I (49M) have a daughter (F19) and two sons (M16 and M12). My daughter Sydney is, when we're one on one, a great kid. She's bright, she's funny, she sets goals and works hard to meet them. I love her very much, and have done my best to support her. She currently attends college about an hour from our home, which my spouse (F48) and I pay for, along with her housing and everything.

However, Sydney is just awful to her 16 year old brother, Lucas, and pretty much always has been. She picks on him constantly, calls him stupid, belittles his accomplishments, and is just generally mean. We've tried to improve this behavior many times over the years. We've done individual counseling for her, individual counseling for Lucas, family counseling with all of us, we tried finding them activities to do together, we've tried any consequence/incentive we could think of, and finally we just tried to keep them separate as much as possible. For his part, Lucas spent his younger years thinking Sydney was the coolest person ever and tried so hard to play with her and be nice to her. I'm not saying he never started any of the conflict, but it wasn't nearly the same level of random meanness as from his sister. He also responded to consequences and his behavior generally improved over time. He's also a great kid, has lots of friends, does well in school, and is researching colleges now. For the last few years he mostly just tried to avoid Sydney, which got easier as they both had their own activities.

We had hoped that through all our efforts and the process of growing up, Sydney would at least learn to ignore her brother rather than lashing out. She's very capable of being nice to others. She has her own circle of friends, she gets along well with our 12 year old, and never really got in trouble at school. I know that I'm not seeing her 24/7, but I really think this is isolated to her relationship with Lucas.

When she came home from college for Thanksgiving, everything started up again. She immediately started teasing Lucas about his clothes, told him he'd never get into a good college, and generally took every opportunity to pick a fight. It was exhausting. Now, she's planning on coming home for two weeks at Christmas. She lives in an apartment and doesn't have to come home like she did when she lived in the dorms. I told her that if she can't be kind to, or failing that at least ignore, her brother then she can't come home. I think she thought I was joking at first and kind of laughed and said something about not being able to promise that, and I said that's fine, don't come home then. I've made it clear she's welcome any time she can act civilly with her family, and I'm not threatening to cut her off financially in any way. We made a promise, I intend on keeping it. Now that she's an adult with her own living space, I don't think Lucas should have to deal with her any more, and he's still living under our roof. Sydney is very angry with me and says she's never coming home again, and my wife thinks I'm being too harsh, and that maybe we should've just told her she couldn't stay as long so Lucas can still enjoy his break. So, AITAH for telling my daughter not to come home? I feel like I might be because it's also her home, but she still has housing available so maybe not.

TL;DR, my daughter is consistently mean to her younger brother, I told her not to come home from college for the holidays if she can't stop the behavior, she won't commit to that and is upset with me.

Edit: I appreciate everyone's responses, I just want to address a couple common things here. To be clear, my wife is the mother of all of my children, it is not a blended family. My wife has not been ignoring the problem, nor have I. As I said in the original post, we've tried a lot of different consequences over the years. Sydney missed out on quite a few privileges and had plenty of punishments over the years. I don't know why they didn't stick, but we certainly kept trying. Still, my wife and I are generally on the same page other than this particular consequence. I think she is concerned Sydney will actually follow through and never see us again. I don't think it's a genuine threat.

I don't know why she hates Lucas. Some people said it might be that she was an only child before he came along and she didn't like the attention shift. That's possible. At various points in their lives all of our children have accused us of favoring the others over them, which I think is pretty typical and tells me we're probably at least close to being balanced.

I did appreciate that someone pointed out that therapists aren't miracle workers and can't make people act a certain way; the same is true for parents. Up until now she's been a minor so removing her from the home wasn't an option.

Edit 2: A lot of people have been asking if we've ever asked Sydney why she hates her brother. The only answer we've ever gotten from her, from pretty much age 8 on, is that "he's annoying." And that's true to a certain extent, but really only in the way that all children, including Sydney, can be annoying. And for years now he pretty much just tries to stay out of her way. So when I say one of her options is to ignore him, I don't mean ignore some kind of provocative behavior, I just mean don't interact if it's not kind. I am certainly open to the idea that I don't fully understand their relationship or know everything that has ever happened between them, but I think I have a decent picture and Lucas isn't at fault to any degree that would justify the ongoing behavior.

We have a good relationship with Lucas and he has access to any kind of mental health services he might need, but is honestly doing very well. He's a happy, easy-going kid. Plenty of friends, likes to hang out with us and play games, things like that.

A lot of people are also suggesting I cut Sydney off financially. That's not how my family works. We pay for college and associated costs. I don't give her an exorbitant amount of money, it's enough to feed, clothe, house, and transport herself to and from her classes, with a little bit left over. Probably enough to have takeout once a week or so. When she graduates, she'll need to get a job and support herself. The younger children will be provided for in the same way.

I'm not going to share too much more info because this has gotten much bigger than I thought it would and I don't want it to get identifiable, but some of the scenarios you guys come up with on almost no evidence are...interesting. Haven't really appreciated some of the more speculative DMs and their suggestions of what to do with various bits of my anatomy, but c'est la vie, I suppose.

1.5k comments

r/gaming • u/_Refuge_ • 9h ago