I have noticed recently that my brother is changing. For those who don’t really read my blog often, I am 23 years old and my brother is 28 now. My brother has always been the person who will help anyone in need, didn’t now how to tell a lie, and never really had those “not nice” words in his vocabulary. Now any “normal” 28 year old man might be willing to help anyone in need, most likely know how to tell a lie, and definitely at least know those “not nice” words. Over the recent year or two, I’ve noticed my brother’s willingness to help has decreased, he lies all the time about things that would not be deemed worth lying about, and using “not nice” words even in random settings.

The underlying comment here would be that I think he has matured. I was speaking to my dad about it and we were talking about how my brother has changed so much. The idea is that he is maturing into that stage of “preteen” when children are usually defiant and learning how to grow into their own. My brother has these fits of anger-not scary anger-but frustration anger where words are not enough to fully express how mad he feels. I remember feelings like that when I was young. Learning nasty words from work have been a big issue as well. Four letter words really don’t have any meaning for my brother other than he knows they are bad and he isn’t supposed to use them. But he hears everyone else using them so why can’t he? If it is another word that could help him express whatever emotion he feels, then why can’t he use it? We all grow up and experiment with our boundaries with parents, friends, other family members, etc so why should my brother be different? Well he is now a 28 year old man experimenting with boundaries and as a member of the “mentally challenged” community, he is held to different standards than “normal” growing people are held to. My brother is very strong and a fit of anger could end with disastrous consequences-not that he would hurt someone or mean to hurt someone but he COULD hurt someone. The worst part of it all is the lying. He lies about everything. He never used to know how to lie and suddenly it’s about everything aka nothing even important! He lies about whether he emptied the dishwasher or threw his laundry down the shoot to the basement. Instead of saying, “oh no, not yet” he just says whatever he thinks will appease whoever he happens to be talking to. While I don’t remember flat out lying as a preteen, I remember little fibs about things I didn’t want to do.

I wonder if this change in behavior shows how my brother is not yet finished maturing. He is delayed mentally obviously so why would it not be any different psychologically? There are times when I definitely feel like the older sibling because honestly I mentally am the older sibling–which I think is sometimes challenging/frustrating to my brother. He can only watch as my friends and I might go out for a drink or a night on the town because the reality is, he isn’t going to go and grab a beer. I can only wait and see how my brother continues to change and mature as he and I grow up together.

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