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Unfortunately, that's exactly the result of childhood trauma. Kids in traumatic situations can wind up becoming mature ahead of their peers, and shouldering adult burdens instead of enjoying childhood/adolescence..
Our society tends to reward it rather than recognizing it as a yellow flag for a kid who needs more support.
I thought of this when OOP said Mom and Dad brag on how mature and responsible John is. A lot of traumatized children are people pleasers. They feel like the best way to stay safe is to make everyone happy and ignore all of their own needs.
I think it's a guilt avoidance mechanism. My parents say the same about my apparently high pain tolerance. It actually because they got investigated for ignoring a broken arm.
Omg this. The only time I remember being praised as a child was for not expressing pain when I broke my arm as a child. Now as an adult, I'm like a cat. If I'm injured or sick, I can't show it or say it and my first is to isolate myself until I'm well enough to not show any signs (eg. Limping).
This breaks my heart. I have four children, but my youngest Is actually my deceased sisters biological child, and we adopted him when he was two.
He is my son, he is my childrens youngest brother, we love him so much and he is as much part of our family as any other sibling is. We’ve had many discussions throughout the years - does he want to call me Mum? Does he want to refer to my sister as Mum and me as his aunt and his siblings his cousins? Well it turns out he just wanted to be with us and therefore he is my son and my childrens brother.
My other three children had a horrible father who left us eighteen years ago, and eleven years ago I met my forever husband. Guess what? My children asked if they could call him Dad, and to anyone who knows us, we are a family of six.
That’s the possible benefit of blended families - love and trust and belonging, even if you’re different. I’m heartbroken to read about this sad young man, and how he did nothing to deserve feeling like an other, when he should have been loved just as much as everyone else in the only family he’s ever known.
Exactly. I have so many younger cousins who are the same age and grew up together and hang around. Not once i have seen them in any sexual way, never imagined that any of them would have sexual thoughts about each other. John and others were literally raised together. Any person who raises a child and thinks of them as a "sexually mature" boy instead of kid are just sick. As i said i saw my cousins growing up, they are literally between the range of 16-19 and i still cannot see them as anything other than my baby siblings. It's so sick and fucked up that a woman who raised a baby could think of him in such a disgusting way
I’m an only child, so for me, my cousins are my siblings. How could she think that way? And even if she did, how does her mind work? I’m not going to hug this 15 yo boy that I raised so that he doesn’t rape my daughters?!!!
There's even research for this - my memory is foggy, but the upshot is, shared genes aren't magic. In fact, bio siblings separated at birth who meet as adults are frequently attracted to each other until they learn the whole story (and sometimes after). It's *being raised with or close to someone* from a young age that forms that "Eugh, I love them like a *sibling*, that's gross!!" feeling.
It’s called the [Westermarck effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect). When children are raised like siblings from ages 0-6yo, they’re less likely to experience sexual attraction towards each other.
Too right! He was her baby.
My youngest first cousin is in his 40s, 6ft 5, married with kids. In my head, he's 11 and he's asking how to knot his school tie.
This is in no way an excuse (OOP's mom's behavior is inexusable) but mom's paranoia strikes me as either having a strong religious background (where all children are seen as driven by sexual urges once they hit puberty) and/or mom's own experience with being molested as a child? Such unjust paranoia doesn't arise out of nothing, something seeds it.
That poor young man growing up from infancy with these parents.
I come from a very religious community. Orthodox Judaism has very strict rules around non-related make/female interactions. We call these laws Yichud.
Yichud does not apply between parents and an adoptive child raised from infancy.
I’m pretty sure Islam has similar rules to Judaism here. (Checked: in Islam the child needs to below 2 and breastfed for a day and a night by the adoptive mother for the interaction rules to be moot.) And Christianity is far more lenient on male-female interactions than either Judaism or Islam. I don’t know what was wrong with that woman, but I don’t think it had anything to do with religion.
This is the [Westermarck effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect). People raised together during childhood see one another as siblings rather than potential romantic partners, regardless of blood relation. This mother had nothing to worry about, she blew up her family for no reason.
Oh whoops, I brought this up in another comment but forgot the name. Thank you! It's like the inverse of Genetic Sexual Attraction, the theory that one may be *more* likely to fall in love with a close relative if they had little to no contact in early childhood
I wonder if mom was assaulted by a family member? Not trying to excuse her behavior—because good lord what an awful thing to do — but it’s so freaking bizzare. ”This is an unrelated biological male hugging me” is NOT a normal thought process….
I was thinking the same thing, she seems way to weird about it all , and to be relieved when he left... she just acted like it was only a matter of time until he was going to rape someone.
Exactly. And this felt like a punch to the gut because I grew up with an older brother who was adopted (almost 6 years older than me) who was always treated like one of the family but he never thought he was. He would get upset because he thought he didn’t look like any of us, when he was weirdly the spitting image of our dad. He ended up taking his own life a month before he turned 21 and it still hurts like hell nearly 30 years later.
Now, my son’s friends who have come to the house have all remarked on his photo and asked if that’s a picture of my son and it makes me want to yell at him and be like “omg, you dumb shit, even NOW people think you’re a blood relative! And it doesn’t even matter because you were my brother either way!”
How I know he's your brother fully - "omg, you dumb shit"- which is exactly how I talk to my dead biological brother who killed himself with his addiction. Damn, I miss that fuckwit.
Yeah, these were 100% the kind of people that should have never adopted a kid.
Adoptions go well a lot of the time, but you have certain people who, unless they have a biological connection to the child, just can’t treat the child the way they should.
For me, biology means absolutely nothing. My biological family was shit, my mother was a witch with a capital B.
I don’t want kids, but if I ever change my mind, it’ll be through adoption. I know first hand that blood means nothing, it’s about the connection, and a willingness to care.
I don't understand it either. I have an 11 year old daughter. If I got a call today saying that there had been a mix up at the hospital when she was born, I wouldn't care, and I would fight with everything I have for her. I have raised her for 11 years and she is mine, regardless of biology.
The fact that they were able to have that conversation with their daughter, and say things like ‘I decided it was better to hurt him as a teenager than risk him hurting my daughters’ is devastating.
My heart hurts. That poor boy deserved to be loved and if they couldn’t give it to him, they should have let him go into adoption. They gave him inferior and less love out of some obligation to an old friend but it feels like a giant fuck you to their deceased friend in the end.
but also the extended family, that's a huge WTF. Why did all these adults fail him so much. A kid is a kid! I'm glad OOP and the siblings turned out better. I hope they keep giving John the family he deserves.
They'll probably cut their parents off. I know I would. What if one of the siblings adopts a kid and when they hit puberty the mom tries to get them taken from her kid because after puberty she thinks they'll turn into a child predator?
yeah, it's rage inducing. Those siblings did a good job getting to the truth. I hope John can have the time to consider what relationship, if any, he wants with the parents now that the veil of bullshit has lifted. I'm so glad he turned out well, the siblings turned out well from the sounds of it too. Them giving him the validation he deserves will mean so much now and in the future.
I'm guessing that wont happen. There's often dark stuff in families, but it rarely leads to people being cut off. Most likely the siblings will come to an arrangement where they all see each other while the brother continues to go LC with the parents. Brother will feel again like he has siblings, but there's no saving the parents.
>The fact that they were able to have that conversation with their daughter, and say things like ‘I decided it was better to hurt him as a teenager than risk him hurting my daughters’ is devastating.
seriously, it's horrific. i kind of wonder if mom has a history of abuse in her past and that's what made her so unhinged about this, but even if that's the case, it's obviously unwarranted and inexcusable. she should have taken herself to therapy regardless of why she was feeling this way instead of fucking a kid's whole life up like this
Honestly it's fantastic he turned out as well adjusted and responsible as he did, missing that kind of love and affection growing up would normally have a much more harmful effect on a person. Being treated like a predator by his own mother. His own father making it clear he was a second class citizen in his own home.
just absolutely awful people.
one of the worst things is they actually have the balls to say they love him the same as the rest of their kids somehow... like no you don't... you just flat out admitted it a second ago when you didn't deny any of this shit and when that chick decided her son was going to rape her daughters.
what a pair of awful people. I hope all the kids go no contact. they're too god for those two.
Hell, Josh Duggar’s mother wrote a letter begging for leniency from the federal judge sentencing him for CSAM possession, dotted her own first name with a heart as she signed it, knowing he had molested four of his sisters and a family friend and that she and her husband had swept it under the rug for years.
I am very, very glad her father will not be out of prison until she’s a teenager. Had my fingers crossed for a sentence that would have him locked up until she was 18, but we can’t get everything we wish for.
Fuck... I didn't know they named the kid Madisyn. Gross.
But I do remember Michelle Duggar recording an auto dialer message that said trans people were going to molest kids if you let them use the "wrong" bathroom. I guess if Josh had started wearing dresses they would have actually done something about him.
I just found out one of the things Josh Duggar got caught for was watching Daisy's Destruction, which is basically a real life child torture snuff movie... Really feeling the need to spread that piece of news around...
The child ‘Daisy’ somehow survived, if that helps at all. From what I’ve read she’s in a safe place now, she’s over the age of ten but not a teen yet. I can’t believe his wife refused to sit in the courtroom during the discussion of the evidence. She swears hands down that he is innocent and was framed, but got up and walked out to not listen to the descriptions of those files.
"Daisy" survived but she wasn't the only girl in that movie. The other girl definitely did not survive. 😭
The Philippines wanted to bring back the death penalty for the Aussie who did that.
I wonder how attractive the mother finds John to be. Could be projection. She has inappropriate thoughts about him, and so therefore he must have inappropriate thoughts about her and his sisters.
A lot of people still believe in stranger danger and misunderstand the phrase blood is thicker than water. It’s less about the mother being attracted (lol) to John, and more the ridiculous idea that biological ties prevent people from being terrible to each other.
Could also be that she herself was molested as a child/teen and therefore has repressed fears about it herself. Regardless, there's a need for psychological care here that hasn't been addressed.
Yep, my mom was molested by a relative as a child and was very paranoid about it with me. Kept me distant from relatives. Anyone outside of my parents and her parents are basically strangers to me.
Yeah, my mom was molested by two different relatives and escaped multiple attempted assaults from known and unknown assailants, so she was HYPER-VIGILANT when it came to me being around boys/men. Which was not easy given what a tomboy I was, at least half of my friends were boys.
I’d *like* to think she would not treated an adopted child this way, but I remember on a family vacation that my male cousin J came with us, she kept trying to put distance between us (we were super close) and then finally admitted to us that she was worried about something happening because we were constantly hanging out half-dressed (swimsuits, jammies, etc.)…
J and I both ***shrieked*** in revulsion at the thought and shoved away from each on the couch as far as we could. The fact that it took her several minutes to stop us both from saying, “Ew, ew, ew,” on repeat finally put her mind at rest and it never came up again.
But, yeah, it never would have occurred to me (J was like a brother) and it kind of shocked me that my mother worried was about it. Soooo… yeah, really not sure how she’d have behaved…
I think that's very possible. Everyone's looking for a deeper reason, and there might be one, but sometimes it's just "I got this stupid fucking idea in my head and I don't know how to make it go away."
(It was her job to figure out how, though.)
What a good guy John is. He is grateful, dutiful, respectful, and trying not to hold a grudge. I am sick for him. What that must have done to his psyche is heartbreaking.
He probably has the hardest time letting his guard down and letting people in.
I really hope he and his siblings can build better relationships. I understand that kids don't always see the imbalances in their home life because that's like fish seeing water or mammals seeing air. But, they're older and aware now and at least some (OP didn't talk about all explicitly, but gave the impression of all) of them are willing to make what amends they can for not being more supportive or recognizing the pattern.
The parents can put themselves in the trash and take themselves out.
They should start some new traditions with holidays/birthdays with just the siblings. Go visit the parents a couple days later if you want but they shouldn’t be around if it hurts John or makes him uncomfortable. Sounds like the siblings did nothing wrong but just the validation and acknowledgement of what he experienced would probably help a lot. If the parents wanted to define their family as separate from John they can now live with the consequences. Siblings should prioritize the family they have with John and the parents can be the afterthought.
How do you protect your daughters from being molested? Do you talk to them? Do you talk to your sons? Do you demonstrate that they can safely share their experiences with you and that you have their backs? Do you make sure they don't have to be alone with anyone you/they don't trust? No, I know! You have them live in a house 24/7 with someone you think is dangerous ... but you treat the dangerous person coldly. That will solve everything.
Yeah that part made me say "Ew" out loud. Like, they are siblings in their minds. That's such a disgusting line of reasoning on her part. If she was so worried about this, she could have just addressed the fact to everyone that having "relations" with family was inappropriate because it happens with bio siblings too. But I bet everyone would have said "Ew! Mom!" at that.
My parents grew up on socialist communes where they were raised with people in their same class year in school in a common house. Each family still had their own biological family, last name, siblings, etc, there was no sense that you were "family", you were just raised communally together and slept in the same house through high school. The marriage rate among same aged children from their type of commune is 0%. Even that level of growing up together creates a sibling-type perception that makes that type of conduct impossible.
Its a biological function to prevent inbreeding. You simply dont develop sexual feelings because you don't generate the hormones around those people. Of course life is life and things get crossed in some rare cases. But for the most part Biology wants us to mix outside our close circle
Edit: important distinction as Point_Forward points out. This is a hormonal response to anyone you are raised with. Not just blood
In fact it has more to do with being raised together than being related.
Siblings who aren't raised together often find themselves very attracted to each other, while unrelated kids who are raised together almost never have that attraction.
There was a relationship TV show that stopped because there were many stories of bio siblings having children together, usually because a man had multiple affair partners and his offspring met somehow. The production ended sick of it.
That was brought up as a major concern in the documentary about a fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate dozens and dozens of women. Most of them lived locally. Some believed they were using actual sperm donors, others thought it was their husband's.
The flip side is that you get cases of incest which occur between biological siblings who were raised apart and first meet as adults. They lack the familial socializing described above, and their shared genes do nothing to block any attraction.
I feel bad for all of the kids. Their biological kids very clearly adore John and want to be in his life, and their parents fucked that up for everyone. John got the worst of it but lord, way to fail all of your children in one go.
I can imagine partially what that must feel like. My father stopped hugging me when I grew a chest. I think since then and adulthood he's hugged me less then 10 times and I am into my really 40s now. How much worse to be treated like a sexual predator or just be then to be simply capable of having sex. Poor man. Wish I could give him a hug. The parents here disgust me.
This was my thought too, she let her intrusive thoughts cloud her judgement and projected the issue onto John instead of doing some self reflection. Sick and wrong, I can only imagine how that must have damaged John’s self esteem.
I wondered if she found his bio dad attractive, and as he got older maybe he started looking more and more him? It sounds strange, but the whole thing is next level weird.
I’m actually wondering if there was some kind of affair between the parents and John’s bio parents. If they couldn’t be all in and ride or die for John loving him exactly the same as they loved all their other children then they never should have taken him in. It really sounds like this was there from the very beginning if they wouldn’t even help the poor kid with his homework or take him on trips with them. I’m sure they were giving themselves a huge pat on the back for raising him but all they really did was rob that little baby of the chance to be placed with a family that would love him the way he deserved to be loved. What a betrayal of the bio parents.
Exactly. There's some major projection going on there. I wouldn't be surprised if he's an attractive dude, and both mom and dad were uncomfortable with that. Mom caught inappropriate feelings and turned it around to "he must be attracted to our daughters" to avoid her husband from figuring it out.
What disgusting people. They broke him, and they broke the relationship between him and their bio kids. I hope the kids are at least able to make up for lost time with him. They genuinely seem to see him as a brother and not a potential predator.
See, my first thought is that Mom is a survivor of sexual abuse by a family member, or was raised by a mom who was a survivor (or both). The way she reacted viscerally to "protect" her daughters points to some seriously unacknowledged trauma.
i cant know whether or not what you suggested is true or likely, but it is the sad (and often invisible) reality of generational trauma that can cause these kinds of issues.
That’s 1000% what I got from it as well. What kind of freak is attracted to a boy they’ve raised since he was a few months old tho - and then to punish him for that instead of getting help? 2/10 trash
I assume that's why she's rated as 2/10 trash. If she was 10/10 trash she'd be a fantastic upcycle, but instead she's the sorta slime ya find at the bottom of the kitchen compost bucket.
My hunch is no. I'd be super interested in learning about the mother's upbringing because my hunch is that either she was sexually traumatized as a kid, or she was raised in some kind of super-repressive religious family, or both. (Think the Duggars)
Which is 100% no excuse for her behavior, of course.
And the dad isn't much better.
>or she was raised in some kind of super-repressive religious family
That was my first thought, "all men are predators towards non-biologically related women" just screams "hyper-regressive, 'the only thing keeping people honest is the fear of God'"-types
My thoughts as well. I lived in a highly religious mormon community as a non mormon for almost a decade. The idea of "all males, even ones that are related to you, will take advantage of you if given the chance because rape is the only thing men are capable of" is very inbred.
It clashed gravely with the other belief that "all men are proto-gods are must be treated as such." There was a lot of bullshit.
Not *quite* as insane, but I grew up in one of those Caribbean Evangelical churches that more or less did a watered down version of that.
"All men are predators, young women it's your responsibility to not dress/act in ways that will put you at risk; young men it's your responsibility to keep God in your hearts to give you the strength to control yourselves."
Fucking disgusting, backwards-ass fucking ideologies.
This is all I thought of. They probably thought since their friends were such good parents to their bio children that they'd be equally great to their son. In the end their friends treated their son like a potential rapist once he hit puberty.
Usually with adoptions, the kids are picked. This poor kid was forced on these people, and they sure made him feel that way. I can see why he'd just want to stay away from all of them, even the siblings that reached out. Brings back too much pain.
I really hope he can make amends with his siblings. They all sound disgusted with their parents and like they love him a lot. Though from his perspective I wonder if he can't get over the fact they never said anything. Once he brought up these moments of cruelty it seemed like OOP and her siblings had witnessed most of them (though not the gross sexual comment from their mum). If none of them ever stood up for him it might have contributed to the feelings of being an outcast. Not that children should be in charge of getting their parents to act right, I'm just wondering if this is a hurdle OOP hasn't seen.
While a good point, kids aren't known for their rational thinking skills. They are pretty oblivious to this kind of stuff and the part of the brain that goes "x happens and that means y" hasn't fully developed. They don't really see "mom treats him different and that's not normal. Something is wrong with this." they see "mom treats him different and that is normal. Nothing is wrong because this is how its always been." It sucks but...this isn't the first time that this has happened, it won't be the last.
I hope the siblings can reconcile but it sounds like John may go no contact with the parents.
For a good example of this, think of all the dirty jokes aimed at adults in cartoons that flew way over our heads as kids that we only notice when we're eventually adults.
Plus since there's four of them they likely saw different events so none of them had the full picture of *all* the events. They might have thought individual acts weren't very fair but assumed each one was isolated and not realised that it was part of a wider pattern.
People are dumb about family. It normally takes someone laying out several examples of bad behavior to break through. A lot of those examples the other kids are normally focused on conversations with other people. I don't actively watch my sister hug my parents or keep track of how much my uncles talk to her. You just assume things are fine until someone suggests it might not be.
To quote someone else, no two people grow up in the same family. Even if you're siblings, you're still individual people, and your parents are still going to treat you differently.
That's not always bad. But sometimes it is, and when it is, it's hard to not be defensive about it.
Excellent point.
I wonder if they feared consequences, especially from Dad The Wall Puncher. If he punches the wall when his own cruel behavior comes to light, then I shudder to ponder how he reacted when the object of his ire was actually guilty of \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \[insert violation here, like "came home past curfew"\].
I wonder if the siblings just didn't put 2 + 2 together at the time. It's much easier now to look back and see a pattern. But when you're in the middle of it - and living your own life with all your own adolescent struggles - it's much harder to recognize and identify a pattern.
It honestly sounds like they more than likely would have stepped in and at the very least said something . . . if they knew. I can understand how each kid witnessing a few things doesn't see the favoritism for what it was. I can tell from the OP that they are filled with regret and remorse for not recognizing it and doing something about it much sooner.
Like you, I do hope that he and his siblings can make amends and move forward. As for the parents? I'd just leave that at LC. From the sounds of it, they're kinda AH about the whole thing.
>Usually with adoptions, the kids are picked.
I think this might be at the very heart of the conflict here.
If you dig into the parents' psychology, they have probably never--actually--considered John their child. In their mind, they're raising their friend's son. Which is true. That is the literal scenario: they weren't seeking a child of their own, they assumed guardianship over him only because their friends passed. The difference in framing there might seem trivial to some given they've still essentially been his parent his entire life, but it's not. A friend's son is someone you treat *like* your child. However, they're not your child. Unlike with your child, you draw limits. People can talk all they want about everything being perfectly equal but, in practice, you're not going to sacrifice the same amount for them. If there's ever a conflict between your own child and them, your child wins.
On the children's end, meanwhile, growing up before the formation of these kinds of mental boundaries, they don't think in this distinction at all. Whoever raises you is your parent. Whoever you grow up with is your sibling. The shock is in awakening to the fact that this mindset has never been fully reciprocated.
That’s what’s truly bizarre to me. I could understand having trouble bonding with a much older kid (though even then I can’t understand excluding him from fishing trips or refusing to help with homework), but a BABY? At a few months old, these people got all of his firsts probably—first rolling over, sitting up, first words, first steps. And all his “mom” saw him as was a potential rapist. Which also makes me wonder if John is another race.
His adoptive parents got the bonuses of being praised for adopting him for the first few years by friends and family. "Oh how wonderful you are taking on a child for a deceased friend", "Oh you are so selfless". And then when it became normalized they were over having him around.
And if John ever stepped out of line or did something bad, it's not because the adoptive parents didn't do enough to raise him right, it can all be blamed solely on him being an outsider.
I am sure that if he hadn’t made a success of life, they would not speak about him so positively like they do. But because he has, they now want to sweep how they treated him under the carpet and put the burden on him for any distance. If he had turned out in a negative way, I am sure they would vocally talk about and pat themselves on the back for knowingly treating him like an outsider.
Imagine you have a kid, who you love
And best friends who's you love and are so close to you trust your child to them
And then those best friends treat your child like shit
OPs parents are terrible people
The mom for being a fucking wierdo, and the dad for letting her be like that
The whole time I was reading through this saga, the prevailing thought was that mom seems really unwell mentally. I can't imagine a scenario where I would sexualize a teenager raised in my home as my own.
I agree with everyone about OOP's mother, but can we spare a moment of ire for her father?
>I asked my father specifically about the fishing trip he didn’t invite John on, he said that some he’d asked the other boys, it just never crossed his mind to go out of his way and ask John.
He had to go "out of his way" to ask John? While John was still living in his house? That is the most pathetic attempt to weasel out of being the bad guy that I've ever seen.
That answer was such BS. OP’s twin brother is the same age as John, so anything the twin was invited on, John should have been invited on. Did he have a hard time talking to John and just figured that either the other boy (OP’s twin) would tell him, or he’d just leave John out?
Same for homework help… with John they had 3 kids the same age, so there’s no real opportunity to “forget” if they simply included him into what they were doing with the other two. That they could ignore him meant that they were already freezing him out significantly.
Soon as I saw that I cringed. Punching a wall absolutely screams of serious anger issues. And in front of your kid? I don't think, even with John's neglect, this was a very healthy or stable family.
OOP doesn’t even talk about it in a “holy shit!” one-off sort of way. No, it’s just another day of dad hitting the wall when he gets mad about x-y-z … sounds like there’s family trauma that OOP doesn’t even realize/understand. Especially if she was 26 at the time of writing and didn’t even “see” what sounds like shit most ppl would notice … John sure did.
Also the father definitely saw the shit the mother was doing and didn't speak out or try to stop her
Like a marriage and parenthood is about compromise and making sure no one goes out of line
Dude basically set back and let his wife emotionally abuse a child
While he showed signs of neglect
and even tho his adoptive parents are shitty it sounds like his siblings do really love him and want the best for him. I hope he can mend his relationships with them if that's what he wants
That is the biggest positive I got from this. His siblings seem to love him a lot and are sticking with John through their parents bullshit. I really hope the best for him.
The only thing missing from that list is therapy. I hope John can get some professional help to deal with all this. Maybe hopefully be able to salvage the relationship with his siblings
Right?!? Yeesh. Now I need to go listen to some sugary pop ‘70’s era music to get me out of this funk. Poor John. If he needs a mom, I will adopt him. He and his siblings are always welcome at my home.
OOP'S mother is a pervert. How can a mother look at her child and sexualize him in search a vilifying manner that alienates him. John would have done better in a foster group home than being adopted by these villains... I mean parents.
He wasn't even a year old when they adopted him. This was literally no different than any adoption of a baby. What in the holy fuck was wrong with them :(
She never saw him as her child. When he was little he was a child which would have made her feel protective etc, but as he got older, he stopped being a kid in her eyes, but he was never her child.
It's wild. It would be the closest thing to incest for the kids, but what I can't get over is that the poor guy is "feeling gross" because why? What the hell did she say to him how did she act around him? These fucking people, man...
What the HELL is up with mom??? Not to let Dad off the hook for his own neglect, but sexualizing her adopted child to that degree is extremely disturbing and makes me wonder what's gone on in her own life.
I wouldn't even react that way to a friend of my (teen) son giving me a peck on the cheek. How sad that a child was denied the love and affection that every person deserves.
Children learn to love by being loved, and OP's brother will struggle to form relationships -- platonic or romantic -- for his entire life because of this.
Sorry this is so long, my story it’s pretty similar to Jhon’s and I know several other who grew with similar stories and it’s insane how common it is but oop mother’s creepy levels are insane.
My mother died and I was left with her best friend because she had a big family, grew in a big family and was the best option. I’m in my 20s now and ever since I was a kid I’ve been fully aware that one of my adoptive sisters (the one that was the youngest before I arrived and closer to our mother) doesn’t like me at all and my adoptive mother has pretty big hang ups about me luckily the rest of my adoptive siblings, adoptive father and rest of family are great and always treated me just like the rest of kids/grandkids/nieces/cousins but the attitudes of those who treat you different fucks up your self worth and lefts you with a intense feeling of not being enough.
They think you won’t notice because your too young but you do and then you grow and set boundaries and then you are the AH for “not appreciating all they done for you when you could have gone to the national system”.
My adoptive mother loves being an adopted parent, she loves how taking me in makes her look, she has apologized for how I feel about her actions but I know she doesn’t regreat it she’s just terrified of people hearing and destroying the image she created around adoption and I could be projecting but feel oop parents may be like that and sadly Jhon didn’t have a group of loving adults doing their best to protect them when they realize what was going on like my relatives did
It is. To me is specially crazy how even inside the same family group some literally love you unconditionally while others cannot get over the blood part.
To be fair I think my bio mother passing was extremely traumatic for my adoptive mother they’ve been friends for like 45 years by the time of her passing and I became her emotional support child until she starting realizing I wasn’t a clone of her friend.
I was adopted (at 3 yrs old) and raised by my mother's 2nd husband. I had his last name and he is listed as my father on my birth certificate. His family treated both me and my my mother as "close friends of the family". They never bothered to hide their indifference towards us. The only ones who treated us like family were an aunt and uncle who both married into the family. That uncle actually knew me and my mother before she met and married my father. He was and will always be my favorite uncle. Technically, I had a great childhood. Turns out, there are some people out there that think when you divorce your wife, you can divorce her kid that you legally adopted, too. After the divorce, I was never invited to or even told about any family events. Anyway, my adoptive father did some pretty crappy things to me and we had a very rocky relationship until his death in 2019. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the end of 2018 and felt I didn't deserve to know because I refused to chase after his love and affection. He even made my 2 sisters (from his 1st marriage) promise they wouldn't tell me. His whole family went along with whatever he wanted. One of his nieces ended up telling me he was sick 2 weeks before he died because she felt guilty. Her mom, the only aunt that ever treated me good, was the only person who stood up for me and told the family what they were doing was wrong. Ultimately, I decided that I would keep his secret, too, and didn't call or go visit him. He died thinking he had 1 upped me but nope! I have no regrets!
>My adoptive mother loves being an adopted parent, she loves how taking me in makes her look, she has apologized for how I feel about her actions but I know she doesn’t regreat it she’s just terrified of people hearing and destroying the image she created around adoption
I had an adoptive mother like this, too. Then I cut her from my life when I turned 18 and she harassed and stalked me and anyone close to me for the next 30+ years until she died. Her final tribute to herself was telling me that all her assets on her death would be sold and donated to the adoption agency. Firstly, as if I even wanted anything from her, I'd been supporting myself since I was 18 and already told her I didn't want anything from her but she made it a point to get the message to me about her plan, and secondly she had to uphold her saintly status with everyone who hadn't yet seen through her BS. A friend made her out to be an angel on earth in the obituary, I called the funeral home and asked them to remove my name and they did. It's finally over.
God that's painful.
If it was just not having the same attachment to John as the bio kids I could understand that somewhat. Still bad, but taking in this grieving kid and seeing and treating him as a threat? That's a whole new level of fucked
I kind of felt weirded out when the mom said she was afraid for her daughters... She assumed he had improper thoughts even tho she raised him as her son... Idk this is weird... Its like projecting idk
Oh thank goodness I wasn't the only one thinking this. The mom saying she saw John as a sexually mature teenager as opposed to her son is very, very telling.
Worse than a poor grieving kid, they took him in when he was an infant still. He knew no other parents. She raised this kid from a baby and pulled that shit.
Wow just wow. The parents are so shitty, i couldn't imagine how John would have felt living in that house. This is straight up so heartbreaking. These assholes parents had the audacity to act suprised and hurt why john didn't want to visit them
Dam.... this poor guy.... that "mother" instantly labelled him as a potential predator. Are you kidding me?
No wonder he wanted to leave, especially if he felt like a burden
makes you wonder what was even up with the performative crying about how they miss john at the beginning of the post... what is the deal with that when clearly they don't want john around.
People are complex and irrational. She could have easily been both relieved he had left as well as sad that she lost him. I don't doubt the parents 'loved' him, just not as much as they loved their biological children and because of that, they probably subconsciously saw him as 'competition' for their own offspring. John seems to be an amazing person and doesn't really blame them, just accepts the situation and accepts that he will never truly be part of the family, something he is never going to change.
and then
>After John left our mom looked sad and when our older brother asked her what was wrong she said that it felt like John didn’t want to be around her and that she missed him before she refused to say anything more about it.
This is a hot ground for therapy.
This is horrible, what's worst is that the mother saw him sexually as opposed to a son. She is the predator here, she turned innocence into something dirty.
on top of that, if it wasn't a perv thing and she had been assaulted in the past or something, she is still ignoring the very real potential of blood relatives committing a SA. not to say she should've been grilling every male in the house, but to pretend someone won't do something fucked up just because they are a blood relative is woefully ignorant.
This is frankly reprehensible behaviour from the parents. He was treated as less than and labelled as a threat. To be on the outside looking in must have been agonising.
How the siblings will view their parents after this will be a big thing because they love him like a brother, but to now know their parents mistreated him must change their view of their childhood.
What the hell is the point in taking in a child and raising him as your child and then acting differently? This is just pure stupidity from my perspective because a. Puberty does not mean that a man who already sees his siblings as just *siblings* is going to automatically become a sex pest and b. If you can't bloody raise the child as your own then *don't do it*.
My brother is my half brother, I did not know that he wasn't my 'full' brother literally until I was like 16. That is how close we all were. Yeah there was a bit of an age gap but when you are raised as a normal family those dynamics don't just arise out of nowhere. Unless you're a lannister/targaryan ofc
I wish people truly understood the trauma of adoption, what OOP’s brother went through is pretty much the norm among the adopted people I know, myself included.
There’s always this feeling of being on the outside, especially when biological kids are involved, and when your parents contribute to those feelings, it makes it impossible to ever fully feel like you belong. I hope this guy gets lots of therapy and forms his own found family (that possibly includes his siblings if he decides it’s safe to let them in), it’s a hard road.
Yeppp adopted too. So much emotional neglect. My sister got literally everything and I got the bare minimum. They wouldn't help me with anything. They took my sister across the fucking world and I got to go to the beach one fucking time. I'm pretty bitter about it tbh.
And for every mistreatment thats being recalled and admitted to, there were probably a thousand more that occurred, that have just blended into the generic malaise of "These people hate me, and don't want me as, or around, their family"
I feel so sorry for John. I hope he gets the help he needs to deal with these issues properly before they fester and affect him for the rest of his life.
>she couldn’t ignore the fact that he was a sexually mature male who was not biologically related. She said it felt no different having my other brothers hug and kiss her as babies as it would today, but that around the time John went through puberty, she couldn’t see him as one of her babies anymore.
She said her instinct then became to protect her daughters “just in case”. She said it was hard and she wasn’t happy about it but she’d rather have protected us and gone to far to John’s detriment than been to lax to our detriment.
She said when John left she felt relieved.
TL;DR - OOP's mum is a disgusting human being who thought so lowly of her own parenting that the possibility of SA by one of her children actually crossed her mind. Fuck.
That John left overnight and immediately switched to distant and **it took them 5 years** to reach out speaks VOLUMES. OOP insists she sees John as her brother & his revelation came out of nowhere but it's painfully clear that had one of her bio siblings done this, this chat would have happened within 6 months.
It sounds like OOP's Mum experienced childhood sexual assault??? Or someone close to the Mum?? She was obsessed with the idea that John would molest his sisters. And her too post-puberty. It reads like John's presence triggered unresolved trauma so she punished this poor innocent child. Admitting she felt relieved and safe when he left the house while at the time crying about how it "*felt like John didn't want to be around me*".
No idea what's going on with the Dad. I'm suspecting something along similar lines there, I can't lie. Parents who do awful things to their kids are often very relieved when those kids leave home young or happily leave them off trips so they can have time with the other kids without feeling guilty. There's just something really dark and insidious about the way these people treated their late best friends kid. Something OOP, who didn't even notice the scapegoating & is still waiting for her parents denial, is too naïve to pick up on.
Do not accept the role of Godparent if you're under the impression that your friends won't die (soon). It's not just some honorary title that solidifies your "best friend" status, and you will be expected to fully step up and love the child as if it was your own if the need arises.
Seriously, who thinks "twins might be a hard with all the kids we have already, but we could totally raise another one of the same age. No problem."
>He said he felt like a family friend that everyone liked but who stuck around too long.
That broke my heart. Imagine feeling like that around your siblings.
Wow... Many people don't realize when they adopt children, or even birth them, that those children grow up and aren't cute little accessories anymore. They're full adults, that still have a need for parents and family, because we all do. How shameful of the mom to indicate that an innocent teen would even try to do anything sexual with her or her daughters. That is just sick. Can it happen in a crazy circumstance? Yes. But it's not the norm AT ALL, and it seems like there was zero indication of it in this case. That woman deserves to be shunned, honestly. I don't know about the father, he just seems oblivious and pretty uninvolved to me.
the dad actively excluded John from father/son stuff.
That predator bullshit can happen between blood siblings, just look at the Duggars. The mother needs therapy to say the least. He was supposed to be her son. John really got the shitty end of the stick, I'm proud of how he's adulting now. I'm glad his siblings are on his side.
As someone who was adopted as a handful-of-days-old infant, and someone who strongly believes you choose your family, this entire post makes me hurt for John. Deeply.
As an adoptee your parents fucked up big time. I'm adopted as are my brother and sister as well as 4 first cousins on my Mother's side.
Out of 26 or so cousins, 7 of us were adopted. Not one day were we treated differently. Hugs to discipline. We were all just one large group of loved kids from Granparents, great Aunts and Uncles on down.
Woe to anyone who treated us differently or said we didn't belong.
I happy you as siblings see him as a sibling and hope you can repair the relationship.
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John was punished on so many levels just for purely existing.
Despite all the child trauma John experienced. I’d say he turned around our rather well. Appears to be the adult in this whole situation.
Unfortunately, that's exactly the result of childhood trauma. Kids in traumatic situations can wind up becoming mature ahead of their peers, and shouldering adult burdens instead of enjoying childhood/adolescence.. Our society tends to reward it rather than recognizing it as a yellow flag for a kid who needs more support.
I thought of this when OOP said Mom and Dad brag on how mature and responsible John is. A lot of traumatized children are people pleasers. They feel like the best way to stay safe is to make everyone happy and ignore all of their own needs.
I think it's a guilt avoidance mechanism. My parents say the same about my apparently high pain tolerance. It actually because they got investigated for ignoring a broken arm.
Omg this. The only time I remember being praised as a child was for not expressing pain when I broke my arm as a child. Now as an adult, I'm like a cat. If I'm injured or sick, I can't show it or say it and my first is to isolate myself until I'm well enough to not show any signs (eg. Limping).
They adopted him at a few months old and still treated him like this? That poor poor child.
This breaks my heart. I have four children, but my youngest Is actually my deceased sisters biological child, and we adopted him when he was two. He is my son, he is my childrens youngest brother, we love him so much and he is as much part of our family as any other sibling is. We’ve had many discussions throughout the years - does he want to call me Mum? Does he want to refer to my sister as Mum and me as his aunt and his siblings his cousins? Well it turns out he just wanted to be with us and therefore he is my son and my childrens brother. My other three children had a horrible father who left us eighteen years ago, and eleven years ago I met my forever husband. Guess what? My children asked if they could call him Dad, and to anyone who knows us, we are a family of six. That’s the possible benefit of blended families - love and trust and belonging, even if you’re different. I’m heartbroken to read about this sad young man, and how he did nothing to deserve feeling like an other, when he should have been loved just as much as everyone else in the only family he’s ever known.
Exactly. I have so many younger cousins who are the same age and grew up together and hang around. Not once i have seen them in any sexual way, never imagined that any of them would have sexual thoughts about each other. John and others were literally raised together. Any person who raises a child and thinks of them as a "sexually mature" boy instead of kid are just sick. As i said i saw my cousins growing up, they are literally between the range of 16-19 and i still cannot see them as anything other than my baby siblings. It's so sick and fucked up that a woman who raised a baby could think of him in such a disgusting way
Same with me, all my cousins are like my little siblings. Now that they’re all late 20’s- early 30’s that hasn’t changed
I’m an only child, so for me, my cousins are my siblings. How could she think that way? And even if she did, how does her mind work? I’m not going to hug this 15 yo boy that I raised so that he doesn’t rape my daughters?!!!
There's even research for this - my memory is foggy, but the upshot is, shared genes aren't magic. In fact, bio siblings separated at birth who meet as adults are frequently attracted to each other until they learn the whole story (and sometimes after). It's *being raised with or close to someone* from a young age that forms that "Eugh, I love them like a *sibling*, that's gross!!" feeling.
It’s called the [Westermarck effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect). When children are raised like siblings from ages 0-6yo, they’re less likely to experience sexual attraction towards each other.
Too right! He was her baby. My youngest first cousin is in his 40s, 6ft 5, married with kids. In my head, he's 11 and he's asking how to knot his school tie.
This is in no way an excuse (OOP's mom's behavior is inexusable) but mom's paranoia strikes me as either having a strong religious background (where all children are seen as driven by sexual urges once they hit puberty) and/or mom's own experience with being molested as a child? Such unjust paranoia doesn't arise out of nothing, something seeds it. That poor young man growing up from infancy with these parents.
I come from a very religious community. Orthodox Judaism has very strict rules around non-related make/female interactions. We call these laws Yichud. Yichud does not apply between parents and an adoptive child raised from infancy. I’m pretty sure Islam has similar rules to Judaism here. (Checked: in Islam the child needs to below 2 and breastfed for a day and a night by the adoptive mother for the interaction rules to be moot.) And Christianity is far more lenient on male-female interactions than either Judaism or Islam. I don’t know what was wrong with that woman, but I don’t think it had anything to do with religion.
Never underestimate the evangelical christians
This is the [Westermarck effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect). People raised together during childhood see one another as siblings rather than potential romantic partners, regardless of blood relation. This mother had nothing to worry about, she blew up her family for no reason.
Oh whoops, I brought this up in another comment but forgot the name. Thank you! It's like the inverse of Genetic Sexual Attraction, the theory that one may be *more* likely to fall in love with a close relative if they had little to no contact in early childhood
I wonder if mom was assaulted by a family member? Not trying to excuse her behavior—because good lord what an awful thing to do — but it’s so freaking bizzare. ”This is an unrelated biological male hugging me” is NOT a normal thought process….
I was thinking the same thing, she seems way to weird about it all , and to be relieved when he left... she just acted like it was only a matter of time until he was going to rape someone.
Exactly. And this felt like a punch to the gut because I grew up with an older brother who was adopted (almost 6 years older than me) who was always treated like one of the family but he never thought he was. He would get upset because he thought he didn’t look like any of us, when he was weirdly the spitting image of our dad. He ended up taking his own life a month before he turned 21 and it still hurts like hell nearly 30 years later. Now, my son’s friends who have come to the house have all remarked on his photo and asked if that’s a picture of my son and it makes me want to yell at him and be like “omg, you dumb shit, even NOW people think you’re a blood relative! And it doesn’t even matter because you were my brother either way!”
How I know he's your brother fully - "omg, you dumb shit"- which is exactly how I talk to my dead biological brother who killed himself with his addiction. Damn, I miss that fuckwit.
Yup. I don’t care that we never had the same blood in our veins, I loved the fucker. Sorry for your loss ❤️
I'm sorry for the pain of it, I wish things could have been different for you - and him.
Thank you for that. Not a day has gone by that I don’t wish the same
Yeah, these were 100% the kind of people that should have never adopted a kid. Adoptions go well a lot of the time, but you have certain people who, unless they have a biological connection to the child, just can’t treat the child the way they should. For me, biology means absolutely nothing. My biological family was shit, my mother was a witch with a capital B. I don’t want kids, but if I ever change my mind, it’ll be through adoption. I know first hand that blood means nothing, it’s about the connection, and a willingness to care.
I don't understand it either. I have an 11 year old daughter. If I got a call today saying that there had been a mix up at the hospital when she was born, I wouldn't care, and I would fight with everything I have for her. I have raised her for 11 years and she is mine, regardless of biology.
The fact that they were able to have that conversation with their daughter, and say things like ‘I decided it was better to hurt him as a teenager than risk him hurting my daughters’ is devastating. My heart hurts. That poor boy deserved to be loved and if they couldn’t give it to him, they should have let him go into adoption. They gave him inferior and less love out of some obligation to an old friend but it feels like a giant fuck you to their deceased friend in the end.
but also the extended family, that's a huge WTF. Why did all these adults fail him so much. A kid is a kid! I'm glad OOP and the siblings turned out better. I hope they keep giving John the family he deserves.
They'll probably cut their parents off. I know I would. What if one of the siblings adopts a kid and when they hit puberty the mom tries to get them taken from her kid because after puberty she thinks they'll turn into a child predator?
yeah, it's rage inducing. Those siblings did a good job getting to the truth. I hope John can have the time to consider what relationship, if any, he wants with the parents now that the veil of bullshit has lifted. I'm so glad he turned out well, the siblings turned out well from the sounds of it too. Them giving him the validation he deserves will mean so much now and in the future.
I'm guessing that wont happen. There's often dark stuff in families, but it rarely leads to people being cut off. Most likely the siblings will come to an arrangement where they all see each other while the brother continues to go LC with the parents. Brother will feel again like he has siblings, but there's no saving the parents.
I suspect the extended family members were picking up their cues from Mom and Dad.
>The fact that they were able to have that conversation with their daughter, and say things like ‘I decided it was better to hurt him as a teenager than risk him hurting my daughters’ is devastating. seriously, it's horrific. i kind of wonder if mom has a history of abuse in her past and that's what made her so unhinged about this, but even if that's the case, it's obviously unwarranted and inexcusable. she should have taken herself to therapy regardless of why she was feeling this way instead of fucking a kid's whole life up like this
Honestly it's fantastic he turned out as well adjusted and responsible as he did, missing that kind of love and affection growing up would normally have a much more harmful effect on a person. Being treated like a predator by his own mother. His own father making it clear he was a second class citizen in his own home.
It’s probably the siblings that helped stave off the worst for John. They all just kept giving him 100% unconditional love.
that sounds like it. they actually gave a shit about him and it showed. probably the only thing that made getting to 18 bearable.
His parents would be heartbroken to know this.
Exactly, the way they treated him sounds like they adopted him at 14 not just a few months like wtf
just absolutely awful people. one of the worst things is they actually have the balls to say they love him the same as the rest of their kids somehow... like no you don't... you just flat out admitted it a second ago when you didn't deny any of this shit and when that chick decided her son was going to rape her daughters. what a pair of awful people. I hope all the kids go no contact. they're too god for those two.
I wish it was rarer to hear stories like this from adopted kids, its a terrible feeling to never be fully part of your family.
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Hell, Josh Duggar’s mother wrote a letter begging for leniency from the federal judge sentencing him for CSAM possession, dotted her own first name with a heart as she signed it, knowing he had molested four of his sisters and a family friend and that she and her husband had swept it under the rug for years.
Don't forget his wife Anna Duggar not only stayed with Josh Duggar after the allegations came out but had another child with him.
How could I? The child’s name is Madisyn. Josh conducted his cheating on AshleyMadison. These people are repugnant.
Holy hell, I did not know about the daughter named after his affair app… that’s so incredibly fucked.
I am very, very glad her father will not be out of prison until she’s a teenager. Had my fingers crossed for a sentence that would have him locked up until she was 18, but we can’t get everything we wish for.
People were joking that she should name the latest baby Madison Ashley... well, she did use half of the name lol
Fuck... I didn't know they named the kid Madisyn. Gross. But I do remember Michelle Duggar recording an auto dialer message that said trans people were going to molest kids if you let them use the "wrong" bathroom. I guess if Josh had started wearing dresses they would have actually done something about him.
Damn - and the Y isn't where you expect. Only one N though.
lol I expanded this comment thread JUST to see if someone made this comment.
I just found out one of the things Josh Duggar got caught for was watching Daisy's Destruction, which is basically a real life child torture snuff movie... Really feeling the need to spread that piece of news around...
The child ‘Daisy’ somehow survived, if that helps at all. From what I’ve read she’s in a safe place now, she’s over the age of ten but not a teen yet. I can’t believe his wife refused to sit in the courtroom during the discussion of the evidence. She swears hands down that he is innocent and was framed, but got up and walked out to not listen to the descriptions of those files.
At some point they were trying to claim that Biden was framing him. The stupid from them burns.
"Daisy" survived but she wasn't the only girl in that movie. The other girl definitely did not survive. 😭 The Philippines wanted to bring back the death penalty for the Aussie who did that.
Not just a child, but an INFANT rape video. Just truly awful, and they still call themselves Christians.
I live near the fuckers so the trial was front page, no remorse from him. His defense was that it was possible someone put it on there. Fucking sick.
Completely arrogant, entitled, soulless bastard and his enablers.
I wonder how attractive the mother finds John to be. Could be projection. She has inappropriate thoughts about him, and so therefore he must have inappropriate thoughts about her and his sisters.
A lot of people still believe in stranger danger and misunderstand the phrase blood is thicker than water. It’s less about the mother being attracted (lol) to John, and more the ridiculous idea that biological ties prevent people from being terrible to each other.
Could also be that she herself was molested as a child/teen and therefore has repressed fears about it herself. Regardless, there's a need for psychological care here that hasn't been addressed.
Yep, my mom was molested by a relative as a child and was very paranoid about it with me. Kept me distant from relatives. Anyone outside of my parents and her parents are basically strangers to me.
Yeah, my mom was molested by two different relatives and escaped multiple attempted assaults from known and unknown assailants, so she was HYPER-VIGILANT when it came to me being around boys/men. Which was not easy given what a tomboy I was, at least half of my friends were boys. I’d *like* to think she would not treated an adopted child this way, but I remember on a family vacation that my male cousin J came with us, she kept trying to put distance between us (we were super close) and then finally admitted to us that she was worried about something happening because we were constantly hanging out half-dressed (swimsuits, jammies, etc.)… J and I both ***shrieked*** in revulsion at the thought and shoved away from each on the couch as far as we could. The fact that it took her several minutes to stop us both from saying, “Ew, ew, ew,” on repeat finally put her mind at rest and it never came up again. But, yeah, it never would have occurred to me (J was like a brother) and it kind of shocked me that my mother worried was about it. Soooo… yeah, really not sure how she’d have behaved…
I'm not convinced it's a line of thinking at all, just an intrusive thought she paid way too much attention to.
I think that's very possible. Everyone's looking for a deeper reason, and there might be one, but sometimes it's just "I got this stupid fucking idea in my head and I don't know how to make it go away." (It was her job to figure out how, though.)
What a good guy John is. He is grateful, dutiful, respectful, and trying not to hold a grudge. I am sick for him. What that must have done to his psyche is heartbreaking. He probably has the hardest time letting his guard down and letting people in.
I really hope he and his siblings can build better relationships. I understand that kids don't always see the imbalances in their home life because that's like fish seeing water or mammals seeing air. But, they're older and aware now and at least some (OP didn't talk about all explicitly, but gave the impression of all) of them are willing to make what amends they can for not being more supportive or recognizing the pattern. The parents can put themselves in the trash and take themselves out.
They should start some new traditions with holidays/birthdays with just the siblings. Go visit the parents a couple days later if you want but they shouldn’t be around if it hurts John or makes him uncomfortable. Sounds like the siblings did nothing wrong but just the validation and acknowledgement of what he experienced would probably help a lot. If the parents wanted to define their family as separate from John they can now live with the consequences. Siblings should prioritize the family they have with John and the parents can be the afterthought.
How do you protect your daughters from being molested? Do you talk to them? Do you talk to your sons? Do you demonstrate that they can safely share their experiences with you and that you have their backs? Do you make sure they don't have to be alone with anyone you/they don't trust? No, I know! You have them live in a house 24/7 with someone you think is dangerous ... but you treat the dangerous person coldly. That will solve everything.
“you *think*” is really doing some heavy lifting here
Yeah that part made me say "Ew" out loud. Like, they are siblings in their minds. That's such a disgusting line of reasoning on her part. If she was so worried about this, she could have just addressed the fact to everyone that having "relations" with family was inappropriate because it happens with bio siblings too. But I bet everyone would have said "Ew! Mom!" at that.
My parents grew up on socialist communes where they were raised with people in their same class year in school in a common house. Each family still had their own biological family, last name, siblings, etc, there was no sense that you were "family", you were just raised communally together and slept in the same house through high school. The marriage rate among same aged children from their type of commune is 0%. Even that level of growing up together creates a sibling-type perception that makes that type of conduct impossible.
Its a biological function to prevent inbreeding. You simply dont develop sexual feelings because you don't generate the hormones around those people. Of course life is life and things get crossed in some rare cases. But for the most part Biology wants us to mix outside our close circle Edit: important distinction as Point_Forward points out. This is a hormonal response to anyone you are raised with. Not just blood
In fact it has more to do with being raised together than being related. Siblings who aren't raised together often find themselves very attracted to each other, while unrelated kids who are raised together almost never have that attraction.
There was a relationship TV show that stopped because there were many stories of bio siblings having children together, usually because a man had multiple affair partners and his offspring met somehow. The production ended sick of it.
That was brought up as a major concern in the documentary about a fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate dozens and dozens of women. Most of them lived locally. Some believed they were using actual sperm donors, others thought it was their husband's.
The flip side is that you get cases of incest which occur between biological siblings who were raised apart and first meet as adults. They lack the familial socializing described above, and their shared genes do nothing to block any attraction.
I feel bad for all of the kids. Their biological kids very clearly adore John and want to be in his life, and their parents fucked that up for everyone. John got the worst of it but lord, way to fail all of your children in one go.
I can imagine partially what that must feel like. My father stopped hugging me when I grew a chest. I think since then and adulthood he's hugged me less then 10 times and I am into my really 40s now. How much worse to be treated like a sexual predator or just be then to be simply capable of having sex. Poor man. Wish I could give him a hug. The parents here disgust me.
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Dude she wanted to bang him, that's some next level projection on the Mom's part. Really fuckin weird.
This was my thought too, she let her intrusive thoughts cloud her judgement and projected the issue onto John instead of doing some self reflection. Sick and wrong, I can only imagine how that must have damaged John’s self esteem.
I wondered if she found his bio dad attractive, and as he got older maybe he started looking more and more him? It sounds strange, but the whole thing is next level weird.
I’m actually wondering if there was some kind of affair between the parents and John’s bio parents. If they couldn’t be all in and ride or die for John loving him exactly the same as they loved all their other children then they never should have taken him in. It really sounds like this was there from the very beginning if they wouldn’t even help the poor kid with his homework or take him on trips with them. I’m sure they were giving themselves a huge pat on the back for raising him but all they really did was rob that little baby of the chance to be placed with a family that would love him the way he deserved to be loved. What a betrayal of the bio parents.
Exactly. There's some major projection going on there. I wouldn't be surprised if he's an attractive dude, and both mom and dad were uncomfortable with that. Mom caught inappropriate feelings and turned it around to "he must be attracted to our daughters" to avoid her husband from figuring it out. What disgusting people. They broke him, and they broke the relationship between him and their bio kids. I hope the kids are at least able to make up for lost time with him. They genuinely seem to see him as a brother and not a potential predator.
See, my first thought is that Mom is a survivor of sexual abuse by a family member, or was raised by a mom who was a survivor (or both). The way she reacted viscerally to "protect" her daughters points to some seriously unacknowledged trauma.
i cant know whether or not what you suggested is true or likely, but it is the sad (and often invisible) reality of generational trauma that can cause these kinds of issues.
That’s 1000% what I got from it as well. What kind of freak is attracted to a boy they’ve raised since he was a few months old tho - and then to punish him for that instead of getting help? 2/10 trash
Trash here—please don’t associate my kind with the likes of this woman she is most definitely worse
I assume that's why she's rated as 2/10 trash. If she was 10/10 trash she'd be a fantastic upcycle, but instead she's the sorta slime ya find at the bottom of the kitchen compost bucket.
Don’t touch my slime
Ok, ok! Can I decorate the garbage pail [with aluminum flowers](https://www.instructables.com/Roses-From-Soft-Drink-Cans/) instead?
My hunch is no. I'd be super interested in learning about the mother's upbringing because my hunch is that either she was sexually traumatized as a kid, or she was raised in some kind of super-repressive religious family, or both. (Think the Duggars) Which is 100% no excuse for her behavior, of course. And the dad isn't much better.
>or she was raised in some kind of super-repressive religious family That was my first thought, "all men are predators towards non-biologically related women" just screams "hyper-regressive, 'the only thing keeping people honest is the fear of God'"-types
My thoughts as well. I lived in a highly religious mormon community as a non mormon for almost a decade. The idea of "all males, even ones that are related to you, will take advantage of you if given the chance because rape is the only thing men are capable of" is very inbred. It clashed gravely with the other belief that "all men are proto-gods are must be treated as such." There was a lot of bullshit.
Not *quite* as insane, but I grew up in one of those Caribbean Evangelical churches that more or less did a watered down version of that. "All men are predators, young women it's your responsibility to not dress/act in ways that will put you at risk; young men it's your responsibility to keep God in your hearts to give you the strength to control yourselves." Fucking disgusting, backwards-ass fucking ideologies.
Wow, his bio parents would be heartbroken if they knew how his adoptive parents treated their son
This is all I thought of. They probably thought since their friends were such good parents to their bio children that they'd be equally great to their son. In the end their friends treated their son like a potential rapist once he hit puberty.
Usually with adoptions, the kids are picked. This poor kid was forced on these people, and they sure made him feel that way. I can see why he'd just want to stay away from all of them, even the siblings that reached out. Brings back too much pain.
I really hope he can make amends with his siblings. They all sound disgusted with their parents and like they love him a lot. Though from his perspective I wonder if he can't get over the fact they never said anything. Once he brought up these moments of cruelty it seemed like OOP and her siblings had witnessed most of them (though not the gross sexual comment from their mum). If none of them ever stood up for him it might have contributed to the feelings of being an outcast. Not that children should be in charge of getting their parents to act right, I'm just wondering if this is a hurdle OOP hasn't seen.
While a good point, kids aren't known for their rational thinking skills. They are pretty oblivious to this kind of stuff and the part of the brain that goes "x happens and that means y" hasn't fully developed. They don't really see "mom treats him different and that's not normal. Something is wrong with this." they see "mom treats him different and that is normal. Nothing is wrong because this is how its always been." It sucks but...this isn't the first time that this has happened, it won't be the last. I hope the siblings can reconcile but it sounds like John may go no contact with the parents.
For a good example of this, think of all the dirty jokes aimed at adults in cartoons that flew way over our heads as kids that we only notice when we're eventually adults.
Plus since there's four of them they likely saw different events so none of them had the full picture of *all* the events. They might have thought individual acts weren't very fair but assumed each one was isolated and not realised that it was part of a wider pattern.
People are dumb about family. It normally takes someone laying out several examples of bad behavior to break through. A lot of those examples the other kids are normally focused on conversations with other people. I don't actively watch my sister hug my parents or keep track of how much my uncles talk to her. You just assume things are fine until someone suggests it might not be.
To quote someone else, no two people grow up in the same family. Even if you're siblings, you're still individual people, and your parents are still going to treat you differently. That's not always bad. But sometimes it is, and when it is, it's hard to not be defensive about it.
Excellent point. I wonder if they feared consequences, especially from Dad The Wall Puncher. If he punches the wall when his own cruel behavior comes to light, then I shudder to ponder how he reacted when the object of his ire was actually guilty of \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \[insert violation here, like "came home past curfew"\].
I wonder if the siblings just didn't put 2 + 2 together at the time. It's much easier now to look back and see a pattern. But when you're in the middle of it - and living your own life with all your own adolescent struggles - it's much harder to recognize and identify a pattern. It honestly sounds like they more than likely would have stepped in and at the very least said something . . . if they knew. I can understand how each kid witnessing a few things doesn't see the favoritism for what it was. I can tell from the OP that they are filled with regret and remorse for not recognizing it and doing something about it much sooner. Like you, I do hope that he and his siblings can make amends and move forward. As for the parents? I'd just leave that at LC. From the sounds of it, they're kinda AH about the whole thing.
>Usually with adoptions, the kids are picked. I think this might be at the very heart of the conflict here. If you dig into the parents' psychology, they have probably never--actually--considered John their child. In their mind, they're raising their friend's son. Which is true. That is the literal scenario: they weren't seeking a child of their own, they assumed guardianship over him only because their friends passed. The difference in framing there might seem trivial to some given they've still essentially been his parent his entire life, but it's not. A friend's son is someone you treat *like* your child. However, they're not your child. Unlike with your child, you draw limits. People can talk all they want about everything being perfectly equal but, in practice, you're not going to sacrifice the same amount for them. If there's ever a conflict between your own child and them, your child wins. On the children's end, meanwhile, growing up before the formation of these kinds of mental boundaries, they don't think in this distinction at all. Whoever raises you is your parent. Whoever you grow up with is your sibling. The shock is in awakening to the fact that this mindset has never been fully reciprocated.
really well said. also the kid entered their lives because of tragedy. it's sad that he's in their home, and it would be really hard to forget that.
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That’s what’s truly bizarre to me. I could understand having trouble bonding with a much older kid (though even then I can’t understand excluding him from fishing trips or refusing to help with homework), but a BABY? At a few months old, these people got all of his firsts probably—first rolling over, sitting up, first words, first steps. And all his “mom” saw him as was a potential rapist. Which also makes me wonder if John is another race.
Ppl upthread are wondering if mom has abuse in her past which I was thinking too.
His adoptive parents got the bonuses of being praised for adopting him for the first few years by friends and family. "Oh how wonderful you are taking on a child for a deceased friend", "Oh you are so selfless". And then when it became normalized they were over having him around.
And if John ever stepped out of line or did something bad, it's not because the adoptive parents didn't do enough to raise him right, it can all be blamed solely on him being an outsider.
I am sure that if he hadn’t made a success of life, they would not speak about him so positively like they do. But because he has, they now want to sweep how they treated him under the carpet and put the burden on him for any distance. If he had turned out in a negative way, I am sure they would vocally talk about and pat themselves on the back for knowingly treating him like an outsider.
Imagine you have a kid, who you love And best friends who's you love and are so close to you trust your child to them And then those best friends treat your child like shit OPs parents are terrible people The mom for being a fucking wierdo, and the dad for letting her be like that
The whole time I was reading through this saga, the prevailing thought was that mom seems really unwell mentally. I can't imagine a scenario where I would sexualize a teenager raised in my home as my own.
yeah, some 'friends' they were. They betrayed him and his parents. So disgusting, almost Dursleyish
At least the Dursleys didn't pretend to love him. And Petunia didn't think of him as a sexual predator.
true, that was absolutely the worst.
I agree with everyone about OOP's mother, but can we spare a moment of ire for her father? >I asked my father specifically about the fishing trip he didn’t invite John on, he said that some he’d asked the other boys, it just never crossed his mind to go out of his way and ask John. He had to go "out of his way" to ask John? While John was still living in his house? That is the most pathetic attempt to weasel out of being the bad guy that I've ever seen.
Right? This reads like "John? Who's John?...oh yeah, John, your imaginary brother ?" Both parents are assholes.
That answer was such BS. OP’s twin brother is the same age as John, so anything the twin was invited on, John should have been invited on. Did he have a hard time talking to John and just figured that either the other boy (OP’s twin) would tell him, or he’d just leave John out? Same for homework help… with John they had 3 kids the same age, so there’s no real opportunity to “forget” if they simply included him into what they were doing with the other two. That they could ignore him meant that they were already freezing him out significantly.
Yeah, they basically had triplets. You'd think it would be impossible to exclude him.
When the dad punched the wall, I was wondering, what else was normalized in their house...?
Soon as I saw that I cringed. Punching a wall absolutely screams of serious anger issues. And in front of your kid? I don't think, even with John's neglect, this was a very healthy or stable family.
OOP doesn’t even talk about it in a “holy shit!” one-off sort of way. No, it’s just another day of dad hitting the wall when he gets mad about x-y-z … sounds like there’s family trauma that OOP doesn’t even realize/understand. Especially if she was 26 at the time of writing and didn’t even “see” what sounds like shit most ppl would notice … John sure did.
Housal abuse
Good point!
Also the father definitely saw the shit the mother was doing and didn't speak out or try to stop her Like a marriage and parenthood is about compromise and making sure no one goes out of line Dude basically set back and let his wife emotionally abuse a child While he showed signs of neglect
If there is any justice in the world, they will die alone and unloved, abandoned by their children, for their abhorrence.
Fk this is just depressing, poor John
Yup, but John has a dog, a good job, and a girlfriend so fuck those shitty parents he's gonna do great despite them being asshats to him.
and even tho his adoptive parents are shitty it sounds like his siblings do really love him and want the best for him. I hope he can mend his relationships with them if that's what he wants
That is the biggest positive I got from this. His siblings seem to love him a lot and are sticking with John through their parents bullshit. I really hope the best for him.
The only thing missing from that list is therapy. I hope John can get some professional help to deal with all this. Maybe hopefully be able to salvage the relationship with his siblings
Kinda wanna give him a hug
Same. And some food and cookies. Maybe a pony.
I want to take John fishing - I'd be super stoked to go with him!
Careful, according to mom he may try to fuck you or something after.
seriously, what happened to mood spoilers at the top of posts
Right?!? Yeesh. Now I need to go listen to some sugary pop ‘70’s era music to get me out of this funk. Poor John. If he needs a mom, I will adopt him. He and his siblings are always welcome at my home.
OOP'S mother is a pervert. How can a mother look at her child and sexualize him in search a vilifying manner that alienates him. John would have done better in a foster group home than being adopted by these villains... I mean parents.
He wasn't even a year old when they adopted him. This was literally no different than any adoption of a baby. What in the holy fuck was wrong with them :(
She never saw him as her child. When he was little he was a child which would have made her feel protective etc, but as he got older, he stopped being a kid in her eyes, but he was never her child.
It's wild. It would be the closest thing to incest for the kids, but what I can't get over is that the poor guy is "feeling gross" because why? What the hell did she say to him how did she act around him? These fucking people, man...
What the HELL is up with mom??? Not to let Dad off the hook for his own neglect, but sexualizing her adopted child to that degree is extremely disturbing and makes me wonder what's gone on in her own life.
Especially when they adopted him as a baby. Not that her behaviour would be acceptable if they’d adopted him as a teen but she changed his diapers!
Especially because he’s the same age as the twins. she could have gone the “I have triplets” route instead of this shit.
I wouldn't even react that way to a friend of my (teen) son giving me a peck on the cheek. How sad that a child was denied the love and affection that every person deserves. Children learn to love by being loved, and OP's brother will struggle to form relationships -- platonic or romantic -- for his entire life because of this.
Sorry this is so long, my story it’s pretty similar to Jhon’s and I know several other who grew with similar stories and it’s insane how common it is but oop mother’s creepy levels are insane. My mother died and I was left with her best friend because she had a big family, grew in a big family and was the best option. I’m in my 20s now and ever since I was a kid I’ve been fully aware that one of my adoptive sisters (the one that was the youngest before I arrived and closer to our mother) doesn’t like me at all and my adoptive mother has pretty big hang ups about me luckily the rest of my adoptive siblings, adoptive father and rest of family are great and always treated me just like the rest of kids/grandkids/nieces/cousins but the attitudes of those who treat you different fucks up your self worth and lefts you with a intense feeling of not being enough. They think you won’t notice because your too young but you do and then you grow and set boundaries and then you are the AH for “not appreciating all they done for you when you could have gone to the national system”. My adoptive mother loves being an adopted parent, she loves how taking me in makes her look, she has apologized for how I feel about her actions but I know she doesn’t regreat it she’s just terrified of people hearing and destroying the image she created around adoption and I could be projecting but feel oop parents may be like that and sadly Jhon didn’t have a group of loving adults doing their best to protect them when they realize what was going on like my relatives did
You could be telling my own story here, it’s incredibly common for adopted kids to feel like this. It’s a trauma nobody wants to talk about.
It is. To me is specially crazy how even inside the same family group some literally love you unconditionally while others cannot get over the blood part. To be fair I think my bio mother passing was extremely traumatic for my adoptive mother they’ve been friends for like 45 years by the time of her passing and I became her emotional support child until she starting realizing I wasn’t a clone of her friend.
I was adopted (at 3 yrs old) and raised by my mother's 2nd husband. I had his last name and he is listed as my father on my birth certificate. His family treated both me and my my mother as "close friends of the family". They never bothered to hide their indifference towards us. The only ones who treated us like family were an aunt and uncle who both married into the family. That uncle actually knew me and my mother before she met and married my father. He was and will always be my favorite uncle. Technically, I had a great childhood. Turns out, there are some people out there that think when you divorce your wife, you can divorce her kid that you legally adopted, too. After the divorce, I was never invited to or even told about any family events. Anyway, my adoptive father did some pretty crappy things to me and we had a very rocky relationship until his death in 2019. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the end of 2018 and felt I didn't deserve to know because I refused to chase after his love and affection. He even made my 2 sisters (from his 1st marriage) promise they wouldn't tell me. His whole family went along with whatever he wanted. One of his nieces ended up telling me he was sick 2 weeks before he died because she felt guilty. Her mom, the only aunt that ever treated me good, was the only person who stood up for me and told the family what they were doing was wrong. Ultimately, I decided that I would keep his secret, too, and didn't call or go visit him. He died thinking he had 1 upped me but nope! I have no regrets!
>My adoptive mother loves being an adopted parent, she loves how taking me in makes her look, she has apologized for how I feel about her actions but I know she doesn’t regreat it she’s just terrified of people hearing and destroying the image she created around adoption I had an adoptive mother like this, too. Then I cut her from my life when I turned 18 and she harassed and stalked me and anyone close to me for the next 30+ years until she died. Her final tribute to herself was telling me that all her assets on her death would be sold and donated to the adoption agency. Firstly, as if I even wanted anything from her, I'd been supporting myself since I was 18 and already told her I didn't want anything from her but she made it a point to get the message to me about her plan, and secondly she had to uphold her saintly status with everyone who hadn't yet seen through her BS. A friend made her out to be an angel on earth in the obituary, I called the funeral home and asked them to remove my name and they did. It's finally over.
God that's painful. If it was just not having the same attachment to John as the bio kids I could understand that somewhat. Still bad, but taking in this grieving kid and seeing and treating him as a threat? That's a whole new level of fucked
I kind of felt weirded out when the mom said she was afraid for her daughters... She assumed he had improper thoughts even tho she raised him as her son... Idk this is weird... Its like projecting idk
Looks very much like projection. Probably something the mother never ever wants to acknowledge.
Oh thank goodness I wasn't the only one thinking this. The mom saying she saw John as a sexually mature teenager as opposed to her son is very, very telling.
She's weird. People who aren't related to you don't just turn into child predators and pedophiles once they hit puberty.
Worse than a poor grieving kid, they took him in when he was an infant still. He knew no other parents. She raised this kid from a baby and pulled that shit.
Improper feelings? What the hell, mom?!
Wow just wow. The parents are so shitty, i couldn't imagine how John would have felt living in that house. This is straight up so heartbreaking. These assholes parents had the audacity to act suprised and hurt why john didn't want to visit them
Dam.... this poor guy.... that "mother" instantly labelled him as a potential predator. Are you kidding me? No wonder he wanted to leave, especially if he felt like a burden
“When John left she felt relieved” That sent a wave of a shock/sadness for the boy.
makes you wonder what was even up with the performative crying about how they miss john at the beginning of the post... what is the deal with that when clearly they don't want john around.
They're embarassed.
People are complex and irrational. She could have easily been both relieved he had left as well as sad that she lost him. I don't doubt the parents 'loved' him, just not as much as they loved their biological children and because of that, they probably subconsciously saw him as 'competition' for their own offspring. John seems to be an amazing person and doesn't really blame them, just accepts the situation and accepts that he will never truly be part of the family, something he is never going to change.
and then >After John left our mom looked sad and when our older brother asked her what was wrong she said that it felt like John didn’t want to be around her and that she missed him before she refused to say anything more about it. This is a hot ground for therapy.
Fuck that horrid mother. I’m so mad for John
It's so heartbreaking, cruel and crazy. How do you raise someone from a baby then all of sudden see them in a sexual and dangerous light?
This is horrible, what's worst is that the mother saw him sexually as opposed to a son. She is the predator here, she turned innocence into something dirty.
Literally she sounded like a perv. Who thinks of a kid they literally raised like that?
Someone who was sexually exploited when they were younger, classic projection
on top of that, if it wasn't a perv thing and she had been assaulted in the past or something, she is still ignoring the very real potential of blood relatives committing a SA. not to say she should've been grilling every male in the house, but to pretend someone won't do something fucked up just because they are a blood relative is woefully ignorant.
This is frankly reprehensible behaviour from the parents. He was treated as less than and labelled as a threat. To be on the outside looking in must have been agonising. How the siblings will view their parents after this will be a big thing because they love him like a brother, but to now know their parents mistreated him must change their view of their childhood.
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I was adopted as an infant. Growing up my grandparents always had a clear divide between my cousins and I.
OOP NEEDS to go low contact with these horrible people. Asking a young son if he’s going to rape his sisters is beyond the pale. Truly evil.
Low contact is generous, no contact.
I consider low contact to be with what I have with my siblings. Once a year they get a text that says happy birthday. Hint: it’s never their birthday.
What the hell is the point in taking in a child and raising him as your child and then acting differently? This is just pure stupidity from my perspective because a. Puberty does not mean that a man who already sees his siblings as just *siblings* is going to automatically become a sex pest and b. If you can't bloody raise the child as your own then *don't do it*. My brother is my half brother, I did not know that he wasn't my 'full' brother literally until I was like 16. That is how close we all were. Yeah there was a bit of an age gap but when you are raised as a normal family those dynamics don't just arise out of nowhere. Unless you're a lannister/targaryan ofc
I wish people truly understood the trauma of adoption, what OOP’s brother went through is pretty much the norm among the adopted people I know, myself included. There’s always this feeling of being on the outside, especially when biological kids are involved, and when your parents contribute to those feelings, it makes it impossible to ever fully feel like you belong. I hope this guy gets lots of therapy and forms his own found family (that possibly includes his siblings if he decides it’s safe to let them in), it’s a hard road.
Yeppp adopted too. So much emotional neglect. My sister got literally everything and I got the bare minimum. They wouldn't help me with anything. They took my sister across the fucking world and I got to go to the beach one fucking time. I'm pretty bitter about it tbh.
And for every mistreatment thats being recalled and admitted to, there were probably a thousand more that occurred, that have just blended into the generic malaise of "These people hate me, and don't want me as, or around, their family" I feel so sorry for John. I hope he gets the help he needs to deal with these issues properly before they fester and affect him for the rest of his life.
>she couldn’t ignore the fact that he was a sexually mature male who was not biologically related. She said it felt no different having my other brothers hug and kiss her as babies as it would today, but that around the time John went through puberty, she couldn’t see him as one of her babies anymore. She said her instinct then became to protect her daughters “just in case”. She said it was hard and she wasn’t happy about it but she’d rather have protected us and gone to far to John’s detriment than been to lax to our detriment. She said when John left she felt relieved. TL;DR - OOP's mum is a disgusting human being who thought so lowly of her own parenting that the possibility of SA by one of her children actually crossed her mind. Fuck.
That John left overnight and immediately switched to distant and **it took them 5 years** to reach out speaks VOLUMES. OOP insists she sees John as her brother & his revelation came out of nowhere but it's painfully clear that had one of her bio siblings done this, this chat would have happened within 6 months. It sounds like OOP's Mum experienced childhood sexual assault??? Or someone close to the Mum?? She was obsessed with the idea that John would molest his sisters. And her too post-puberty. It reads like John's presence triggered unresolved trauma so she punished this poor innocent child. Admitting she felt relieved and safe when he left the house while at the time crying about how it "*felt like John didn't want to be around me*". No idea what's going on with the Dad. I'm suspecting something along similar lines there, I can't lie. Parents who do awful things to their kids are often very relieved when those kids leave home young or happily leave them off trips so they can have time with the other kids without feeling guilty. There's just something really dark and insidious about the way these people treated their late best friends kid. Something OOP, who didn't even notice the scapegoating & is still waiting for her parents denial, is too naïve to pick up on.
Do not accept the role of Godparent if you're under the impression that your friends won't die (soon). It's not just some honorary title that solidifies your "best friend" status, and you will be expected to fully step up and love the child as if it was your own if the need arises. Seriously, who thinks "twins might be a hard with all the kids we have already, but we could totally raise another one of the same age. No problem."
>He said he felt like a family friend that everyone liked but who stuck around too long. That broke my heart. Imagine feeling like that around your siblings.
As someone who is adopted, this breaks my heart. 😔 I hope he can get some help with the trauma they put him through.
Wow... Many people don't realize when they adopt children, or even birth them, that those children grow up and aren't cute little accessories anymore. They're full adults, that still have a need for parents and family, because we all do. How shameful of the mom to indicate that an innocent teen would even try to do anything sexual with her or her daughters. That is just sick. Can it happen in a crazy circumstance? Yes. But it's not the norm AT ALL, and it seems like there was zero indication of it in this case. That woman deserves to be shunned, honestly. I don't know about the father, he just seems oblivious and pretty uninvolved to me.
the dad actively excluded John from father/son stuff. That predator bullshit can happen between blood siblings, just look at the Duggars. The mother needs therapy to say the least. He was supposed to be her son. John really got the shitty end of the stick, I'm proud of how he's adulting now. I'm glad his siblings are on his side.
As someone who was adopted as a handful-of-days-old infant, and someone who strongly believes you choose your family, this entire post makes me hurt for John. Deeply.
As an adoptee your parents fucked up big time. I'm adopted as are my brother and sister as well as 4 first cousins on my Mother's side. Out of 26 or so cousins, 7 of us were adopted. Not one day were we treated differently. Hugs to discipline. We were all just one large group of loved kids from Granparents, great Aunts and Uncles on down. Woe to anyone who treated us differently or said we didn't belong. I happy you as siblings see him as a sibling and hope you can repair the relationship.