That letter could have been written by my mother. I too was always angry and hateful at home and "civil and pleasant" outside of it. The problem was not a personality issue as Pru suggests in this case, but a family dynamic. My father was sexually abusing me and my mother turned a blind eye. To this day (even after I told her) my mother still considers me a hateful and angry person. Instead of accepting wholesale that the problem is the daughter, Pru should know better that blame is a useful and common tool to avoid the mirror in dysfunctional families.

I don't think Pru was suggesting that it was a personality issue. I think she was hinting at it being a family dynamic. What she was suggesting, rewarding the opposing desirable behaviors, also suggest that the undesirable behaviors have been rewarded. As the mother stated, she prefers her son, so perhaps the only time the daughter gets undivided attention is when she is being nasty and mean.

Try competing with a dead person.

My mother had a female stillborn.

My father used to enjoy making me feel good about myself by saying, "The wrong one lived."

I'm sorry, big guy.

Maybe our fathers are playing cards in hell.

This story reflects my own family, I being the boy and my older sister being the nasty daughter.

We endured the death of our father which left my mother capable yet deficient in some ways as a single parent. I suspect my sister partly blamed the loss of our father on our mother. She also greatly missed his fathering during her impressionable tweenies and teens.

That being so, where is the father in this matter? A daughter needs a father, ecspecially during her tweens & teens . What role did the mother have in the absence of the father?

He's in the household, but he doesn't rate much mention in the letter. I think his wife has just left him out of the equations and he doesn't know exactly what's going on.

I guess I have a whole different take on this. Are some people just "born" a certain way? My parents were married until the day my father died. He was always a part of our lives. He was a hard-working man, loving, not a cheater, pedophile or drug/alcohol abuser. In short, he was the perfect father. My mother was all that, too. Maybe they were a little over-protective but they had come from families that were quite the opposite.

Anyway, my older sister and I both grew up with the same parents. No one was abused. My sister was a sweet little girl, but when she hit puberty she was hell on wheels. My parents tried to get therapy for her, but nothing helped. She was hateful to them, ran away, attempted to shack up with some man when she was 15-just all kinds of crazy junk. Why?

I have my theories, but I think she was born with a "screw" loose or something. She told me some years later that when I was about 4 or 5 she thought me and our parents were plotting to murder her. Crazy!

She became a very selfish adult. She dumped her first child on my parents. Later, she claimed they "stole" her but that was not true. She, nor her druggie husband would take care of the girl. I have now "inherited" my niece since my father is dead and my mother is in a nursing home. My niece is not mean or hateful, but she has some disabilities and can't really live on her own. I promised my dad if anything happened to him or my mom I would look out for her. He knew my sister would not and her father could not. Who knows what happens when I am history!

I really saw myself in both letters-about the niece and the two different personalities of the kids. It was not a matter of choice for this auntie. The girl had nowhere to go. I am a bit curious like Pru-why is that aunt only fixated on the one child?

I have two sons and they are both very different. I love them both. One is just happy-go-lucky and the other one is uptight and temperamental. Hell, I don't know why. Neither have ever told me they hated me all the time like LW's daughter. That is a bit strange and strange that the woman waited this long to worry about it.

It is hard to tell from one letter what is going on in a family. I would just suggest to LW with the hateful daughter to tell her she loves her when she says I hate you. Some people you just can't change or help. I have learned that the hard way.

My dad told me once he loved me and my sister both, but he liked me better. I didn't understand at the time, but I do now. I wasn't always causing problems.

To the person that said his father told him the wrong one died, do not take that to heart. I know that is hard, but don't listen to him. You are here for a reason. I wish you could have had a father like mine. He was also everybody's grandpa. He used to come over and play basketball or video games with my boys. He came to every birthday party. One year this little neighbor girl jumped in daddy's lap and said "can I call you grandpa, too?" My dad said yes. He was the neighborhood grandfather. Your father is wrong in what he said and hopefully he will realize it. If not, you realize it.

...why are you choosing to ignore the twisted relationship between the mother and son? She describes the kid like a prospective lover, not a child. Or are you projecting, like so many others on this subject?

It isn't normal for a mother to describe her children the way the LW describes hers. Get it? It's not normal. She decided AT BIRTH that she didn't like her daughter, and there is nothing that's going to change that.

MessyONE:

She decided AT BIRTH that she didn't like her daughter, and there is nothing that's going to change that.

My sister is like that. She didn't like her sons, since they were going to grow up into men someday. She did everything she could to prevent that. She liked her daughters, until they began to express opinions of their own.

It sounds like the LW's son has learned not to have any opinions except his mother's, and that is as tragic as what is happening to the daughter. Perhaps more so, because she will probably be able to get out and lead a normal life someday.

I have to agree with MessyOne regarding the LW description of her son.

As well, I suspect many daughters become 'she devils' due to how the parents have approached her in the years leading up to the devilry. There is no way to know how her father treated the girl. Perhaps he was passively disengaged, uncaring, thoughtless. I know my sister completedly missed her father. She was very insecure and our mother failed to belay her fears. My sister turned on our mother as a result. Over time, I suspect it became a comforting habit of hers to berate or treat the mother this way.

Anyways, there are my 2 cents......

You know Messy I am starting to wonder if you aren't the one projecting. I saw nothing wrong with Sandstorms take on it. None of us know what exactly has been going on in the household.

It sounds like the LW's son has learned not to have any opinions except his mother's, and that is as tragic as what is happening to the daughter. Perhaps more so, because she will probably be able to get out and lead a normal life someday.

yeechhhhh. The other thing I thought of when I read that letter was, what kind of relationship must her kids have with each other?? I love my brother more than anything, and we always got along growing up. I didn't understand my friends who hated their siblings and wished they were only children. We each think the other one is our parents' favorite, and my mom insists she doesn't have a favorite, but it's mostly joking.

I can see what aspects of him my parents prefer, but that's their fault not his, so it hasn't hurt our relationship. Likewise, I know there are things about me and the way I live my life that they prefer to his (he's smarter, cooler, and has a better job than I'll ever have - he's more "Braggable" to other parents; I handle money better. He's more forthcoming and comes to them for advice more, but I'm more independent. I control my temper better. Etc.).

There is no way this girl and boy can possibly have a relationship, and that makes me sad. I don't know whether the son plays up his "good kid" image to the mom and relishes evilly in how much more his mom likes him than his sister, or whether he feels horribly guilty about mom liking him better, but either way it's totally toxic.

To the OP: I'm so horrified every time I hear of a family in denial over abuse. I'm sorry you had to go through that. A good friend of mine was sexually abused by her older brother when they were young. She finally told her parents (after her attempted suicide in college). They don't deal with it at all. She's in therapy on her own, but I don't think her parents ever spoke to her brother about it. They just don't want to know. It's horrible.

The early teens and teens and early 20's are often when mental illness presents itself. It sounds like your sister is mentally ill and the illness presented itself at the beginning of puberty.

I can pinpoint pretty well when my sister's behavior started to truly deviate from normal. We are also very different personality-wise, but her instability started around puberty and continued into adulthood. She's finally on firmer footing now, though still often volitile. A bi-polar friend sees his illness in her behaviors. She never acted out quite as badly as yours did, but a normal, healthy teenager doesn't obsess over her parents dying and leaving her behind or sit in the corner and pull her hair out. This type of problem with one child really affects the whole family dynamic. It certainly had a very deep impact on my personality.

I don't know if you can saw mentally ill people were born with something amiss, or if they develop it, like a diabetic. Either way, when it presents in the teen years and the parents aren't equipped to handle it, it can really impact a family dynamic and the affected person's entire life.

tupperwear:

We each think the other one is our parents' favorite, and my mom insists she doesn't have a favorite, but it's mostly joking.

My siblings and I will occasionally have the, "I'm the favorite, aren't I, Mom?" arguments, to which Mom always will smile and nod non-committally or answer, "Whatever you think." The oldest 2 are retired.

I think the kids feeling there is a question on who might be favorite (themself or another) is far, far better than both knowing which one it is. It ruins one's self-worth, and overly inflates the other's, and teaches the favored one to expect that in the real world.

Thats our household in a nutshell. We have 4 kids and of course we each have one child we probably would consider a "favorite", either because they share the same interests or sense of humor whatever. However it is something we have never openly discussed and our kids tease ach other saying "you're mom's favorite""No I'm not we all know you are" "well dad likes you best"etc. Every child is different (and its extremely obvious in our family, their intests vary so drasticly between one child and the next) and it only normal to feel more confortable around one personailty vs another one. Maybe we have been fortunate but thankfully with all of our kids we have each found at least one thing we can bond over even if we don't understand the rest of their interests or tastes lol.