Sibling Trouble

[Niraj]

I am 26 and Indian.We are a joint family. I have a younger brother(23) and two cousins , a sister(25) and a brother(21). I am elder to all of them and they don't listen to me.We have all graduated, and me and my brother are doing job in India. My sister has completed masters in America and currently jobless there, and my cousin brother is jobless for a year now here in India.

Problem is : My family expects me to handle them as I am elder to them. At the same time, they wont listen to me : they feel I will just control them and give commands and I will be just enjoying according to them . I am not able to understand ,whats the scope of these words in my family situation (control , commands and enjoy).

They are very immature and seriously need help . Even my family forces me to help them , they do not want to take it anyway. Trying to get close and soothing them makes them go away far that much . I want to do what I can but these are too stupid to even feel my perspective. They would rather destruct than take help from me. Outside there is nothing you would feel anything is wrong but when there is nothing happening to improve the situation . The situation's a showstopper actually!

My younger brother is far far worse to handle . He is hot tempered and has attitude of thwarting people of any suggestions for him. He doesnt listen a single thing. He is very immune to good advice. He is a fool who has company of fools ,who advises him foolish ways and he does even think that its foolish because he is trusting those fools. There are many instances where he has acted fool , which my family also approves of but my family is also not able to mend him.

He is the one who bothers me the most.He is very weak and he doesnt know that, I am afraid he would be able to face and handle the life struggles properly. He has not seen anything. He is narrow minded to be precise. He is living with me from his graduation days. My friends and I myself have been very near to him to help him with studies or whatever he needed during his graduation days. I kept him away from bad company by keeping him to live with me every these many years away from home. Still he does not understand the value of me for his graduation years and now too.

The other two cousin sibling has good parent base with money and they can take care of them without any job. He does not seem to understand that our situation is different.He has potential but he has a big attitude and trust issues.He would just self destruct since now is just the early years in job for him.
I am frightened what he would do if he gets very frustrated.

What would you advise me in my situation ? What can I do better ? How do I change myself? What is the best way to counter this?
TBH, I am one year away from being married , and there are lot of things to take care of. I need to raise lot of money to purchase my own house and for my marriage. My younger brother dont understand anything of my situation. Sometimes I feel like bad parenting for him because my father is not able to mend him. My father talks to me like I have to take care of everybody now on and I would have take them together with me and how will you when your siblings don't co-operate?

 

[ray_zorse]

Dude I understand there are some cultural issues, like expectations on you to care for people etc, but I think you might be going about it slightly the wrong way.

To give an example I used to hang out with a Vietnamese chick in her early-to-mid 20s, Vietnamese familes are somewhat like Indian families in that they are very close, several generations often live under one roof, everybody knows everybody's business, and older siblings are strongly expected to care for younger (including in the sense of interfering, being authoritarian and so on). This girl lives overseas so she doesn't live in her parents' home, she lives with her older sister and her sister's husband. So her sister is something like a mother to her. Tells her when she's allowed to go out, how late she can stay out, who she can see etc. She also reports back on her to the family in Vietnam, so basically my friend has to be very careful about reputation management (no slutty behaviour, et cetera). And I tell you something, I think this is absolutely crazy -- the girl is an adult, she has a job, her own independent income, etc... and she HATES her older sister.

This is basically how it looks from the perspective of your brother, I'm not surprised he's reacting to this tightly constrictive environment. Listen, people do best when they're given space to make their own mistakes. The boy is an adult right? So if he wants to bum around learning nothing and doing nothing, staying out late and hanging out with unsuitable people... why not? He will have to deal with the consequences of his own behaviour later -- people his own age will be educated, progressing in their careers, having families, etc... he won't be -- he'll be stuck in some menial job, not really marriage material, etc. And, this might motivate him to improve. I know it did me. But he has to be given space to make his own mistakes. Remember that true leadership is compassionate. Try to see it from his point of view. Firstly, he might just be a late bloomer, he might need more time to get his shit together. Secondly, he might have totally different goals in life than you -- short term, medium term and long term. What would be much better would be to accept him and show that you accept him unconditionally.

It is also absolutely essential (whether you are a business manager, coach of a team, parent, brother, teacher...) that people be given autonomy to manage their own learning and that they be given areas of responsibility and judged on how well they meet those responsibilities (rather than somebody breathing down their neck and telling them what to do the whole time). So, if he lives in the household with you, then you might consider discussing with him what would be his household responsibilities -- for example, would there be a roster so that people take it in turns to wash the dishes. Or would everybody just cook for themselves and clean up after themselves. What would happen about paying the rent, cleaning the shower? What you need to do is have an open discussion about these things, going into it with an open mind, because he will only do these responsibilities if he takes them on himself, voluntarily, as if it's his own idea, not if they are assigned to him. So just discuss around those topics and see what gives. Apart from that (how he interacts with society, how he pays the rent etc)... it's not really your concern.

The danger of applying the above approach (which has to be applied) is that you may end up with him leeching off you. That's something you need to put a stop to. So if he won't take responsiblity for himself then you have to also not take responsibility for him. Rent not getting paid -> tell him he has to move out. Et cetera. Just act like any ordinary member of society... and treat him like any ordinary member of society too. You're not obliged to grease the rails for him.

What really concerns me about your post is your questions along the line of "how can I fix him"... it just doesn't work that way my friend. That's assuming something is broken -- it might simply be that you don't understand him. The only thing you can change is your own behaviour, and the changes you want to make are (1) being less judgemental (2) giving him more space (3) giving him clear responsibilities if that's unavoidable (4) not being an enabler of bad habits.

Ray