For this week's Off Topic Tuesday, I'm choosing a darker and less pleasant topic, but one that's important for me to raise awareness for: sibling abuse.

Sibling abuse is one of the most common forms of domestic violence, and it's also estimated to be the most under-reported due to how incredibly normalized and accepted it is. Despite how common, under-reported, and normalized sibling abuse is, it is equally as traumatic and damaging as parental abuse.

It's normal for siblings to argue, it's normal for siblings to tease each other, it's normal for siblings to have some rivalry. It is not normal / healthy sibling rivalry for one sibling to repeatedly harm and terrorize the other, especially when the sibling repeatedly doing the harming and terrorizing has some power dynamic tilted in their favor (such as being older, larger, stronger, etc.)

This is important to me because I am a survivor of sibling abuse. I have been completely non-contact with my siblings for over ten years now, and I have also spent those ten years in trauma therapy to try to recover from the things my siblings did to me and put me through. I feel very passionate about the cause of sibling abuse because all the while I was enduring abuse the adults around me dismissed it as "sibling rivalry" instead of helping or protecting me.

It's not normal sibling rivalry that I spent my childhood and adolescence covered in bruises from being assaulted by my older siblings (and couldn't fight back because they were bigger than me). It's not normal that as a teenager I couldn't sleep at night because I was so afraid of my older siblings, and ten years later I still need to take sleep aids at night because despite all the trauma therapy and being no-contact, that terror of my older siblings still lives within me which still makes it hard to sleep at night. Someone might have intervened earlier and taken the abuse seriously if it had been an adult, such as a parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent who was harming and terrorizing me. But because it was "just" my siblings no one really cared or intervened.

So here's what you can do: stop contributing to the idea that abusive behavior between siblings is in any way normal or acceptable. If it would be wrong for a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc to do it to a child, it's wrong for a sibling to do it. This is especially the case when power dynamics come into play, such as one sibling being older / bigger / stronger than the other sibling they're harming and/or terrorizing.

Not to say younger siblings never abuse older siblings, it is true that the majority of sibling abuse cases are an older sibling abusing a younger sibling, but if a younger sibling has some power dynamic or advantage tilted in their favor (such as the older sibling being disabled while the younger sibling is able bodied) a younger sibling can still abuse an older sibling.

This was definitely a major contributing factor in my case. I can't really say that the adults in my family really ever taught or enforced boundaries on my older siblings. Nobody taught or enforced to my older siblings that they actually need to respect words like "stop" "no" and "don't", so if someone smaller and weaker than them (such as a younger sibling) tried to use those words to them it was completely meaningless.

By the time we were teenagers and eventually young adults and their behavior had escalated into what was undeniably domestic violence, when the (older) adults in my family at this point *finally* started thinking "hmm, maybe we should tell the older kids to back off a little in how much they physically assault and verbally abuse (my name)" at this point it was essentially too late. They had been getting away with it for too long, and they couldn't suddenly learn to respect boundaries and the words "no" or "stop" as easily a younger kid might be able to.

Another thing the article mentions that I think is a good point is that preventing sibling abuse means making sure kids are getting age appropriate adult supervision, because kids not getting enough age appropriate supervision can be a risk factor for sibling abuse developing. Violent and inappropriate behavior should be nipped in the bud as soon as adults witness it, but that's not always possible if adults aren't present to witness it in the first place. Lack of age appropriate adult supervision can lead to violent and inappropriate behavior to continue without being properly addressed by an adult.

As mentioned I've been completely no-contact with my siblings for over a decade. However, I've still heard bits and pieces here and there about my siblings and how their adult relationships and marriages are going, and I've heard more than a few questionable and concerning things about how my siblings treat their partners.

To me I guess it just makes sense, if someone spends their formative years getting away with abusing their sibling, no one intervening or teaching them that it's wrong, what's to stop them from repeating that same behavior as an adult with their partners and/or children?

Sibling abuse of course is important to stop and prevent for the sake of the sibling they're abusing (trust me, I know), but preventing and stopping abusive behavior between siblings is also really important for the sake of their future partners and/or children.