I love to say that I'm right a lot, especially when it comes to psychological disorders--mostly because it's my field of study and I'm working towards a PhD in the field. However, this isn't something that I'm being bratty and "I'm-always-right" about. I'm 23 years old and have a little brother who will be 12 in a few months. He is absolutely horrendous to our parents. He is not adopted, he is not a half-child or a stepchild--he was a surprise to my parents, but we are not a blended family in any way. As he is the baby (I have a twin brother who is, obviously, also 23), my mother's excuse for letting him behave the way that he does is that she is "tired" and doesn't want to "deal" with him. He displays almost all of the signs and symptoms of ODD, and has already been diagnosed with ADHD. I live with borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder, so my mother immediately disregards any sort of plea to get him seen by a therapist because of how much trouble I've put her through. She always tells me how tired she is of putting her children through therapy, how he isn't going to therapy, and how there's nothing wrong with him. But regularly, if not daily, he is screaming at my parents, hitting and kicking them, spitting on them, swearing at them, telling them both that he wishes they were dead, etc. He's been kicked out of one school and forced us to move to a new town so he could be put into a school that he would be better monitored at. After being at his new school for the past few months, he's already been banned from school events, given a handful of detentions, and always gets phone calls home because of his behavior. And yet, my mother chooses to ignore it and simply scream about how she's a terrible mother and how he's so awful and how she's at the end of her rope...
what can I do? Is there anything that I can do? At this point, I care more about my brother not developing further issues later in life (I am a recovering addict and god, I would never be able to deal with myself if I just allowed my brother to get into that kind of trouble if I could avoid it) than I do about my mother being ignorant and trying to wear blinders around this situation.
Help. /: