It’s my first time in this subreddit, so forgive me for formatting it weird if I do.
Title above, basically. I’ve realized that I’m the golden child in the family dynamic between me, my mother, and my little sibling, with the latter being a scapegoat. My little sibling means the world to me and more, and I honestly feel defenseless and terrified against my mother and more scared to stand up to her. I tried it once or twice, but it was met with … severe punishment. I think it scared my sibling instead of anything happening. On the other hand, I don’t want to enable my mother or her constant digs at my sibling’s self-worth and self-esteem by just standing by – I’d been in my sibling’s position before they were born, and I remember how scared I was and how I desperately wanted someone to save me. I still do, but I’m older than them and I have the capability to keep them safe to some extant, even if it’s not obvious to me right now. I will be graduating soon, but I’m not quite an adult yet, so any housing situations are limited, but it does mean I have some opportunities available, even if very few. I just want to keep my sibling safe.
TLDR; I’m a golden child in the dynamic, and my younger sibling’s the scapegoat. I want to keep them safe and happy and healthy, but don’t know how to do so without risking the wrath of my mother. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!
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Do not do anything in front of your mother, since I guess you are minors and depending on her. However no matter how the little one is insulted, assure yourself you are telling the truth when you are alone; tell him/her you are smart, you are a great brother/sister, I am so happy you are my brother/sister and so on and tell this often. Best of luck to both of you!
It’s really nice to see a GC recognizing what is going on and trying to protect your scapegoat sibling. My GC older sister joined in with the abuse both physically and also she would buddy up to me to find out things to get me in trouble with our parents. But I idolized her anyway because she was my big sister. Now I am beginning to see how things could have been different if I at least had her on my side.
>I honestly feel defenseless and terrified against my mother and more scared to stand up to her. I tried it once or twice, but it was met with … severe punishment
Well, that’s how they often do it.
If your survival is dependent on your mother, you can’t defend your sibling in front of your mother for the reasons that you just explained. When you’re old enough to move out and be independent, that’s a totally different story–you can and should look into grey rocking as a future strategy.
More immediately? Deflect. You can’t defend your sibling directly because that’ll feel like an attack and it’ll be punished, right? So instead, you need to distract your mother away from being upset. That might mean refocusing her anger on someone or something else; it might mean paying extra close attention to her mood and trying to head off her rage before it escalates to taking it out on your sibling in the first place.
Fundamentally, your mom is emotionally underdeveloped and immature. If you can hijack her mood and distract her with something that feels good emotionally, you can deescalate tensions–the thing to be aware of is that hurting your sibling is one of the things that feels good to your mom, so it’s really fucking tricky to find a “safe” outlet to distract from that.
Be the safe person they can trust and confide in. Assure them they are loved. Spend time with them, play with them, do fun things with them. Take them places. Reassure them that whatever mean things your mom tell them it is not true.
Resist triangulation, which means her attempts to poison you guys against each other. Make sure that you have your own relationship independent of your parents. Don’t allow her to gatekeep your relationship. You don’t have to go through her to have a sibling relationship.
It is often said that the Golden Child is the Golden child because they remind the Narcissist of everything they love about themselves, and likewise, the scapegoat reminds them of everything they hate about themselves. So it’s completely arbritary and could easily have been the other way around.
The most important thing is for your sibling to understand that your home situation is not normal and what your mom says isn’t true. The most damage is done when the victim believes what the abuser says and they think everything is normal. My grandparents saved me because I saw them as normal instead of my parents.
Try to give as much positive reinforcement as possible.
Help your sister develop some goals for her life and help her make a plan to achieve her goals. She needs to focus on long term goals, not your mother.
Teach her to gray rock as much as possible or at least not to give your mother information that can be used against your sibling.
Be careful about bad mouthing your mother. It can backfire. Your sibling needs to learn to succeed despite your mother. She may need to minimize her accomplishments so that she isn’t sabotaged.
Good luck
There’s a lot of great advice here so I’m just gonna say this to you OP- kudos to you for acknowledging what’s happening to your sibling. And wanting to keep them safe. It takes a lot of emotional maturity to understand this kind of abuse especially when you are the golden child. And you seem to have that at quite a young age.
My brother is the GC and I think he handled things perfectly. He learned that standing up for me got me in trouble for “corrupting him” so he would validate what was happening in private. Things like “that isn’t fair” “you didn’t do anything” “that was my fault, not yours”. It helped me see that it wasn’t all in my head.
Another thing he’d do is ask questions. “Why doesn’t scapegoat get a treat?” “Is scapegoate not allowed to go?” “Did scapegoat get to do this as well?” Seemingly innocent questions that made my parents have to pause and think of a valid response. Most of the time they brushed it off but every now and then I was included in the fun things he got.
He also learned early on to not go to our parents when we had problems or arguments. He came to me directly to work it out. One caveat is that we had a pretty abnormal sibling relationship. We hardly fought or picked on each other so do with that what you will.
It’s not easy being on either side. No one wins. The best thing you can do is ally yourself with your sibling. Don’t encourage or support the abuse they endure. You’re a team. Both of you understanding that you’re both being abused
I tried to protect my little brother by telling him our mother is crazy and he was ok.
Also, by going places with him and getting away from the house. We have a big age gap.
I was also a scapegoat, more like The Scapegoat; my mother only had room to adore our older nsister.
Just tell the truth about the narc and mean it. That is the only thing I want from mine. Ever. And let me tell you I wish it weren’t so. He is still the enabler’s enabler. You appear to be made of better stuff (bless you). Just be there to make the lies and gaslighting at least harder and you will be doing your best work as your best self.
Ask them! Start talking about it.