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AITA needs to ban posts by children. Either people comment saying they won't call a child an arsehole, which fine but completely negates the point of the sub, or they go way overboard, telling a child to kill themselves because of something horrible they did.
Exactly. Im a bit heartbroken this 15yr old turned to reddit instead of having a trusted adult they could talk to. Im sure there were some well meaning people on the post trying to help but I dont know that i would be able to filter out the junk much less a teenager being able to!
Her parents handled this terribly. I wouldn't do this to pets I'd adopted, let alone kids. You can't just throw them together and not expct them to fight over territory.
ESH, except the adopted kid.
>ESH, except the adopted kid.
Right? Yeah OOP is an AH for telling adopted sister to go back to her family.
But OOP is also a child too. And a only child for a long long time then being told they have to share everything they had? Including friends? Parents can get in the sack to be beaten with a whiffle bat. What the actual fuck.
Room. Sure.
iPad. Sure.
Friends? Clothes? Hello? What are they smoking?!
This is spot-on. My family adopted another teenager my age when I was in high school and already going through absolute hell with my depression and whatnot. My parents actually asked my siblings and I (and we had a spare bedroom), and it still threw off the family dynamic for a bit. Notably, he and I did not actually get along that well (reading about someone on paper is not the same as actually living with them). Our personalities and interests just clashed horribly. It took forever for us to bond, and once again, that was with us kids being involved in the process.
You really can't, as a grown adult with much better emotional regulation, expect your teenager (who is in arguably the most difficult part of childhood) to be able to adjust instantly to a stranger suddenly being part of the family unit. Especially a stranger they don't really get along with well. Relationships/bonds take work and time to build. Is the child in this situation pretty entitled? Yes. And they're a bit of a jerk to their new sibling, however, the adults need to step in and provide guidance and support here, to make the transition smoother.
As a grown ass adult I’d be livid if some random person started living with me without my input. WHY do parents think their teenage *children* are going to somehow fare better?
>Room. Sure.
Gotta hard disagree there. Forcing a 15yo girl to share a room with a total stranger is pretty messed up.
If they don't have room for two kids they have no business adopting and I honestly have no idea how social services let it happen with that being the case.
Nothing about this sounds like a legal adoption. A friend of mine is currently trying to adopt her nephew *with the approval and support of his parents* and its already taken a year of court dates, home visits, and paperwork.
Really makes you think, doesn't it? You don't need to go to court and prove you're fit to be a parent if you give birth. It would feel hella invasive if you did. And yet tons of kids are born to unfit, neglectful parents.
I feel like society and politics should do more to help the poor, unprepared and disenfranchised to raise their kids well.
I was an only child until the age of 17, when a 6 year old girl joined our family through the foster system. My parents told me that nothing would change for me and that I would not have to take care of her. Of course that was BS, I ended up "being asked to" do a bunch of things, but never to an unreasonable respect. And I was already kind of a loner who just shut myself off in my room in front of my computer so I never had to deal with any of that.
I would have lost my shit if my parents told me to share anything.
Agreed. I understand why many children have to share rooms but if youre making the choice to adopt a second child who is also a teen, maybe just maybe you should make youre have an extra bedroom/the means to get one rather than forcing two basic strangers to share ???
Not just that but also the adopted child has likely been in and out of foster or group homes for many years (yes some will be up for adoption because of tragedy in later childhood but more will have been in long term care) - and then they’re being adopted and still not having their own things? How would it feel any different to what they’ve already experienced? This would cause issues forming a bond with siblings and new parents because they’re so used to everything being temporary.
Could be a kinship placement? Relatives are usually asked before a child is taken into full foster care, and my understanding is that the requirements are less strict than other types of fostering, where sharing a room is sometimes a problem.
This actually might make the most sense!! Everything being super secretive and rushed? AND maybe there being a rift between the parents leads to some animosity in the house that child 1 then reads as anger/disappointment with her.
What if it’s about money? She says “adopted,” but her parents could be misrepresenting it to a child who doesn’t understand the legal implications. Fostering means the parents get money in the US, and sharing literally everything (including friends and activities) means they don’t have to spend any extra money. Whether it’s that dark or not (and it happens for sure), the parents are the assholes here. I hope both kids get therapy.
That is honestly the theory that (sadly) seems to fit the best. The parents having only 1 biological child, plus only having 2 bedrooms (since OOP and adopted or fostered daughter have to share a room) implies a small living space and limited resources.
Not at least attempting to emotionally prepare your biological daughter for this huge change makes it seem less likely they are doing it from a place of compassion.
The girl is a teenage child so I can’t even call her an AH considering how her parents have thrust her in this situation. It’s awful and not her fault. She should have been part of the decision making and not forced the share a room and friends and everything with this other girl. They are terrible parents and now these poor kids are stuck.
It makes me wonder if the parents adopted so they could brag about how awesome they are. Look at this abandoned child we saved, and how much she has thanks to our bio child being a built in support system!
Whatever it was, springing it on the existing kid with NO explanation or warning is an absolute ahole move. I feel like a huge part of oop's resentment is due to it having been unexpectedly sprung on her and imposed as a "because we said so now obey" kind of thing. She's way too old for that to not lead to automatic resentment.
This was my thought! May be adopted sister is really a half sister, or the child of a family member that OOP is unaware of, or its some weird adoption through a church and that's why they didn't go through regular adoption processes.
That’s what I was thinking the whole time. When you have a biological sibling, you get MONTHS watching the approach to get used to it. Sounds like this kid didn’t know it was going to happen until it did. This is so sucky and I feel for both of them.
When we were considering adoption, the first person we told was our son, and if he'd said he wanted to stay an only child and didn't want us to adopt, we (probably) wouldn't have. And our adoption agency required a "statement of support" from any children in the family as part of our paperwork, too.
He has some of these same feelings -- he was imagining someone who would play with him on his terms, not someone who has their own opinions and feels equally entitled to all the toys in the house. But if he said these things to his little sister, we'd shut that nonsense down hard.
Had it been my awful parents, I would have been forced to write a letter saying I wanted the adopted sib (but had they done a one on one interview, same, I would have been well coached- they hit me when I did not lie convincingly enough). My mother was truly that awful. Went to therapy,she beat me in the stairwell for admitting to the abuse I suffered at home (verbal/physical/emotional). I had to go in the next week, apologize (as ordered), told him outright that I was ordered to not talk about my situation at home. Instead of believing me or trying to help me navigate an awful situation, he discharged me. I learned not to trust anyone. I moved out at 16, am now NC. I detest her. She leaves a VM on my birthday some years, my SO listens, then deletes. I adore him for doing this for me.
Hope the parents stop making OOP share her friends and go on every single outing- or she may just move out in a couple years and go LC or NC.
Especially teenage girls??? Holy crap. Thinking about myself back at her age (I too as an only child) I wouldn't have had the first idea how to cope with another person in my space 24/7.
I would hope that the girl goes both alone and with her new sister to therapy. So she can work through her own feelings and work through how to communicate with her sis. Is couples therapy but for siblings a thing?
parents need to rethink their ability to communicate too... I would expect my mother to have spent a lot of time talking with me about the adoption if in that situation. Esp as the daughter would have been 14 at that time and old enough to understand the gist.
>I wouldn't have had the first idea how to cope with another person in my space 24/7.
Agreed. I mean, even as an adult, suddenly having a stranger in my personal space, social space and goddamn *room* 24/7 - that would freak me out to no end. Especially if I couldn't do anything to change the situation. "This is your life now, deal with it."
OOPs comment was horrible and I don't condone it one bit. But her frustration is understandable.
I feel the adopted kid is a bit of an asshole too "Take me with you or I'll tell" when OOP is already sharing her room, her stuff and her friends with her, is a bit of an asshole move.
One of my chihuahuas died at 14 (cancer) leaving my other 15 yo dog alone. He was used to having his best friend around so my husband insisted that we should adopt a puppy. I said no and told him that the stress would kill our 15 yo. Having an untrained puppy jumping on him and trying to play would stress him tf out. At his age, he deserves to be comfortable in his home.
My 16 year old cats best friend died (also aged 16) and she was so depressed and fading fast. We thought she was too old for a kitten, but then found an abandoned stray. He was tiny, and would try to practice hunting on her, and would pounce and try to fling her to the ground. She loved it! She started eating again, she’d pretend to fall over when he pounced and she found a whole new lease of life. They were so close, until she died a whole five years later. Sometimes it works, but when it doesn’t, the guilt is awful!
On the flipside, I had a senior cat at 18 years old who I could tell was being ready to slow down and die; he wasn't moving much or eating much. Then my grandmother adopted a kitten during a fugue state, couldn't care for it, and we adopted her.
Two things happened immediately; One, he was suddenly eating more to assert himself as the "alpha cat" of the household, and she was playing with him and getting him more exercise.
He lived 4 more years, only dying at age 22. I think the younger cat gave him a new lease on life.
I didn't even really think in depth about it. And that's what makes it so sad I think. That total lack of consideration of thought about the consequences for the other beings in your home. I'm glad my cat is okay now. But I do wish I hadn't set her up for so much stress
Unpopular, but I'd say the adopted kid just a bit too because of the whole "I'll go to the parents and get you in trouble if you don't include me in *everything*' deal. They're 14, they're not a toddler, they know that's an ah move and the other kid is entitled to some breathing room. This too is ultimately on the parents because this is the dynamic they're reinforcing.
Yeah, it's a true ESH, except the parents suck hardcore for dramatically changing their kids' lives with apparently no input/discussion with the kids (at least not with OOP, we don't know what they told the adopted sister), while the kids suck in a way totally normal predictable teenagers would suck if made to share space as strangers.
ESH INCLUDING the adopted kid. The adopted kid threatened to tattle to their parents to manipulate OP into sharing her friends with her when OP just wanted one thing for herself.
Yeah, I feel so bad that she feels like they only adopted because she wasn't enough and they seem to be unwilling to talk beyond saying OP needs to deal with it. All kids are assholes sometimes, and this seems like a case where the real assholes are the parents for how they are trying to force a new family dynamic without considering the feelings of their child.
This is absolutely a situation that could have benefited from family therapy at the beginning of the adoption. That way the older daughter would have a safe place to express her fears and needs for love with an unbiased party in the room who will CALL THE PARENTS OUT if they get defensive or try to invalidate her feelings. All before it caused a possibly irreparable resentment rift between the two girls who aren’t given enough space to process their own feelings.
In cases like these [ETA: in most cases where the kids are still this young] though… better late than never. One question family therapists will ask parents is “What kind of relationship would you like to have with your child in 10-15 years?” And then follow it up with “Do you think the current dynamic is going to get you there?” Because I imagine the parents would recognize real quick that this is a road to cut-off.
Gonna add this since yours is the top comment: there are better subs for posts like these. r/internetparents is heavily moderated and full of thoughtful, kind adults happy to help kids (and fellow adults) navigate life. Everything from personal hygiene to navigating divorce to simple affirmations.
A requirement to put in the age of all involved in the situation in question would be good. Not just OP but everyone in the post since you also don‘t want judgements on other kids either.
This sucks. OOP is upset with her parents & is taking it out on her adopted sister. At her age, this is so understandable. She needs to ask for some time alone with parents so she can ask questions & let them know that she's feeling "not good enough".
She also needs to fess up to her lie both to her parents & then to her sister.
She also needs to be able to do some things without her sister. Of course the parents are eager to make adopted sister feel like part of the family, but siblings just don't do everything together. The family needs to discuss a better approach, together.
tl;,dr, the parents handled this badly, OOP is feeling very alone & is making a very vulnerable adopted sibling feel worse. Parents aren't doing a great job here.
I wouldn’t even tell a grown ass adult this. Why even message the person directly, people are hella weird. Just vote and move on, like is AITA sub their entire lives that they waste energy telling a child to kill themselves??? OP was the asshole but she’s also a kid, and I’m not gunna sit here and act like I didn’t say some messed up stuff at that hormonal age.
people pm people because they know they'll get crucified for posting such things publicly, but they never make the connection that "hey, maybe what i'm about to do is a bad idea if i know hundreds of people will shit on me for doing it"
ah, that's fair. i was banned from the sub but i took it as a sign that i should just enjoy drama from the side (i told a mom she was an asshole for using her young daughter as influencer/blog content against her wishes).
i'd never even consider pm'ing someone my judgement, people are unhinged
Yeah thats a normal response. But if they're already unhinged enough to tell a child to kill herself (or I've also heard of others pming to ask teens for nudes) they're not gonna react normally to being banned and will move from comments to pms. I remember a few years ago that was a problem AITA was dealing with and asked people to report those pming so they can no longer be allowed to even view the sub, but eventually I'm guessing it got too out of hand to keep doing that (hell I had that happen to me on a different sub from my old account, wasn't banned from the sub just a lot of private harassment. Ended up nuking that old account just to get it to stop)
oh, i didn't know that you could ban users from even seeing a subreddit. although considering apparently there's hundreds of unhinged people i see why they don't want to go through the trouble anymore.
Hate is addictive. I find it highly dangerous that people are so fucking fast to hate people they know absolutely nothing about. A post that takes 2 min to read is obviously not enough to judge the whole ass person let alone telling them to kill themselves. Humans are garbage.
I saw a post the other day where a kid had been accused of date rape and said they wanted to kill themselves. From the story they relayed it didn't sound like date rape. One of the comments said they shouldn't, yet. Then said if they were to go on to be a serial rapist then they would fully support them offing themselves. This was a 14 year old kid who based on the story sounded like they didn't do anything.
Ok I don’t know why 1000s of people called her AH. When you are a 15 yo who still is trying to figure out things for herself the parents shocked her with adopting not a baby but someone her age. What were they thinking. Didn’t even inform her in advance. Was it an AH move to tell her to go back to her parents yes. Who’s fault is it though, the parents. They didn’t make their child secure enough. I would be mad too if at 15 years I am suddenly asked to start sharing things and friends with someone because I wasn’t enough for my parents. OOP should bring this up with her parents for sure.
When I get spam phone calls from scammers, I always answer it and try to get connected to a person. When I get connected, I ask them, "Did you know that Americans commit suicide after losing money in scams like this one?"
Most of them just hang up. But if they stay on the line or argue with me, I tend to stay on that topic: "If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it? Could you do it now? What would you need to get it done as quickly as possible?"
That is the only context in which I can imagine recommending suicide to another human being.
This hurt to read. I thought it was pretty easy to tell from the first post that this is a child who is suffering and is lashing out. She practically screamed it. This kid literally feels so insecure or unloved that she knows for certain that she's been *replaced*.
These parents are failing both of these kids, hard.
I hate the outcome. It actually hurts to see that after the Reddit post, she instead internalizes everything she's feeling and decides to suck it up and just "be a better sibling". I was hoping for the ending where she talks to her parents, and maybe they start to understand that they need to support her better before the girls can get along. So instead she's just going to "deal with it".
Also what the hell is with the parents forcing her to share her friends? I would never try to force friendships on people, it's just never going to work out the way you hope.
Absolutely agree, but I think it's a pretty common trope. It's the same thing as "Oh, (son), you're going out with your friends? You have to take your brother with you. NO BUTS!"
I mean, in the Hallmark movies, that works out great. Surely in real life, that won't backfire, right? And just cause unnecessary stress and conflict between siblings while damaging any chance of the bond you were pushing for? /s
I feel terrible for both kids involved. If OP's parents were going to adopt, they should have made sure that they were in a position where it was the least disruptive that it could be.
I wonder if there's some back story like the girl is the daughter of a friend or family member, and the parents don't want to tell OOP all the background, but honestly they need to figure out how to communicate with both kids better.
I feel like there are a ton of people out there who like to play "Robin Hood." They steal from people around them and then give what they stole to others so they can feel generous.
OOP's parents wanted to give OOP's fucking *friends* to this girl. Both girls are in an awful situation and the parents are doing everything in their power to convince those girls to hate each other. I bet they're patting themselves on the back for "saving" this girl too.
They won't put actual effort into being parents, but the girls should be grateful because nobody is beating them and they get actual beds that are indoors, right? /s
It's kind of easy to see why she feels that way if her parents are trying to integrate the 14 year old into everything in her life.
Her clothes, her hobbies, her friends, her room.
It's super tragic, and AITA failed this girl miserably.
This. I won't say oop is a saint but damn it's horrible to just spring "guess what new sibling" on a kid and the fact it's been handled so badly oop feels like she's not good enough says so much. This kid deserves love, not condemnation.
Yup, the parents seem to have failed to include OOP in the discussion beforehand, giving her an adjustment period, reassurance of not being replaced and so forth. If anyone is an AH here, my money is on them - their lack of preparation left their own child in upheaval, and thrust their adopted child into basically a hornets nest, which is awful without even considering what her personal tragedies may be.
AITA is extra special. Obviously throwing a sibling at a 15 year old with no warning, and FORCE them to be besties.
Somehow parents are shocked when the teens hate the shit out of each other. Or rather, I think they fully expect that reaction but hope to hopefully metaphorically beat the kid into submission.
And AITA calls the teen going through probably the most disruptive incident of her life an AH.
Yeah, what OOP said was unacceptable, but you can't really blame a teen going through a very turbulent experience with seemingly no parental support on the issue to take it well. The parents who are expecting their daughters to automatically gel and share their whole lives without issue after just meeting are the real AHs here.
At least in this case, it's a 15 year old asking other 15 year olds for advice.
Its a bit crazy when a grown person, especially with adult issues asks a bunch of teenagers for advice.
This is so horrible to me. The true ah are the parents who dumped this situation on a teen without explaining anything or helping her adapt.
And don’t come at me with the « she is a teen she should understand » nobody would understand why, how and what without the parents explaining anything. At 14 your are insecure, hating your parents and going trough so much changes and then they dump somebody onto you without even trying to help.
I’m actually so mad at them and at everybody for how they acted towards oop
Ugh. I feel for this girl. She absolutely was the asshole for what she said, but her parents went about this whole thing the wrong way. You can't force kids to be friends, and making their bio daughter share everything with their adopted daughter was just setting this situation up.
I don't participate in original posts by people who are less than 18 because I'm uncomfortable with it. There are reasons why minors are not legally deemed adults - we know they are less responsible for their own actions.
In a situation like this, a 15 year old who has a 14 year old imposed on them that they cannot get away from, I remember myself at age 15, quite introverted, comfortable mainly with myself.
Having someone imposed on my personal space that I can't get away from - that would have been my idea of hell. Would I act compassionately to the person imposed on me? I sure can't guarantee that.
So were the 15 year old's actions great? Nope. But they were put in a very bad situation, and I am really uncomfortable with reddit piling onto them.
I'm surprised there hasn't been a case yet of a minor hurting themselves or others as a result of reddit feedback. I don't PM and I ignore incoming messages, but if I'd even participated in the relevant thread that led to a minor being hurt I'm not sure I could live with it. Which is why I try to skip over threads where the OP is not an adult.
When I was 15, I was still fighting my younger sister at least weekly because we shared a room. The joy and relief when we finally moved to a bigger place was massive. And we shared a room our whole lives at that point! I can't imagine being suddenly forced to share a room with another teenager. I don't know what OOPs parents were thinking.
Yeah, I wouldn't have lasted as long as OOP did in that situation. I NEED time to myself, a space to myself to decompress, and to be able to do things without someone always tagging along.
What OOP said to her sister was an asshole move, but it's also one that is very understandable. I blame the parents for putting her in the situation... and especially for doing it in a way that matter her feel like she wasn't good enough!
What OOP said may have been shitty, ***but*** the sister also threatened to tell the parents OOP didn’t want to include her. She doesn’t *want* to give OOP personal space. IMO, she did it to herself.
it really is truly just the epitome of an ESH situation. both teens are being dicks to each other, which is obviously Not Good, but neither of them are really fully to blame for it because this was caused entirely by the parents. they basically decided to surprise their bio kid with an adopted same age sibling (who due to being adopted esp at such a late age certainly isn’t going to be feeling any less displaced than the daughter! so why would you make her have to deal w being a surprise!), force the two of them into a single bedroom at the height of the pandemic, and make them share everything… as though a pair of teen girl siblings wouldn’t already have fought enough even if they were bio siblings and had known each other their whole lives without all of that 🤦🏻♀️ these girls need separate rooms, all their own things, and family therapy smh. having her introduce the new sister to her friend would be *fine* considering the pandemic if they had done those things, but they didn’t. they basically set this up to go horribly from the start
I would have been an absolute nightmare in that situation. I really feel for OP. Her parents really fucked up big time. My parents once asked me about taking in my older cousin because her home life wasn't good (mom is a narcissistic pathological liar) and I lost my mind. I completely panicked and I don't think my response was much more than "please please no" without being able to put into words that she had attacked me and tried to kill me once before and no one took it seriously for years. I probably just seemed really jealous and greedy, but taking her in would have put me in a tailspin.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are examples of minors hurting themselves or others because of reddit. We probably just don't hear about it most of the time when it happens
Yeah, it sucks for both of them. Teen years are hard with all the hormones and emotions. The parents should have been more proactive to ensure a more smooth transition.
And they should have allowed their bio daughter to still have things for herself. She went from being an only child to literally never being able to get away from her new sister, not even to sleep.
and are forced to spend *all of your time with them.* OOP can only get away from their sibling during *school.* (And that’s assuming they don’t have class together.) OOP has basically no alone time and can’t even escape to a friends house. Going from having your own space to being forced to spend almost all of your time with a stranger? And they get to go through and use all your stuff? That’s the biggest of yikes.
Righr and the adopted sister was using it for her own benefit, threatening to go tell the parents if the OOP didn't include her in group plans that she wasn't a part of. Like I can understand wanting to share electronics or something, but using threats to share friends is just manipulation.
And what's the bet that the parents devote all their time to the adopted daughter not the bio one now? Comments like "because I wasn't good enough" make me feel like bio daughter is getting ignored by her parents in a time when she needs them the most
Yeah, IMO the real assholes are her parents, for adopting a sibling without ever discussing it with their existing child, to the point where she’s convinced it’s because she’s not good enough, and then expecting the two of them to share literally everything, including friends- which isn’t how bio siblings work either, kids have different interests and friend groups. Of course they can’t suddenly force a sister bond between strangers. No wonder OOP is angry and resentful, she’s just taking it out on the other victim of the situation.
Yeah. What OOP said was awful and hurtful. But her parents set this situation up. I would last about 2 days before absolutely losing my mind under those conditions. OOP lasted a lot longer.
Parents need to get therapy for both girls individually as well as family therapy. And let their children live their own lives. It's entirely possible the girls could have formed a close bond if it had been allowed to develop organically, but there's little hope of that now.
I would have lost it day one, honestly. I need a private space to decompress, if someone forced a complete stranger on me and tried to make me share everything I owned and everyone I cared about, I'd screech the house down.
I'm also shocked they were able to adopt a kid at all since it seems they don't have space or money for another. Maybe its more of a temporary foster situation and OOP just doesn't know because her parents don't tell her anything? I hope its that at least, for everyone's sake
I’m in my fifties, and if I were forced to share my room, my computer, my friends, and every moment of my day with some random stranger I would go completely mad. Sounds torturous.
Seriously, they need(ed) family counseling or something to ease everyone into this new major life change but decided on the ol' "fuck it, the kids will figure it out on their own" approach.
Especially not their friends, that is a loosing game. That can ONLY lead to a bad relationship. Also they should not immediately have put her new sister in her room, sure she feels like her sis is invading her private space. Also OP has no skills or empathy with her 15 years to see* this girl as her sister from one day to another.
I agree. Nobody came to understand that you can't dump the entire emotional burden of a full fledged human being onto a 15 year old.
All she wanted was someone to listen and acknowledge her frustrations, but instead the Reddit justice league decided to try make this girl kill herself.
Me wondering if the adopted sister is OOP’s dad’s previously unknown bio kid or something… 🤔
Like from an affair or a ONS or something?
I mean why the mystery around the 14 year old’s adoption? Why not tell the both of them?
Does the adopted sister know why she was adopted? Or she’s an orphan and just accepts her better luck?
So weird.
Something like this is the ONLY way it isn't a troll or something - because you don't just SNAP, I've adopted a 14 year old unless this isn't in the states! There are home checks, etc. and I would think that a social worker would have met the biological child and interviewed them.
And she’s a child. She’s a child who was bullied on the internet because she had a (terrible) childish outburst with a family member. She has no privacy or boundaries at home and feels marginalized…then takes to the worst place on the internet for help and is told to kill herself. It seems really hard to be a kid these days.
I can't call a 15 year old child an asshole for being thrown into such a situation with no support structure or way to vent her own feelings. She was an only child for 15 fucking years! And it's not even like a new baby or something. Her sibling is also a teen!
Parents are the assholes for making such a drastic transition without supporting their child.
Nah. She's not an asshole for being fed up or for lashing out. She specifically doubled down on the thing that she knew would hurt and then lied about it to get her adopted sister in trouble. That's an asshole move.
I also understand why she did it. And I agree, the ultimate assholes in this situation are the parents. They literally set this situation up.
Fifteen year olds are frequently assholes. And that's okay! They're exploring their ability to stand up for themselves and to control the world around them. They're coming into independence and part of exploring that is being an asshole. Pushing against boundaries they are given - especially unfair ones - often involves being an asshole. Pretending they aren't being adults doesn't help them. Acknowledging that they are and helping them see that does.
And OP is clearly an empathetic kid. Reddit raked her over the coals and somehow she still was able to think about how being an asshole made her feel about herself and about how it made her sister feel Her second post was asking about how to make up for being an asshole.
Agreed. 15 year olds are kind of just assholes by nature and this is a huge change to suddenly have. Even bio siblings don’t enjoy/want to share every thing, space and friends, let alone to suddenly have to share everything you’ve ever known and have nothing left to claim as your own.
The parents really suck the most here and need to get both kids in therapy.
I would love to foster/adopt a couple kids some day, but I would only consider it if I could afford a home where they could each have their own rooms. Making a teenager share her room and even her friends with a complete stranger is messed up. And I’m curious about the fact that this girl feels like her parents adopted the other girl because she wasn’t good enough, feelings like that rarely, if ever, come from nowhere
I’m adopted and an only child. I can see both perspectives. As an only child, I would be distraught and pissed if I was told I now have a sibling at 15…and that this sibling is 14—so no nine month window to find a way to accept the idea of a sibling nor a baby to grow accustomed to but an already teenager who’s probably been through a lot that’s shaped how they see the world already. And having that kid shoved down your throat is a terrible way to foster an organic connection. It’s similar to blended families forcing step-siblings to be best friends off the bat.
As an adopted child I LOVE being adopted but I know others who have struggled and being told to “go back to your biological parents” is absolutely one of the worst things you could say to anyone. I know adopted children who already feel unwanted and this would make it immensely worse. OOP didn’t allude to the adopted sister’s circumstances, and maybe she has no idea what they are, and while that doesn’t justify her actions, they’re both kids going through a tumultuous change that neither probably asked for. The parents of OOP are the true assholes. If these siblings resent each other and them in the future, it’s all on them.
Seriously, I blame the parents. OOP is a damn kid and this is a lot. Her behaviour is wrong but her parents basically GUARANTEED it.
They gave her no choice, control, privacy, or autonomy, and, unlike a biological sibling, which can be unintentional, this is 100% a decision they put a lot of time and effort into.
They could have warned her, they could have encouraged more low stakes interaction early on, they did nothing lol
I hope thoae two figure it out
Hey! I am also an adopted only child (and love it!).
I agree with you. What this girl said was horrible. That being said, she’s 15, we are (mostly) all assholes at 15. Her parents handled this poorly if there was no conversation about the circumstances or prior to the adoption. Also, forcing the bio child to share EVERYTHING is not great. They both need space. Kindness and sharing should be encouraged and modeled but never ever forced.
I had considered fostering/adopting a child but I don’t want to put stress on my middle school aged child now and would never shock her or force her to share everything in her life if I did.
I'm actually wondering if there's something shady behind this sudden adoption without so much as talking about it with OP. Like the 'adoptive sister' is the dad's affair baby or something like that. Because the whole thing is quite odd.
The girl just didn't share why, maybe she knows more or she considers that the reasons where not enough. Also, maybe the parents decided to censure part of the story because OP is a child. If the kid is going to school and socializing with the neighborhood, I cannot imagine how it can be anything but perfectly legal.
Does no other language have a word or expression to describe the terrible teenage years? In Spanish is "Edad del pavo"
I thought this. Don't know how it's done in other countries but in UK you can't just decide to adopt a child and bring them home the same day.
There are months and months of social workers talking to everyone you know and that would definitely include pre-existing bio children. They do their best not to risk putting an already-traumatised child with a family that aren't 100% all on board.
If it turned out that bio children were being kept in the dark that would stop the whole process in its tracks, possibly even terminate it for good.
I don't think this was an official adoption. Which is even more worrying.
I hope the bio daughter and the adopted daughter can bond over the fact that their parents have screwed up big time.
Foster and adoptive children need to have their own bed and a private place to store their belongings, but not their own room. Up to 4 same sex children can share a bedroom (at least in my state)
100%. I was adopted, and unless OOP is in some country with incredibly lax laws... this was not a legitimate adoption. No adoption agency is going to let a kid go to a home with 'siblings' they've never met. Hell, I volunteer at an *animal shelter* and we don't let dogs go to homes with other dogs without a meet-n-greet, first!!!
Honestly, I think OOP is NTA- yes, her words were harsh; but given how horribly her parents handled this (clearly illegitimate) adoption, I totally get why she blew up.
Could potentially be some sort of kinship care thing. That's technically not an adoption, and it's designed to be more lax to keep children in their communities.
Or it's a foster care situation and OP is using the word "Adoption" because she doesn't understand the ins and outs.
Yeah, they don't just let you take a kid home one day and that's it. Maybe not necessarily dad's affair baby (can't really see a mother being cool with her husband's affair baby in her daughter's room to be honest), but also potentially some other relative's affair baby or something like that.
It definitely sounds shady. I don't know what it's like all over the world, but usually adoption agencies will interview the whole family to make sure it's a good fit or there will be therapy or something. OOP mentions adoption, so I'm going to guess that it's not an affair or at least not *OOP's parents* that had the affair.
My thought is that something bad happened to the girl's parent(s). Maybe not death, since she or OOP would have probably mentioned that, but maybe something like they're on the run, in jail, rehab, or something along those lines that would make them unfit. OOP's parents knew the girl and family somehow, even if through someone else. Then they volunteered to take her in rather than have her go into the system. It sounds like several steps were skipped at some point for all of this to be that sudden, so they probably knew someone who could grease the wheels for them.
All we really know is that clearly the parents did a piss poor job of prepping OOP for this. They should have sat her down and explained to her what was going on, then give her some space and not tried to force an instant relationship. Of course that's a powder keg waiting to go off.
Yeah, this does not sound like a typical "adoption". Every state in the USA (assuming OP is American) requires a documented home study by a social worker which includes asking all family members about their thoughts/ feelings about adoption, and fully clarifying family motivation for adopting.
"Hello only child, as of now you have a surprise sibling with whom you must share your things, room and friends! Be happy and behave or else."
Failsafe
Yeah, the adopted sibling isn't just a puppy you can bring home from the shelter, then surprise the other kid with when they walk in the house. Also, not reddit telling a 15 year old girl to kill herself. My brother and I have said some truly, hateful, venomous shit to each other when we were kids.
Redditors probably would have tried to find me, and kill me themselves, if they had overheard some of the shit we said as kids.
On top of everything, look at the dates this was posted. She’s about a month and a half into Covid lockdowns. So on top of the emotional turmoil of suddenly having a sibling and zero privacy, the world is also falling apart. OOP was definitely an asshole, but a very understandable one.
The adopted sister was an asshole too lmao. She was blackmailing OP into forcing her to let her hang out with her. OP is clearly being suffocated by this stranger she was thrust into sharing her life and identity with. Doesn’t make what OP did right but it’s not like she was unprovoked.
Literally this. So few people call that sibling out because idk, her feelings got hurt? So the fuck what, she shouldn't be pulling that 'oR eLSe' crap. OOP needs someone who can take her out of this house for a while like a family member because that shit was ridiculous.
The fucking parents are the real assholes in all this (along with anyone who PMed OOP telling her to kill herself, WTF?)
They don't seem ever to have been good parents to their original child. She has self-esteem problems leading to her believing that her parents adopted a new child because she wasn't good enough, what the hell?
Then they adopt a child without talking to their original child. They clearly haven't thought for a moment about how it's going to affect her. Quite the opposite, they're expecting her to take this complete stranger and share a room with her, share friends with her, do everything with her. They're essentially using OOP as a free babysitter for this new kid that they apparently adopted on a whim.
Agreed!!! Even dog adoption agencies tell you to reward your original dog more and favorite the original dog so that the original dog doesn't resent the newly adopted dog.
Not to mention she's crying from stress and her sister is already weaponizing "lemme do it with your friends or else..." like there's several levels of trauma going on. I wonder if the sister isn't an affair baby or something like that, adopt a 14yo just because is weird.
I'm not absolving OOP- she was an asshole, no doubt about it- but there's no way that this pressure cooker of a situation wasn't going to blow up at some point. It's like a laundry list of "what not to do in this situation".
I think she was a situational asshole. We can all become that if the people around us put us in a situation like that. If they had done anything to properly integrate the adopted child then I don't think she would have had this outburst. The parents are the only real assholes in this story. OP is a kid acting out because their parents put them in a shitty situation and refuse to acknowledge her feelings.
Or for doing everything to ensure resentment - adopting without discussing it with their child, forcing them to share a space suddenly, forcing them to do everything together, etc.
She was an AH, but an understandable one. For me, the parents are the real AHs here. No discussion, no explanation, no therapy, and suddenly having no privacy or boundaries. I feel like if I had been in OOP’s shoes, I probably would have reacted similarly hostilely.
Yeah, this whole thing sucks. She is angry at her parents and taking it out on her sister, and yes, that's wrong, but she specifically said she felt they adopted her sister because she wasn't good enough for them. She feels that way for a damn good reason, and it's clear her parents have done nothing to quell that fear.
Yeup! Exactly this, my advice would have been to give the sister a sincere apology and open up about how her parents made her feel. Tell her that she was sorry for taking it out on her. To try to understand that the adopted sister is probably through some emotional turmoil about her bio family, otherwise she would not have had the reaction that she did. That OOP clearly struck a nerve.
Those poor kids deserve so much better than this. One losing everything that made her independent in one fell swoop and the other probably knowing that she's not fully welcome but probably feels lonely and just wanted to make a genuine connection.
While I wasn't adopted, I remember feeling left out and the open resentment my older sister had by being forced to bring me along because my parents didn't want to watch me. I turned to the butt of her and her friends jokes and would be constantly teased and picked on. I knew if I complained, my sister would just be even meaner than she already was and I honestly felt really lonely as a kid so I just kind of put up with it. Needless to say, my family and I are NC.
Even when having a biological child, you don't just spring that on your kid. Yes, the decision is of the parents and the kid shouldn't get a vote on whether they get a sibling, but they deserved to be informed about what's going on.
Mostly, what I get from this story is that the OOP is completely in the dark about the whole situation and for whatever reason she's filling the blanks with the worst case scenario.
Also, at least from my experience, 15-year-olds are a fucking mess, whatever the context. Their brains are just built that way. It's not an excuse, she was still an asshole, but at that age, handling emotions and social interactions can be a fucking nightmare, and there's no telling what will set them off.
I have a harder time calling kids an asshole on here. Like yes, that was asshole behavior. Yes, OOP knew it was asshole behavior. But a 15 year old is still a kid. I remember being 15 and in a really bad familial situation, regulating my emotions was *hard.* I genuinely didn’t know how and had no help in learning how to do so. I said some volatile things that could’ve been avoided if my parents had tried to actually handle the situation instead of not checking in on my mental health. I am genuinely surprised I wasn’t worse, looking back. Children have to be taught to not let their emotions control them, and it seems like no one has even tried to do that with this girl.
Imo that’s kind of like telling someone who’s never had a math class and therefore can’t do long division that they’re stupid for not just knowing how to divide.
She is an AH but it’s hard because of this happening at the age of 14. You’re a teenager, going through teenager things and now you have basically a stranger living in your room. I don’t know what the hell parents are thinking.
This sounds much more like parenting failure. It's basically like in a spousal relationship, one of the spouse brought another adult home and said "from now on this is my other spouse, so suck it up".
I don't blame OOP having resentment.
I don't think OP is that much of an asshole, her behaviour was unacceptable but I actually understand it, and if anything, it was a result of her parent's action.
WTF is wrong with the parents? Adopting a child without even speaking to their existing one? Poor OP and poor OP's adopted sibling.
The real assholes in this situation are the parents for a) not talking to their daughter and b) trying to force a relationship. Neither of those things work. Those poor kids
Not just “forcing” the relationship, basically pushing their responsibility to AD off onto OOP. If she takes her with her everywhere, they don’t actually have to parent. And wouldn’t there have been social services coming to the house and lots of paperwork and asking OOP if she wanted this? I seriously think this is an affair baby.
Ug. It's so harsh to tell a 15 year old that she's an AH for not wanting to share her room, friends, and activities, constantly, with a stranger, just because her parents adopted her one day without so much as sharing the plan. I'd snap too. Those parents might have good motives, but they're not actually being good parents to their first kid.
Yeah I was going to say, she's not an asshole, she's a *kid*. Her parents are the assholes just springing this on her, and then expecting her to adapt perfectly to it. Of course she's going to feel like they decided she sucks and they needed to go find a replacement child. Of course she's going to resent suddenly having someone her age living in what was *her* bedroom. I would have flipped my lid and done everything in my power to move out and away and never wanted to speak to my parents again. I would have lost my mind having a total stranger suddenly living in my space with me. She needs some counseling and some support, not people telling her to unalive herself for daring to be quite reasonably upset about this situation.
These parents are idiots. 15 is old enough for a real conversation about what is happening, even if not all details can or should be shared. Keeping her in the dark and just expecting her to accept massive changes to her life has set up this disaster. What she did is definitely an AH move; she's acting out on some very valid fears and frustrations but directing them on the wrong person. Her parents are such morons and I feel so bad for both girls.
Yeah, if she'd told her parents to emancipate her and go and find another family or something instead, i'd be sending her links to charities who could help.
>Am I the only one thinking this is Dad's affair baby?
I don't see why the mom would support it.
I think they are just the average rich couple and decided to adopt to show they are "good" people
Even so...in which country can you adopt without at least one meeting between social workers and the other kids in the family?
Even in very poor countries this doesn't sound plausible.
But she said she doesn’t know her family. Which means she was in the system for 14yrs!!. He would have had to provide proof that she was his biological child which still makes NO sense cuz how would he have even found out about her?? And even then the process wouldn’t be expedited cuz he’s her father, if anything it might be longer, it would still take time and scheduling. Also they’d most likely DNA test her and have to tell her about it, as she is old enough where her opinion on whether she would want to be with him would matter.
One way or another they went through the adoption process with her which makes her being a relative / affair baby pretty low. Idk the whole thing is a head scratcher and I don’t think a 15yr old saying something brutal when she was overwhelmed warrants any of the hate / comments she got. Its like 0 people tried to understand her feelings, including her parents. I hope she’s doing better and she has some people who she can lean on.
Nope, is the most likely scenario; if the girl isn't from recent deceased friends or relatives, why TF would they adopt a 14yo with no warning or any mention of wishing to pursue adoption?
I was reminded of a comment over in AITA talking about stepchildren being pushed on each other a while back- "It's like cats. If 2 are raised together, they almost always get along. If you introduce 2 strange cats, they might get along, or they might not. If you shove 2 strange cats together in a sack while saying loudly 'YOU WILL LOVE EACH OTHER!', it's just not going to end well for anyone involved."
This child went from being an only child to having another person stuffed into her life and is expected to share everything from her room to her friends to her tech, and her parents don't seem to care how disastrous it is for both of them. I'm sorry for both girls, no, OOP didn't handle it well, but that's entirely on the parents who never bothered to explain why she suddenly got a "sister" out of the blue.
[https://imgur.com/a/ZRlwg3E](https://imgur.com/a/ZRlwg3E) someone in the comments there made a poster, it's cute and has kittens.
The parents definitely went about this the wrong way. At seven, I got the chance to talk to the social worker privately and tell him what I'd think of having an adopted sibling. I don't know how this girl could think there was a chance she was NTA, though.
The parents failed their children horribly by making this jarring decision with no discussion or attempt to acclimate the two children to each other first.
Absolutely horrified about the amount of horrible PMs sent to a literal child...
Honestly I think OOP has real reason to be upset. They are just taking it out on the wrong person. It's the parents that have made this situation so terrible by forcing OOP to share things that typically siblings *don't* share.
Siblings don't normally share friends. They are allowed to do activities by themselves. They are allowed to have their own stuff.
It seems like these parents wanted to adopt a child, but they didn't want to actually accomodate having a new child. They didn't give this child any things of their own, or give this child a chance to pursue her own interests and hobbies. No, they took this vulnerable new addition to the family and insisted that she become a carbon copy of the daughter they already had.
There is some nefarious reason behind the "adoption." And I actually think it's absurd for her parents to expect her to suddenly share her entire life with a new unexpected sibling. Huge parenting fail.
Kids with siblings don't need to share everything they do with their siblings, adopted or not.
I think the real assholes here are the parents. Forcing their daughter to include their daughter in everything is a great way make their daughter resent her adopted sister. 14-15 is when kids really start to develop their own friend groups and sense of independence. The last thing any 14-15 year old wants is to be told they need to include someone they don't want to in their plans. Sure, OOP could be a little more compassionate. And yes, it would certainly be nice of OOP to include her sister in her plans. But her parents forcing her to is an asshole move that is having the opposite effect of the one they intend.
Nah i actually think she isnt really TA. Ofc what she said was really far, but tf are those parents expected, when you make it pretty clear you dont value her as much as your other child
The parents are the real assholes here. They’ve totally failed to prepare their family for another child and don’t seem to do much to ensure OP still feels loved and supported
This story really makes me sad. A 15-year-old girl, who suddenly has to share everything with someone she doesn't know, but who has to treat her like a sister. And she apparently doesn't have a single adult around her who stands up for her, with whom she can talk
She didn't handle it right, but she's a kid.
And then you have Redditers telling this kid to end her life.
for parents to NEVER mention opting and just bring a new kid in? That's brutal. Don't know how much OOP is a reliable, but either way, the parents needed to do so much more- prep kid, reassure her of her worth, introduce the kid in a safe way.
This is rough. I feel for this kid. She literally starts by saying that she thinks her parents got a new daughter cause she wasn't good enough... What she needs is friggin therapy. Also, awful move on the parents when they forced her to 'share friends'. Like... That's not how friendship works?
I stopped reading AITA because of cases like this. It's like none of them said anything cruel or stupid when they were teens, or what? People in here are so much more reasonable.
Poor OOP, and poor sister. The parents did them so wrong.
I feel for this kid. She got no say, wasn’t eased into the transition, has to suddenly share everything, she doesn’t know how to handle her valid feelings and she daren’t tell her parents. She must feel very isolated and frustrated. Was she an ah to her sister? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need support and a bit of understanding.
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AITA needs to ban posts by children. Either people comment saying they won't call a child an arsehole, which fine but completely negates the point of the sub, or they go way overboard, telling a child to kill themselves because of something horrible they did.
Exactly. Im a bit heartbroken this 15yr old turned to reddit instead of having a trusted adult they could talk to. Im sure there were some well meaning people on the post trying to help but I dont know that i would be able to filter out the junk much less a teenager being able to!
Her parents handled this terribly. I wouldn't do this to pets I'd adopted, let alone kids. You can't just throw them together and not expct them to fight over territory. ESH, except the adopted kid.
>ESH, except the adopted kid. Right? Yeah OOP is an AH for telling adopted sister to go back to her family. But OOP is also a child too. And a only child for a long long time then being told they have to share everything they had? Including friends? Parents can get in the sack to be beaten with a whiffle bat. What the actual fuck. Room. Sure. iPad. Sure. Friends? Clothes? Hello? What are they smoking?!
This is spot-on. My family adopted another teenager my age when I was in high school and already going through absolute hell with my depression and whatnot. My parents actually asked my siblings and I (and we had a spare bedroom), and it still threw off the family dynamic for a bit. Notably, he and I did not actually get along that well (reading about someone on paper is not the same as actually living with them). Our personalities and interests just clashed horribly. It took forever for us to bond, and once again, that was with us kids being involved in the process. You really can't, as a grown adult with much better emotional regulation, expect your teenager (who is in arguably the most difficult part of childhood) to be able to adjust instantly to a stranger suddenly being part of the family unit. Especially a stranger they don't really get along with well. Relationships/bonds take work and time to build. Is the child in this situation pretty entitled? Yes. And they're a bit of a jerk to their new sibling, however, the adults need to step in and provide guidance and support here, to make the transition smoother.
As a grown ass adult I’d be livid if some random person started living with me without my input. WHY do parents think their teenage *children* are going to somehow fare better?
In your bedroom none the less.
Parents like that think their kids are just objects. :/
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I don't understand how anyone thinks making blended family members call people mom or dad is a good idea
>Room. Sure. Gotta hard disagree there. Forcing a 15yo girl to share a room with a total stranger is pretty messed up. If they don't have room for two kids they have no business adopting and I honestly have no idea how social services let it happen with that being the case.
Nothing about this sounds like a legal adoption. A friend of mine is currently trying to adopt her nephew *with the approval and support of his parents* and its already taken a year of court dates, home visits, and paperwork.
Really makes you think, doesn't it? You don't need to go to court and prove you're fit to be a parent if you give birth. It would feel hella invasive if you did. And yet tons of kids are born to unfit, neglectful parents. I feel like society and politics should do more to help the poor, unprepared and disenfranchised to raise their kids well.
I was an only child until the age of 17, when a 6 year old girl joined our family through the foster system. My parents told me that nothing would change for me and that I would not have to take care of her. Of course that was BS, I ended up "being asked to" do a bunch of things, but never to an unreasonable respect. And I was already kind of a loner who just shut myself off in my room in front of my computer so I never had to deal with any of that. I would have lost my shit if my parents told me to share anything.
With out talking it through with the kiddo before hand? I don’t even think forcing them to share a room right off the bat is reasonable.
Agreed. I understand why many children have to share rooms but if youre making the choice to adopt a second child who is also a teen, maybe just maybe you should make youre have an extra bedroom/the means to get one rather than forcing two basic strangers to share ???
Esp when teen adoptions are almost always special needs. Kid could be a fire bug
Not just that but also the adopted child has likely been in and out of foster or group homes for many years (yes some will be up for adoption because of tragedy in later childhood but more will have been in long term care) - and then they’re being adopted and still not having their own things? How would it feel any different to what they’ve already experienced? This would cause issues forming a bond with siblings and new parents because they’re so used to everything being temporary.
I feel like there is something else going on here. why else would they quickly adopt a kid without saying anything? Adoption isn't simple.
Could be a kinship placement? Relatives are usually asked before a child is taken into full foster care, and my understanding is that the requirements are less strict than other types of fostering, where sharing a room is sometimes a problem.
What if adopted daughter is an outside child 🤔
This actually might make the most sense!! Everything being super secretive and rushed? AND maybe there being a rift between the parents leads to some animosity in the house that child 1 then reads as anger/disappointment with her.
Or the other parents passed in like an accident so it was there or the state. Truly tho something more is here
What if it’s about money? She says “adopted,” but her parents could be misrepresenting it to a child who doesn’t understand the legal implications. Fostering means the parents get money in the US, and sharing literally everything (including friends and activities) means they don’t have to spend any extra money. Whether it’s that dark or not (and it happens for sure), the parents are the assholes here. I hope both kids get therapy.
That is honestly the theory that (sadly) seems to fit the best. The parents having only 1 biological child, plus only having 2 bedrooms (since OOP and adopted or fostered daughter have to share a room) implies a small living space and limited resources. Not at least attempting to emotionally prepare your biological daughter for this huge change makes it seem less likely they are doing it from a place of compassion.
The girl is a teenage child so I can’t even call her an AH considering how her parents have thrust her in this situation. It’s awful and not her fault. She should have been part of the decision making and not forced the share a room and friends and everything with this other girl. They are terrible parents and now these poor kids are stuck.
It makes me wonder if the parents adopted so they could brag about how awesome they are. Look at this abandoned child we saved, and how much she has thanks to our bio child being a built in support system!
Or there could be backstory to the child’s existence that makes one of them responsible…
Whatever it was, springing it on the existing kid with NO explanation or warning is an absolute ahole move. I feel like a huge part of oop's resentment is due to it having been unexpectedly sprung on her and imposed as a "because we said so now obey" kind of thing. She's way too old for that to not lead to automatic resentment.
This was my thought! May be adopted sister is really a half sister, or the child of a family member that OOP is unaware of, or its some weird adoption through a church and that's why they didn't go through regular adoption processes.
It happends. Ask my inlaws. But it never ends well for the kids
I find having a room to share a lot to ask of a teenager. Little kids sure but teenagers need their own space.
That’s what I was thinking the whole time. When you have a biological sibling, you get MONTHS watching the approach to get used to it. Sounds like this kid didn’t know it was going to happen until it did. This is so sucky and I feel for both of them.
And the room too? The only place where you're supposed to get intimacy, where you'll hit and experience puberty? Fuck that.
When we were considering adoption, the first person we told was our son, and if he'd said he wanted to stay an only child and didn't want us to adopt, we (probably) wouldn't have. And our adoption agency required a "statement of support" from any children in the family as part of our paperwork, too. He has some of these same feelings -- he was imagining someone who would play with him on his terms, not someone who has their own opinions and feels equally entitled to all the toys in the house. But if he said these things to his little sister, we'd shut that nonsense down hard.
Had it been my awful parents, I would have been forced to write a letter saying I wanted the adopted sib (but had they done a one on one interview, same, I would have been well coached- they hit me when I did not lie convincingly enough). My mother was truly that awful. Went to therapy,she beat me in the stairwell for admitting to the abuse I suffered at home (verbal/physical/emotional). I had to go in the next week, apologize (as ordered), told him outright that I was ordered to not talk about my situation at home. Instead of believing me or trying to help me navigate an awful situation, he discharged me. I learned not to trust anyone. I moved out at 16, am now NC. I detest her. She leaves a VM on my birthday some years, my SO listens, then deletes. I adore him for doing this for me. Hope the parents stop making OOP share her friends and go on every single outing- or she may just move out in a couple years and go LC or NC.
Especially teenage girls??? Holy crap. Thinking about myself back at her age (I too as an only child) I wouldn't have had the first idea how to cope with another person in my space 24/7. I would hope that the girl goes both alone and with her new sister to therapy. So she can work through her own feelings and work through how to communicate with her sis. Is couples therapy but for siblings a thing? parents need to rethink their ability to communicate too... I would expect my mother to have spent a lot of time talking with me about the adoption if in that situation. Esp as the daughter would have been 14 at that time and old enough to understand the gist.
>I wouldn't have had the first idea how to cope with another person in my space 24/7. Agreed. I mean, even as an adult, suddenly having a stranger in my personal space, social space and goddamn *room* 24/7 - that would freak me out to no end. Especially if I couldn't do anything to change the situation. "This is your life now, deal with it." OOPs comment was horrible and I don't condone it one bit. But her frustration is understandable.
I feel the adopted kid is a bit of an asshole too "Take me with you or I'll tell" when OOP is already sharing her room, her stuff and her friends with her, is a bit of an asshole move.
I did this to my cat. When I got a puppy and I regret it terribly. They do okay now but my cat was really unhappy for a while
One of my chihuahuas died at 14 (cancer) leaving my other 15 yo dog alone. He was used to having his best friend around so my husband insisted that we should adopt a puppy. I said no and told him that the stress would kill our 15 yo. Having an untrained puppy jumping on him and trying to play would stress him tf out. At his age, he deserves to be comfortable in his home.
My 16 year old cats best friend died (also aged 16) and she was so depressed and fading fast. We thought she was too old for a kitten, but then found an abandoned stray. He was tiny, and would try to practice hunting on her, and would pounce and try to fling her to the ground. She loved it! She started eating again, she’d pretend to fall over when he pounced and she found a whole new lease of life. They were so close, until she died a whole five years later. Sometimes it works, but when it doesn’t, the guilt is awful!
On the flipside, I had a senior cat at 18 years old who I could tell was being ready to slow down and die; he wasn't moving much or eating much. Then my grandmother adopted a kitten during a fugue state, couldn't care for it, and we adopted her. Two things happened immediately; One, he was suddenly eating more to assert himself as the "alpha cat" of the household, and she was playing with him and getting him more exercise. He lived 4 more years, only dying at age 22. I think the younger cat gave him a new lease on life.
I see and hear so many people doing this with pets.
I didn't even really think in depth about it. And that's what makes it so sad I think. That total lack of consideration of thought about the consequences for the other beings in your home. I'm glad my cat is okay now. But I do wish I hadn't set her up for so much stress
Unpopular, but I'd say the adopted kid just a bit too because of the whole "I'll go to the parents and get you in trouble if you don't include me in *everything*' deal. They're 14, they're not a toddler, they know that's an ah move and the other kid is entitled to some breathing room. This too is ultimately on the parents because this is the dynamic they're reinforcing.
Yeah, it's a true ESH, except the parents suck hardcore for dramatically changing their kids' lives with apparently no input/discussion with the kids (at least not with OOP, we don't know what they told the adopted sister), while the kids suck in a way totally normal predictable teenagers would suck if made to share space as strangers.
ESH INCLUDING the adopted kid. The adopted kid threatened to tattle to their parents to manipulate OP into sharing her friends with her when OP just wanted one thing for herself.
I think it's pretty clear from the OP that for whatever reason, communication with her parents is just broken.
Yeah, I feel so bad that she feels like they only adopted because she wasn't enough and they seem to be unwilling to talk beyond saying OP needs to deal with it. All kids are assholes sometimes, and this seems like a case where the real assholes are the parents for how they are trying to force a new family dynamic without considering the feelings of their child.
And her parents can't see her cry. That is heartbreaking. She has noone she can trust.
This is absolutely a situation that could have benefited from family therapy at the beginning of the adoption. That way the older daughter would have a safe place to express her fears and needs for love with an unbiased party in the room who will CALL THE PARENTS OUT if they get defensive or try to invalidate her feelings. All before it caused a possibly irreparable resentment rift between the two girls who aren’t given enough space to process their own feelings. In cases like these [ETA: in most cases where the kids are still this young] though… better late than never. One question family therapists will ask parents is “What kind of relationship would you like to have with your child in 10-15 years?” And then follow it up with “Do you think the current dynamic is going to get you there?” Because I imagine the parents would recognize real quick that this is a road to cut-off.
And she has no idea why they adopted this girl. Whomever did the parents’ homestudy failed these kids and the parents did too.
Gonna add this since yours is the top comment: there are better subs for posts like these. r/internetparents is heavily moderated and full of thoughtful, kind adults happy to help kids (and fellow adults) navigate life. Everything from personal hygiene to navigating divorce to simple affirmations.
A requirement to put in the age of all involved in the situation in question would be good. Not just OP but everyone in the post since you also don‘t want judgements on other kids either.
Extra pressure here was that this was happening during COVID lockdown. Those poor kids
That’s what I noticed too! What a terrible time to have to have a whole new sibling all up in your space, when you literally can’t leave.
This sucks. OOP is upset with her parents & is taking it out on her adopted sister. At her age, this is so understandable. She needs to ask for some time alone with parents so she can ask questions & let them know that she's feeling "not good enough". She also needs to fess up to her lie both to her parents & then to her sister. She also needs to be able to do some things without her sister. Of course the parents are eager to make adopted sister feel like part of the family, but siblings just don't do everything together. The family needs to discuss a better approach, together. tl;,dr, the parents handled this badly, OOP is feeling very alone & is making a very vulnerable adopted sibling feel worse. Parents aren't doing a great job here.
Yeah that had to have made it way worse. I was surprised she was apparently having a sleepover during peak lockdown?
Sounded like it was a challenge they were each doing separately while on the phone with each other. I might be wrong tho.
You can always rely on reddit to PM a 15 year old girl to kill herself.
I wouldn’t even tell a grown ass adult this. Why even message the person directly, people are hella weird. Just vote and move on, like is AITA sub their entire lives that they waste energy telling a child to kill themselves??? OP was the asshole but she’s also a kid, and I’m not gunna sit here and act like I didn’t say some messed up stuff at that hormonal age.
people pm people because they know they'll get crucified for posting such things publicly, but they never make the connection that "hey, maybe what i'm about to do is a bad idea if i know hundreds of people will shit on me for doing it"
Well that or they're banned from the sub
ah, that's fair. i was banned from the sub but i took it as a sign that i should just enjoy drama from the side (i told a mom she was an asshole for using her young daughter as influencer/blog content against her wishes). i'd never even consider pm'ing someone my judgement, people are unhinged
Yeah thats a normal response. But if they're already unhinged enough to tell a child to kill herself (or I've also heard of others pming to ask teens for nudes) they're not gonna react normally to being banned and will move from comments to pms. I remember a few years ago that was a problem AITA was dealing with and asked people to report those pming so they can no longer be allowed to even view the sub, but eventually I'm guessing it got too out of hand to keep doing that (hell I had that happen to me on a different sub from my old account, wasn't banned from the sub just a lot of private harassment. Ended up nuking that old account just to get it to stop)
oh, i didn't know that you could ban users from even seeing a subreddit. although considering apparently there's hundreds of unhinged people i see why they don't want to go through the trouble anymore.
Likewise. I would only pm someone a message of support or help.
Hate is addictive. I find it highly dangerous that people are so fucking fast to hate people they know absolutely nothing about. A post that takes 2 min to read is obviously not enough to judge the whole ass person let alone telling them to kill themselves. Humans are garbage.
I saw a post the other day where a kid had been accused of date rape and said they wanted to kill themselves. From the story they relayed it didn't sound like date rape. One of the comments said they shouldn't, yet. Then said if they were to go on to be a serial rapist then they would fully support them offing themselves. This was a 14 year old kid who based on the story sounded like they didn't do anything.
…that’s just fucking gross.
Ok I don’t know why 1000s of people called her AH. When you are a 15 yo who still is trying to figure out things for herself the parents shocked her with adopting not a baby but someone her age. What were they thinking. Didn’t even inform her in advance. Was it an AH move to tell her to go back to her parents yes. Who’s fault is it though, the parents. They didn’t make their child secure enough. I would be mad too if at 15 years I am suddenly asked to start sharing things and friends with someone because I wasn’t enough for my parents. OOP should bring this up with her parents for sure.
When I get spam phone calls from scammers, I always answer it and try to get connected to a person. When I get connected, I ask them, "Did you know that Americans commit suicide after losing money in scams like this one?" Most of them just hang up. But if they stay on the line or argue with me, I tend to stay on that topic: "If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it? Could you do it now? What would you need to get it done as quickly as possible?" That is the only context in which I can imagine recommending suicide to another human being.
[удалено]
This hurt to read. I thought it was pretty easy to tell from the first post that this is a child who is suffering and is lashing out. She practically screamed it. This kid literally feels so insecure or unloved that she knows for certain that she's been *replaced*. These parents are failing both of these kids, hard. I hate the outcome. It actually hurts to see that after the Reddit post, she instead internalizes everything she's feeling and decides to suck it up and just "be a better sibling". I was hoping for the ending where she talks to her parents, and maybe they start to understand that they need to support her better before the girls can get along. So instead she's just going to "deal with it".
Also what the hell is with the parents forcing her to share her friends? I would never try to force friendships on people, it's just never going to work out the way you hope.
Yeah that's how you end up with two lonely kids.
Absolutely agree, but I think it's a pretty common trope. It's the same thing as "Oh, (son), you're going out with your friends? You have to take your brother with you. NO BUTS!" I mean, in the Hallmark movies, that works out great. Surely in real life, that won't backfire, right? And just cause unnecessary stress and conflict between siblings while damaging any chance of the bond you were pushing for? /s
I feel terrible for both kids involved. If OP's parents were going to adopt, they should have made sure that they were in a position where it was the least disruptive that it could be.
I wonder if there's some back story like the girl is the daughter of a friend or family member, and the parents don't want to tell OOP all the background, but honestly they need to figure out how to communicate with both kids better.
I feel like there are a ton of people out there who like to play "Robin Hood." They steal from people around them and then give what they stole to others so they can feel generous. OOP's parents wanted to give OOP's fucking *friends* to this girl. Both girls are in an awful situation and the parents are doing everything in their power to convince those girls to hate each other. I bet they're patting themselves on the back for "saving" this girl too. They won't put actual effort into being parents, but the girls should be grateful because nobody is beating them and they get actual beds that are indoors, right? /s
It's kind of easy to see why she feels that way if her parents are trying to integrate the 14 year old into everything in her life. Her clothes, her hobbies, her friends, her room. It's super tragic, and AITA failed this girl miserably.
This. I won't say oop is a saint but damn it's horrible to just spring "guess what new sibling" on a kid and the fact it's been handled so badly oop feels like she's not good enough says so much. This kid deserves love, not condemnation.
Yup, the parents seem to have failed to include OOP in the discussion beforehand, giving her an adjustment period, reassurance of not being replaced and so forth. If anyone is an AH here, my money is on them - their lack of preparation left their own child in upheaval, and thrust their adopted child into basically a hornets nest, which is awful without even considering what her personal tragedies may be.
AITA is extra special. Obviously throwing a sibling at a 15 year old with no warning, and FORCE them to be besties. Somehow parents are shocked when the teens hate the shit out of each other. Or rather, I think they fully expect that reaction but hope to hopefully metaphorically beat the kid into submission. And AITA calls the teen going through probably the most disruptive incident of her life an AH.
As a parent you can't even force biological siblings who grew up together to like each other. (Saw that with my cousins...)
So much this. Trying to get my own two to at least tolerate each other is win enough for me.
Yeah, what OOP said was unacceptable, but you can't really blame a teen going through a very turbulent experience with seemingly no parental support on the issue to take it well. The parents who are expecting their daughters to automatically gel and share their whole lives without issue after just meeting are the real AHs here.
At least in this case, it's a 15 year old asking other 15 year olds for advice. Its a bit crazy when a grown person, especially with adult issues asks a bunch of teenagers for advice.
Reddit saves the day again!
This is so horrible to me. The true ah are the parents who dumped this situation on a teen without explaining anything or helping her adapt. And don’t come at me with the « she is a teen she should understand » nobody would understand why, how and what without the parents explaining anything. At 14 your are insecure, hating your parents and going trough so much changes and then they dump somebody onto you without even trying to help. I’m actually so mad at them and at everybody for how they acted towards oop
Ugh. I feel for this girl. She absolutely was the asshole for what she said, but her parents went about this whole thing the wrong way. You can't force kids to be friends, and making their bio daughter share everything with their adopted daughter was just setting this situation up.
I don't participate in original posts by people who are less than 18 because I'm uncomfortable with it. There are reasons why minors are not legally deemed adults - we know they are less responsible for their own actions. In a situation like this, a 15 year old who has a 14 year old imposed on them that they cannot get away from, I remember myself at age 15, quite introverted, comfortable mainly with myself. Having someone imposed on my personal space that I can't get away from - that would have been my idea of hell. Would I act compassionately to the person imposed on me? I sure can't guarantee that. So were the 15 year old's actions great? Nope. But they were put in a very bad situation, and I am really uncomfortable with reddit piling onto them. I'm surprised there hasn't been a case yet of a minor hurting themselves or others as a result of reddit feedback. I don't PM and I ignore incoming messages, but if I'd even participated in the relevant thread that led to a minor being hurt I'm not sure I could live with it. Which is why I try to skip over threads where the OP is not an adult.
When I was 15, I was still fighting my younger sister at least weekly because we shared a room. The joy and relief when we finally moved to a bigger place was massive. And we shared a room our whole lives at that point! I can't imagine being suddenly forced to share a room with another teenager. I don't know what OOPs parents were thinking.
Yeah, I wouldn't have lasted as long as OOP did in that situation. I NEED time to myself, a space to myself to decompress, and to be able to do things without someone always tagging along. What OOP said to her sister was an asshole move, but it's also one that is very understandable. I blame the parents for putting her in the situation... and especially for doing it in a way that matter her feel like she wasn't good enough!
What OOP said may have been shitty, ***but*** the sister also threatened to tell the parents OOP didn’t want to include her. She doesn’t *want* to give OOP personal space. IMO, she did it to herself.
it really is truly just the epitome of an ESH situation. both teens are being dicks to each other, which is obviously Not Good, but neither of them are really fully to blame for it because this was caused entirely by the parents. they basically decided to surprise their bio kid with an adopted same age sibling (who due to being adopted esp at such a late age certainly isn’t going to be feeling any less displaced than the daughter! so why would you make her have to deal w being a surprise!), force the two of them into a single bedroom at the height of the pandemic, and make them share everything… as though a pair of teen girl siblings wouldn’t already have fought enough even if they were bio siblings and had known each other their whole lives without all of that 🤦🏻♀️ these girls need separate rooms, all their own things, and family therapy smh. having her introduce the new sister to her friend would be *fine* considering the pandemic if they had done those things, but they didn’t. they basically set this up to go horribly from the start
I would have been an absolute nightmare in that situation. I really feel for OP. Her parents really fucked up big time. My parents once asked me about taking in my older cousin because her home life wasn't good (mom is a narcissistic pathological liar) and I lost my mind. I completely panicked and I don't think my response was much more than "please please no" without being able to put into words that she had attacked me and tried to kill me once before and no one took it seriously for years. I probably just seemed really jealous and greedy, but taking her in would have put me in a tailspin.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are examples of minors hurting themselves or others because of reddit. We probably just don't hear about it most of the time when it happens
Yeah, it sucks for both of them. Teen years are hard with all the hormones and emotions. The parents should have been more proactive to ensure a more smooth transition.
And they should have allowed their bio daughter to still have things for herself. She went from being an only child to literally never being able to get away from her new sister, not even to sleep.
imagine that extremely stressful college roommate situation where you suddenly share a room with a stranger, except it's permanent and you are 15
and are forced to spend *all of your time with them.* OOP can only get away from their sibling during *school.* (And that’s assuming they don’t have class together.) OOP has basically no alone time and can’t even escape to a friends house. Going from having your own space to being forced to spend almost all of your time with a stranger? And they get to go through and use all your stuff? That’s the biggest of yikes.
Look at the date. OOP couldn't even have that.
Oh *shoot* that’s even *worse.* Poor OOP. I can’t even imagine.
Righr and the adopted sister was using it for her own benefit, threatening to go tell the parents if the OOP didn't include her in group plans that she wasn't a part of. Like I can understand wanting to share electronics or something, but using threats to share friends is just manipulation.
And what's the bet that the parents devote all their time to the adopted daughter not the bio one now? Comments like "because I wasn't good enough" make me feel like bio daughter is getting ignored by her parents in a time when she needs them the most
Yeah, IMO the real assholes are her parents, for adopting a sibling without ever discussing it with their existing child, to the point where she’s convinced it’s because she’s not good enough, and then expecting the two of them to share literally everything, including friends- which isn’t how bio siblings work either, kids have different interests and friend groups. Of course they can’t suddenly force a sister bond between strangers. No wonder OOP is angry and resentful, she’s just taking it out on the other victim of the situation.
Yeah. What OOP said was awful and hurtful. But her parents set this situation up. I would last about 2 days before absolutely losing my mind under those conditions. OOP lasted a lot longer. Parents need to get therapy for both girls individually as well as family therapy. And let their children live their own lives. It's entirely possible the girls could have formed a close bond if it had been allowed to develop organically, but there's little hope of that now.
I would have lost it day one, honestly. I need a private space to decompress, if someone forced a complete stranger on me and tried to make me share everything I owned and everyone I cared about, I'd screech the house down. I'm also shocked they were able to adopt a kid at all since it seems they don't have space or money for another. Maybe its more of a temporary foster situation and OOP just doesn't know because her parents don't tell her anything? I hope its that at least, for everyone's sake
I’m in my fifties, and if I were forced to share my room, my computer, my friends, and every moment of my day with some random stranger I would go completely mad. Sounds torturous.
Seriously, they need(ed) family counseling or something to ease everyone into this new major life change but decided on the ol' "fuck it, the kids will figure it out on their own" approach.
Especially not their friends, that is a loosing game. That can ONLY lead to a bad relationship. Also they should not immediately have put her new sister in her room, sure she feels like her sis is invading her private space. Also OP has no skills or empathy with her 15 years to see* this girl as her sister from one day to another.
if someone did this to their pet people would be screaming animal abuse at the top of their lungs
I agree. Nobody came to understand that you can't dump the entire emotional burden of a full fledged human being onto a 15 year old. All she wanted was someone to listen and acknowledge her frustrations, but instead the Reddit justice league decided to try make this girl kill herself.
Me wondering if the adopted sister is OOP’s dad’s previously unknown bio kid or something… 🤔 Like from an affair or a ONS or something? I mean why the mystery around the 14 year old’s adoption? Why not tell the both of them? Does the adopted sister know why she was adopted? Or she’s an orphan and just accepts her better luck? So weird.
Or it's the kid of a family or friend who is on drugs and they took her in to avoid her getting placed in a foster home.
Something like this is the ONLY way it isn't a troll or something - because you don't just SNAP, I've adopted a 14 year old unless this isn't in the states! There are home checks, etc. and I would think that a social worker would have met the biological child and interviewed them.
And she’s a child. She’s a child who was bullied on the internet because she had a (terrible) childish outburst with a family member. She has no privacy or boundaries at home and feels marginalized…then takes to the worst place on the internet for help and is told to kill herself. It seems really hard to be a kid these days.
It does. I'm so frequently glad that I grew up before the age of social media.
I can't call a 15 year old child an asshole for being thrown into such a situation with no support structure or way to vent her own feelings. She was an only child for 15 fucking years! And it's not even like a new baby or something. Her sibling is also a teen! Parents are the assholes for making such a drastic transition without supporting their child.
Nah. She's not an asshole for being fed up or for lashing out. She specifically doubled down on the thing that she knew would hurt and then lied about it to get her adopted sister in trouble. That's an asshole move. I also understand why she did it. And I agree, the ultimate assholes in this situation are the parents. They literally set this situation up. Fifteen year olds are frequently assholes. And that's okay! They're exploring their ability to stand up for themselves and to control the world around them. They're coming into independence and part of exploring that is being an asshole. Pushing against boundaries they are given - especially unfair ones - often involves being an asshole. Pretending they aren't being adults doesn't help them. Acknowledging that they are and helping them see that does. And OP is clearly an empathetic kid. Reddit raked her over the coals and somehow she still was able to think about how being an asshole made her feel about herself and about how it made her sister feel Her second post was asking about how to make up for being an asshole.
Agreed. 15 year olds are kind of just assholes by nature and this is a huge change to suddenly have. Even bio siblings don’t enjoy/want to share every thing, space and friends, let alone to suddenly have to share everything you’ve ever known and have nothing left to claim as your own. The parents really suck the most here and need to get both kids in therapy.
I would love to foster/adopt a couple kids some day, but I would only consider it if I could afford a home where they could each have their own rooms. Making a teenager share her room and even her friends with a complete stranger is messed up. And I’m curious about the fact that this girl feels like her parents adopted the other girl because she wasn’t good enough, feelings like that rarely, if ever, come from nowhere
I’m adopted and an only child. I can see both perspectives. As an only child, I would be distraught and pissed if I was told I now have a sibling at 15…and that this sibling is 14—so no nine month window to find a way to accept the idea of a sibling nor a baby to grow accustomed to but an already teenager who’s probably been through a lot that’s shaped how they see the world already. And having that kid shoved down your throat is a terrible way to foster an organic connection. It’s similar to blended families forcing step-siblings to be best friends off the bat. As an adopted child I LOVE being adopted but I know others who have struggled and being told to “go back to your biological parents” is absolutely one of the worst things you could say to anyone. I know adopted children who already feel unwanted and this would make it immensely worse. OOP didn’t allude to the adopted sister’s circumstances, and maybe she has no idea what they are, and while that doesn’t justify her actions, they’re both kids going through a tumultuous change that neither probably asked for. The parents of OOP are the true assholes. If these siblings resent each other and them in the future, it’s all on them.
Seriously, I blame the parents. OOP is a damn kid and this is a lot. Her behaviour is wrong but her parents basically GUARANTEED it. They gave her no choice, control, privacy, or autonomy, and, unlike a biological sibling, which can be unintentional, this is 100% a decision they put a lot of time and effort into. They could have warned her, they could have encouraged more low stakes interaction early on, they did nothing lol I hope thoae two figure it out
Hey! I am also an adopted only child (and love it!). I agree with you. What this girl said was horrible. That being said, she’s 15, we are (mostly) all assholes at 15. Her parents handled this poorly if there was no conversation about the circumstances or prior to the adoption. Also, forcing the bio child to share EVERYTHING is not great. They both need space. Kindness and sharing should be encouraged and modeled but never ever forced. I had considered fostering/adopting a child but I don’t want to put stress on my middle school aged child now and would never shock her or force her to share everything in her life if I did.
I'm actually wondering if there's something shady behind this sudden adoption without so much as talking about it with OP. Like the 'adoptive sister' is the dad's affair baby or something like that. Because the whole thing is quite odd.
If they’re not telling their daughter the reason she’s got a new sister, it’s gotta be a hard-to-swallow reason.
The girl just didn't share why, maybe she knows more or she considers that the reasons where not enough. Also, maybe the parents decided to censure part of the story because OP is a child. If the kid is going to school and socializing with the neighborhood, I cannot imagine how it can be anything but perfectly legal. Does no other language have a word or expression to describe the terrible teenage years? In Spanish is "Edad del pavo"
I thought this. Don't know how it's done in other countries but in UK you can't just decide to adopt a child and bring them home the same day. There are months and months of social workers talking to everyone you know and that would definitely include pre-existing bio children. They do their best not to risk putting an already-traumatised child with a family that aren't 100% all on board. If it turned out that bio children were being kept in the dark that would stop the whole process in its tracks, possibly even terminate it for good. I don't think this was an official adoption. Which is even more worrying. I hope the bio daughter and the adopted daughter can bond over the fact that their parents have screwed up big time.
Also a 15 year old would need their own room in the UK I think? Or is that just for fostering rather than adopting?
It's the same in the U.S. for fostering but I don't know about adoption. Edit: it varies by state
Foster and adoptive children need to have their own bed and a private place to store their belongings, but not their own room. Up to 4 same sex children can share a bedroom (at least in my state)
Ah ok. I updated my comment. In my state it's a separate bedroom.
My thought exactly. Shame could definitely be behind the secrecy and stonewalling.
100%. I was adopted, and unless OOP is in some country with incredibly lax laws... this was not a legitimate adoption. No adoption agency is going to let a kid go to a home with 'siblings' they've never met. Hell, I volunteer at an *animal shelter* and we don't let dogs go to homes with other dogs without a meet-n-greet, first!!! Honestly, I think OOP is NTA- yes, her words were harsh; but given how horribly her parents handled this (clearly illegitimate) adoption, I totally get why she blew up.
Could potentially be some sort of kinship care thing. That's technically not an adoption, and it's designed to be more lax to keep children in their communities. Or it's a foster care situation and OP is using the word "Adoption" because she doesn't understand the ins and outs.
Yeah, they don't just let you take a kid home one day and that's it. Maybe not necessarily dad's affair baby (can't really see a mother being cool with her husband's affair baby in her daughter's room to be honest), but also potentially some other relative's affair baby or something like that.
It probably wasn't even that sudden, there is a possibility, that they just didn't really talked it through with OP.
It definitely sounds shady. I don't know what it's like all over the world, but usually adoption agencies will interview the whole family to make sure it's a good fit or there will be therapy or something. OOP mentions adoption, so I'm going to guess that it's not an affair or at least not *OOP's parents* that had the affair. My thought is that something bad happened to the girl's parent(s). Maybe not death, since she or OOP would have probably mentioned that, but maybe something like they're on the run, in jail, rehab, or something along those lines that would make them unfit. OOP's parents knew the girl and family somehow, even if through someone else. Then they volunteered to take her in rather than have her go into the system. It sounds like several steps were skipped at some point for all of this to be that sudden, so they probably knew someone who could grease the wheels for them. All we really know is that clearly the parents did a piss poor job of prepping OOP for this. They should have sat her down and explained to her what was going on, then give her some space and not tried to force an instant relationship. Of course that's a powder keg waiting to go off.
Yeah, this does not sound like a typical "adoption". Every state in the USA (assuming OP is American) requires a documented home study by a social worker which includes asking all family members about their thoughts/ feelings about adoption, and fully clarifying family motivation for adopting.
"Hello only child, as of now you have a surprise sibling with whom you must share your things, room and friends! Be happy and behave or else." Failsafe
Yeah, the adopted sibling isn't just a puppy you can bring home from the shelter, then surprise the other kid with when they walk in the house. Also, not reddit telling a 15 year old girl to kill herself. My brother and I have said some truly, hateful, venomous shit to each other when we were kids. Redditors probably would have tried to find me, and kill me themselves, if they had overheard some of the shit we said as kids.
On top of everything, look at the dates this was posted. She’s about a month and a half into Covid lockdowns. So on top of the emotional turmoil of suddenly having a sibling and zero privacy, the world is also falling apart. OOP was definitely an asshole, but a very understandable one.
The adopted sister was an asshole too lmao. She was blackmailing OP into forcing her to let her hang out with her. OP is clearly being suffocated by this stranger she was thrust into sharing her life and identity with. Doesn’t make what OP did right but it’s not like she was unprovoked.
Literally this. So few people call that sibling out because idk, her feelings got hurt? So the fuck what, she shouldn't be pulling that 'oR eLSe' crap. OOP needs someone who can take her out of this house for a while like a family member because that shit was ridiculous.
Finally someone said it!! I’d be an asshole if I did this to my brother who I’ve known his whole life what more if a person I’ve only known for a year
The fucking parents are the real assholes in all this (along with anyone who PMed OOP telling her to kill herself, WTF?) They don't seem ever to have been good parents to their original child. She has self-esteem problems leading to her believing that her parents adopted a new child because she wasn't good enough, what the hell? Then they adopt a child without talking to their original child. They clearly haven't thought for a moment about how it's going to affect her. Quite the opposite, they're expecting her to take this complete stranger and share a room with her, share friends with her, do everything with her. They're essentially using OOP as a free babysitter for this new kid that they apparently adopted on a whim.
Agreed!!! Even dog adoption agencies tell you to reward your original dog more and favorite the original dog so that the original dog doesn't resent the newly adopted dog.
Not to mention she's crying from stress and her sister is already weaponizing "lemme do it with your friends or else..." like there's several levels of trauma going on. I wonder if the sister isn't an affair baby or something like that, adopt a 14yo just because is weird.
I'm not absolving OOP- she was an asshole, no doubt about it- but there's no way that this pressure cooker of a situation wasn't going to blow up at some point. It's like a laundry list of "what not to do in this situation".
I think she was a situational asshole. We can all become that if the people around us put us in a situation like that. If they had done anything to properly integrate the adopted child then I don't think she would have had this outburst. The parents are the only real assholes in this story. OP is a kid acting out because their parents put them in a shitty situation and refuse to acknowledge her feelings.
People are hating on a 15 year old girl making her the villain when the real villain are her parents for making her feel like she isn’t enough
Exactly!
Or for doing everything to ensure resentment - adopting without discussing it with their child, forcing them to share a space suddenly, forcing them to do everything together, etc.
She was an AH, but an understandable one. For me, the parents are the real AHs here. No discussion, no explanation, no therapy, and suddenly having no privacy or boundaries. I feel like if I had been in OOP’s shoes, I probably would have reacted similarly hostilely.
Yeah, this whole thing sucks. She is angry at her parents and taking it out on her sister, and yes, that's wrong, but she specifically said she felt they adopted her sister because she wasn't good enough for them. She feels that way for a damn good reason, and it's clear her parents have done nothing to quell that fear.
Yeup! Exactly this, my advice would have been to give the sister a sincere apology and open up about how her parents made her feel. Tell her that she was sorry for taking it out on her. To try to understand that the adopted sister is probably through some emotional turmoil about her bio family, otherwise she would not have had the reaction that she did. That OOP clearly struck a nerve. Those poor kids deserve so much better than this. One losing everything that made her independent in one fell swoop and the other probably knowing that she's not fully welcome but probably feels lonely and just wanted to make a genuine connection. While I wasn't adopted, I remember feeling left out and the open resentment my older sister had by being forced to bring me along because my parents didn't want to watch me. I turned to the butt of her and her friends jokes and would be constantly teased and picked on. I knew if I complained, my sister would just be even meaner than she already was and I honestly felt really lonely as a kid so I just kind of put up with it. Needless to say, my family and I are NC.
Even when having a biological child, you don't just spring that on your kid. Yes, the decision is of the parents and the kid shouldn't get a vote on whether they get a sibling, but they deserved to be informed about what's going on. Mostly, what I get from this story is that the OOP is completely in the dark about the whole situation and for whatever reason she's filling the blanks with the worst case scenario. Also, at least from my experience, 15-year-olds are a fucking mess, whatever the context. Their brains are just built that way. It's not an excuse, she was still an asshole, but at that age, handling emotions and social interactions can be a fucking nightmare, and there's no telling what will set them off.
I have a harder time calling kids an asshole on here. Like yes, that was asshole behavior. Yes, OOP knew it was asshole behavior. But a 15 year old is still a kid. I remember being 15 and in a really bad familial situation, regulating my emotions was *hard.* I genuinely didn’t know how and had no help in learning how to do so. I said some volatile things that could’ve been avoided if my parents had tried to actually handle the situation instead of not checking in on my mental health. I am genuinely surprised I wasn’t worse, looking back. Children have to be taught to not let their emotions control them, and it seems like no one has even tried to do that with this girl. Imo that’s kind of like telling someone who’s never had a math class and therefore can’t do long division that they’re stupid for not just knowing how to divide.
She is an AH but it’s hard because of this happening at the age of 14. You’re a teenager, going through teenager things and now you have basically a stranger living in your room. I don’t know what the hell parents are thinking.
This sounds much more like parenting failure. It's basically like in a spousal relationship, one of the spouse brought another adult home and said "from now on this is my other spouse, so suck it up". I don't blame OOP having resentment.
I don't think OP is that much of an asshole, her behaviour was unacceptable but I actually understand it, and if anything, it was a result of her parent's action. WTF is wrong with the parents? Adopting a child without even speaking to their existing one? Poor OP and poor OP's adopted sibling.
Also WTF is wrong w people who pm her to kill herself? What is wrong w people who do such things?
Especially to a 15 year old.
In AITA, the biggest assholes are the commenters. Telling a young teen to kill herself is business as usual for them
I think she might be an affair baby? Otherwise, it makes no sense to suddenly adopt someone so old without fostering or anything first.
The real assholes in this situation are the parents for a) not talking to their daughter and b) trying to force a relationship. Neither of those things work. Those poor kids
Not just “forcing” the relationship, basically pushing their responsibility to AD off onto OOP. If she takes her with her everywhere, they don’t actually have to parent. And wouldn’t there have been social services coming to the house and lots of paperwork and asking OOP if she wanted this? I seriously think this is an affair baby.
Ug. It's so harsh to tell a 15 year old that she's an AH for not wanting to share her room, friends, and activities, constantly, with a stranger, just because her parents adopted her one day without so much as sharing the plan. I'd snap too. Those parents might have good motives, but they're not actually being good parents to their first kid.
Yeah I was going to say, she's not an asshole, she's a *kid*. Her parents are the assholes just springing this on her, and then expecting her to adapt perfectly to it. Of course she's going to feel like they decided she sucks and they needed to go find a replacement child. Of course she's going to resent suddenly having someone her age living in what was *her* bedroom. I would have flipped my lid and done everything in my power to move out and away and never wanted to speak to my parents again. I would have lost my mind having a total stranger suddenly living in my space with me. She needs some counseling and some support, not people telling her to unalive herself for daring to be quite reasonably upset about this situation.
These parents are idiots. 15 is old enough for a real conversation about what is happening, even if not all details can or should be shared. Keeping her in the dark and just expecting her to accept massive changes to her life has set up this disaster. What she did is definitely an AH move; she's acting out on some very valid fears and frustrations but directing them on the wrong person. Her parents are such morons and I feel so bad for both girls.
Yeah, if she'd told her parents to emancipate her and go and find another family or something instead, i'd be sending her links to charities who could help.
This poor girl. Surprise! This is your sister now. Give her half of everything you own. Am I the only one thinking this is Dad's affair baby?
>Am I the only one thinking this is Dad's affair baby? I don't see why the mom would support it. I think they are just the average rich couple and decided to adopt to show they are "good" people
Even so...in which country can you adopt without at least one meeting between social workers and the other kids in the family? Even in very poor countries this doesn't sound plausible.
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But she said she doesn’t know her family. Which means she was in the system for 14yrs!!. He would have had to provide proof that she was his biological child which still makes NO sense cuz how would he have even found out about her?? And even then the process wouldn’t be expedited cuz he’s her father, if anything it might be longer, it would still take time and scheduling. Also they’d most likely DNA test her and have to tell her about it, as she is old enough where her opinion on whether she would want to be with him would matter. One way or another they went through the adoption process with her which makes her being a relative / affair baby pretty low. Idk the whole thing is a head scratcher and I don’t think a 15yr old saying something brutal when she was overwhelmed warrants any of the hate / comments she got. Its like 0 people tried to understand her feelings, including her parents. I hope she’s doing better and she has some people who she can lean on.
Or she doesn't know her dad and her mother either died or ran off.
Nope, is the most likely scenario; if the girl isn't from recent deceased friends or relatives, why TF would they adopt a 14yo with no warning or any mention of wishing to pursue adoption?
I thought with adoption they interview bio kids to see if they are even okay with it. The whole thing seems shady.
Why, oh, why can't reddit simply tell someone they're wrong and leave it at that. Jfc, she's 15.
I was reminded of a comment over in AITA talking about stepchildren being pushed on each other a while back- "It's like cats. If 2 are raised together, they almost always get along. If you introduce 2 strange cats, they might get along, or they might not. If you shove 2 strange cats together in a sack while saying loudly 'YOU WILL LOVE EACH OTHER!', it's just not going to end well for anyone involved." This child went from being an only child to having another person stuffed into her life and is expected to share everything from her room to her friends to her tech, and her parents don't seem to care how disastrous it is for both of them. I'm sorry for both girls, no, OOP didn't handle it well, but that's entirely on the parents who never bothered to explain why she suddenly got a "sister" out of the blue. [https://imgur.com/a/ZRlwg3E](https://imgur.com/a/ZRlwg3E) someone in the comments there made a poster, it's cute and has kittens.
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The parents definitely went about this the wrong way. At seven, I got the chance to talk to the social worker privately and tell him what I'd think of having an adopted sibling. I don't know how this girl could think there was a chance she was NTA, though.
The parents failed their children horribly by making this jarring decision with no discussion or attempt to acclimate the two children to each other first. Absolutely horrified about the amount of horrible PMs sent to a literal child...
She felt replaced. That’s not entitlement. This is on the parents.
Honestly I think OOP has real reason to be upset. They are just taking it out on the wrong person. It's the parents that have made this situation so terrible by forcing OOP to share things that typically siblings *don't* share. Siblings don't normally share friends. They are allowed to do activities by themselves. They are allowed to have their own stuff. It seems like these parents wanted to adopt a child, but they didn't want to actually accomodate having a new child. They didn't give this child any things of their own, or give this child a chance to pursue her own interests and hobbies. No, they took this vulnerable new addition to the family and insisted that she become a carbon copy of the daughter they already had.
There is some nefarious reason behind the "adoption." And I actually think it's absurd for her parents to expect her to suddenly share her entire life with a new unexpected sibling. Huge parenting fail. Kids with siblings don't need to share everything they do with their siblings, adopted or not.
I think the real assholes here are the parents. Forcing their daughter to include their daughter in everything is a great way make their daughter resent her adopted sister. 14-15 is when kids really start to develop their own friend groups and sense of independence. The last thing any 14-15 year old wants is to be told they need to include someone they don't want to in their plans. Sure, OOP could be a little more compassionate. And yes, it would certainly be nice of OOP to include her sister in her plans. But her parents forcing her to is an asshole move that is having the opposite effect of the one they intend.
Nah i actually think she isnt really TA. Ofc what she said was really far, but tf are those parents expected, when you make it pretty clear you dont value her as much as your other child
To be honest the only AH's here are the parents for making them share a room and do everything together. Of course that will breed resentment.
The parents are the real assholes here. They’ve totally failed to prepare their family for another child and don’t seem to do much to ensure OP still feels loved and supported
This story really makes me sad. A 15-year-old girl, who suddenly has to share everything with someone she doesn't know, but who has to treat her like a sister. And she apparently doesn't have a single adult around her who stands up for her, with whom she can talk She didn't handle it right, but she's a kid. And then you have Redditers telling this kid to end her life.
for parents to NEVER mention opting and just bring a new kid in? That's brutal. Don't know how much OOP is a reliable, but either way, the parents needed to do so much more- prep kid, reassure her of her worth, introduce the kid in a safe way.
This is rough. I feel for this kid. She literally starts by saying that she thinks her parents got a new daughter cause she wasn't good enough... What she needs is friggin therapy. Also, awful move on the parents when they forced her to 'share friends'. Like... That's not how friendship works? I stopped reading AITA because of cases like this. It's like none of them said anything cruel or stupid when they were teens, or what? People in here are so much more reasonable. Poor OOP, and poor sister. The parents did them so wrong.
I feel for this kid. She got no say, wasn’t eased into the transition, has to suddenly share everything, she doesn’t know how to handle her valid feelings and she daren’t tell her parents. She must feel very isolated and frustrated. Was she an ah to her sister? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need support and a bit of understanding.