Everything Going Downhill

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Everything is going downhill real fast and real quickly. J Bird [my brother, brother folks] of 14 [15 soon] was seemingly doing fine about our cat. Our cat has finally come home in his cremated remains. But it appears the other autistic in the house, my brother of 19 years P Boy has decided to change the atmosphere of the house.

I think I've stated J Bird is the sweet docile one for the most part. You can rile him up sometimes. P Boy has always had anger issues and has always been the loud more aggressive one.

J Bird and P Boy had a bit of a fight. P Boy decided what would hurt his baby brother the msot is to destroy his prized works of art. We had fashioned a display area for J Birds completed Lego Worlds. P Boy destroys them. All of them. Well J Bird is upset. He starts screaming and the sleeping dragon that he is, starts to flip out. [There was a lot of cursing in the house]. Well J Bird decides that the best way to get back at P Boy is to destroy something precious of his own.

P Boy is more musically focused. It seems to be the only time when I see him calm. He collects and writes music. Long story short J Bird destroys his CD collection. Scattering CDs all over the yard and snapping other CDs. P Boy decides to hit his brother. J Bird isn't much of a fighter. The only reason I found out about all of this is the fact that I one walked into him pushing his little brother and J Bird had ran to me sobbing the whole story.

How can I get these two to work together?

P Boy is so aggressive and I don't know where his frustration and anger stems from. He just seems so frustrated and annoyed all the time. He won't talk to me. At 19 he's bordering the landscape of the household. Technically, he could live on his own. But because of his epilespy he isn't well equipped.

J Bird I've always been able to work things out with him. But this time. He's been stubborn.

I don't get why P Boy always bullies his brother. I don't want to call the police. Cause technically I could because J Bird is a minor and P Boy is an adult, however, things are getting out of my hands.

How can I get P Boy to talk to me?

He's always been a loner type in the household. He refuses services or assistance from the family. He's stubborn, blockheaded, and he's a complete and total basement dweller. Only ever really focusing on his music, he doesn't have much of a future going since he's blowing off college.

How can I get P Boy to stop bullying his younger brother is the main issue here?

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Sorry for this post. But I haven't been able to really sleep because these thoughts are whizzing through my head.

I'll have to flush this answer out later but, for now, each should be restricted to separate parts of the house where they can't hurt each other or each other's stuff. The line is, "I know you are hurting, and I think letting you have your own space, and letting your brother have his, for a while, is step one to figuring out how to move past things."

And enforce it.

I would say firstly that PBoy needs to be punished for bullying. And you need to keep doing this. Can you do a reward system of some type for him regarding music?

You can also do a reward system of some type for the little guy when he responds to Pboys bullying. Give him clear guidelines on what to do and when he does it properly, he gets a reward. Revenge is not the way to solve the problem.

Make sure both boys know the new rules and rewards for each other. And they should not be left alone for long. I'm not sure how all this destruction happened without someone knowing about it or hearing something. For their own safety and that of your home, clearly this needs to be addressed. They both need to be monitored better or else the bullying will just continue.

Excellent!

The boys seemed to be pretty much doing this all on their own. But I had a long talk with them. It's hard cause dad works long hours, so its just me taking on the parenting. Right now I don't let either of them in each other's room. I talked to them together and then separately as well. P Boy is being elusive as ever and I haven't seen much around the house lately. Not that he's gone outside of the house, stays inside his room all day.



P Boy is a elusive figure. I'd have to keep him out of his room just to monitor his music. And technically, hasn't he already been punished losing some of his music already have to rebuy everything now. But I fear it would only make him angrier to separate him from his music.

The being alone was a failure on my part. I always hear them yelling at each other, but never thought it escalate into that. I shrugged it off being use to it so much.

Don't be too hard on yourself. You are making the best of a difficult situation. I have the same thoughts sometimes but my boys are much younger. Your brothers need to learn to work things out. The only thought I have to offer is this: when working with two parties who have distinctly different view points one way to start working towards reconciliation is to find at least one thing they have in common and focus on that point of agreement, however small, then work from there. See if you can get them both to agree to some ground rules that will hopefully keep them out of each other's hair and help there be at least a little peace in the house.

P Boy has done it again. His violent streak has rampaged. He has been elusive until this evening. And he's been completely banished and grounded from his music. Which he isn't even happy about either. He broke one of the vases in the house all because he was angry. He doesn't tell me why he just says because he felt like it. I told him at 19 he isn't getting anywhere with behavior like this. He tells me he doesn't f*****g give a crap and that I need to shut the f**k up and go help out Cry Baby J.

I think sometimes he's a little jealous of J Bird. Mom and dad had completely side stepped helping the middle child with his needs. And started to assisting J Bird the moment he was diagnosed and showed signs quite early on. P Boy has always been a little not in the limelight. So I feel that sometimes because of the parental divorce that P Boy is finally able to release his jealous rage on his brother.

P Boy was sent to a ward at some point too. We've never sent J Bird to a ward despite him showing behaviors that were out of the families control at some point. I also was sent to a ward once. Mental ward. Not as long as P boy. P Boy a few months. Me just a few weeks.

Unfortunately, P Boy has to learn that no matter how much sympathy one can feel for him, he will have to take responsibility for his actions. Step two, beyond keeping them separate, is to require each one to develop a plan for making it right with the other sibling. P Boy will have to fix or pay for what he destroyed (the family may need to give him the option to do chores to earn money for that). As the instigator, he gets stronger consequences, but J Bird needs to take responsibility for his destruction, too; he could have and should have sought your help, instead of acting out of anger. They both need to be taught that retaliation is a vicious cycle, and everyone loses with it.

I am assuming they are developmentally able to handle that, of course; it sounds like they should be, but since I don't know them, I can't be sure.

I'm sorry to hear that your parents made a few decisions that were so devastating for your brother (and for you). You're being a wonderful big brother, but there are limits to what you'll be able to do, and just like parents have to accept their limits, you'll have to accept yours.

I don't like the idea of taking your brother's music away as a consequence. It sounds like its the only thing that calms him.

I don't know where to go when it comes to P Boy. Music is the only thing that stops him from being a menance in the household. But at the same time, there isn't much of a punishment I can give him.

-Taking away the computer just means no electronic music, instead he'll play his violin or the cello or his guitar

He doesn't care for anything other than music. So it's hard to punish someone who doesn't care for the punishment.

I agree that taking away his music will make him worse as it calms him. The correct punishment needs to be replacing what he broke, As far as his brother's artwork, he needs to make his brother something.
Jbird needs to help in replacing his CD's. If anything else gets broken intentionally, then that needs to be replaced by them.

I think they need something more than just punishments here. I think you all need a family councilor. No wards, just a sit down with a therapist all three of you, once a week. There are issues here that go deeper than just acting out...there is alot of resentment and all that needs to be worked through. Not just stuffed further down by punishments.
If he wont go...then he will have to make a choice from moving out or recieving family counciling.
He is at the age now that staying home is a privelege not a right and he needs to earn that privelege by getting help sorting out his issues with his brother, so he can contribute to the family.
Dont enable him on this....it will not do him any good to let this continue. You must treat him like an adult with adult consquenses if you expect him to act like an adult.

I like the word behave. And I agree with what you said. My dad works long hours so he doesn't know what goes on here at the house. We do have a family therapist. But P Boy has been a bit sneaky and elusive. I will, however, set up an appointment for all three of us.

I am getting P Boy to fix the stuff he broke off his brother. And J Bird will have to replace the stuff he broke with his allowance, which he has been saving up now for something else.

P Boy will have to buy the family a new vase as well.

I'm at my wits end with both of them. J Bird hasn't been his usual docile self. And P Boy is just rampaging around like freakin Godzilla terrorizing Housapan.

Also the issue of the cat needs to be addressed. The therapist needs to help them both find healthy ways to grieve the cat's death other than lashing out at each other.
I recomend that they have a funeral of sorts to express their grief and good memories...that stuff has to come out somehow and if they dont have a way of talking it out, they will act it out as they have done.
Those with ASD's express grief differently than NT's do.

Also you need to inform your dad what has been going on. He may need to scale back on his job alittle and help deal with this.

If Pboy is being elusive with the therapist, then have a sit down privately with the thrapist and tell her the dynamics between the two brothers, so she/he can zero in on the issues with Pboy before he knows what happened.
A good therapist can get to the root of it quick with the right information.

All three of us are autistic. So it can get a little crowded with misdirection and miscommunication in here.

We were going to build our cat a shine for his cremated remains that came back.

I have informed my father. But he's very busy and can't tone down his work. Without dad, the computers don't run. So I'm stuck being father and brother. And I'm going to die if this keeps up.

And good idea about telling the therapist about the brothers hissy.

Pandora Box
My heart really goes out to you. You are very young to have so much responsibility on your shoulders. You've told us much about the things your brothers love but what are your special interests and is there any way you can find some time to do things for yourself? As others in my life keep reminding me, you have to do things to fill up your own bucket once in a while if you are going to be able to provide anything for your loved ones.

If P Boy is loud and aggressive I'm thinking he may need some type of active outlet for his energy? And staying in his room won't do much good for that.
Is there something else that he could be encouraged to do that you think might help his demeanour?

He use to do karate, but it got to expensive for the family to pay, that and the schedules no longer worked with parental units work schedule, worse was the location move that made it to far out. He did Kick Boxing as well for a while, but wasn't the same as karate. He didn't talk to many of the people there and only ever made one friend. But once he stopped doing karate, the friend never contacted him again. So he spends most his time in his room. Playing music or making music.