Took advantage of my brother

I'm female and 21. Years ago, when I was about 12-13 and my brother was 3-4, I basically bribed him into making out with me. I did it at least twice. My ignorant belief was that he would be too young to remember and it couldn't have a lasting psychological effect on him. I also did it because I was convinced that I couldn't do that with anyone my own age due to insecurities, so I took advantage of him. There was also an incident in my room where I asked him to do some sexual stuff, but he replied "what?" and I just snapped out of it, stopped, said "just kidding" and vowed to myself never to do anything like that again. He said "then why did you ask?" and I didn't have an answer.

We have a good relationship now and he is 11. I don't know if he remembers it, or if it will have some unconscious psychological effect on him. For years I forgot about it, or kept it in the back of my mind, but now it's resurfacing and I want to make it right. I don't know what to do. Should I talk to him directly about it? Should I confess it to a therapist? I don't know where to start, but I want to take responsibility for it and minimize the lasting damage. How to proceed?

Hi

Determining what is abuse and what is childhood experimentation can be difficult to do imo but I think an important thing here is how your brother is and also how you feel about the whole thing. I would suggest that a good place to start in terms of figuring things out would be to talk to a therapist. They will be able hopefully to help you figure out whether you need to do anything further about this and should help with your feelings about it all.

Take good care and try not to beat yourseslf up

Cracked