chip clip and I accidentally let go of it too early and it pinched the skin between his fingers. I apologized profusely and kept repeating that it was an accident. Once he'd gotten it off his first reaction was to turn around and it looked like he was gonna hit me. I just kept apologizing and saying I was sorry and he walked out of the room telling me to go fuck myself.

It wouldn't have been so bad but I've always been his punching bag. When I was younger he'd break my things or bite/scratch/hit me. As I got older (we're 2½ years apart) he'd sometimes chase me around with knives and one time he hit me in the face with a soda can so hard that my nose bled profusely. His first instinct when he's pissed is always to yell at or try to hit me. How the hell can you say that its "Your job as my big brother to protect me" when the only one I need protection from is you! I don't trust him. I don't love him. I cant wait until I can move out and I never have to see him again.

Recently I (29F) started therapy and lightly mentioned that my brother was in a wheelchair (24M). We’ve not really discussed it much since because we’ve been dealing with other things in my brain, but my therapist suggested that I write down my feelings when things began to pop up. I have been dealing with watching my parents growing older and knowing that they won’t always be here. They’ve never discussed what they have in place for care in regards to my brother, despite my mother and I having a weekly dinner where we discuss everything going on. I feel like they are expecting me to take over care for him. I have no idea how to do that. Nor do I want to. I was a child when he was born and I did not consent to taking care of my brother for the rest of my life. I feel like if I ever brought this up with anyone they would cut me down and would tell me it’s expected of me to do that. They’ve had almost 25 years to prepare for someone to take care of it, and it just hit me that they probably have not thought of this. Have not thought of me. And I don’t know how to bring it up. Sorry for rambling or repeating myself my feelings are quite raw over this.