porkster That's very interesting! I hope others do some research on it, too.

Erica and Josh, my thoughts and prayers are with you! I am a bit older than the two of you but have a similar story. i am in my mid-30s and the oldest of 8 children. Both of our parents passed away in 2008. Our dad was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer and passed away after a very hard 3 1/2 month battle. Six months later, our mom was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and passed away a month and a half later. It was a devastating time for all of us and most especially, our youngest brother who was still in high school. Our grandmother had lived with our parents for a bit and fell ill in 2007 and passed away that spring - this was during my brother's sophomore year of high school. During his junior year, our dad got sick and passed away. This was an incredibly hard time for my brother because he's the only boy in the family so if our mom wasn't home to help our dad go to the bathroom at his bedside and my husband wasn't there, our dad would get my brother to help him. There were times when our dad would try to get up in the middle of the night and because he was so weak, he would fall on the floor and then our mom would need my brother and sister to help her pick him up and get him back into bed. It was devastating to see our parents deteriorate so quickly and especially hard on our brother to have to take on so many difficult adult responsibilities at such a young age. Our mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of the summer just before our brother started his senior year and then passed away a month a 2 weeks later. So our brother dealt with 3 major losses throughout his last 3 years of high school. As soon as my mom passed away, i immediately went to the court to get official custody of my brother. My mom and I had talked about me and my husband taking on a guardianship role. Because my brother was 17 at the time and would turn 18 a month and a half later, we got court appointed custody rather than full guardianship. Guardianship would have taken several months to put in place and go before a Judge and at that point, my brother would have been 18 which would make guardianship more difficult. With custody, it is me and my husband vs. my parents but because my parents are deceased, they cannot argue any of the guidelines of the custody agreement. We needed to have some form of official documentation stating our custodial responsibilities in order to get my brother under our health insurance and thankfully, this worked. Erica, it is wonderful that your father set up a trust to help you with school! I wish I could say the same about our parents. Unfortunately, they were not at all prepared for what might happen if they passed away. There were no Wills, no education trusts, nothing to help out with any of the costs to help raise the younger siblings who needed help and guidance, both financial and otherwise. One of my sisters and I are administering the estates (my grandmother, mom, and dad's estates) and our lawyers made it very clear that no estate money could be used to help with education because even though my brother was 17 at the time of their passing, our parents had every right and opportunity to designate money to be left to help with education costs. It was incredibly frustrating and left me in tears many times as I tried to work step by step to figure out how we were going to manage everything financially. Both my husband and I were still paying back our own student loans and I had been laid off from my job shortly after returning back to work after my mom's funeral. I think that changing the dynamics of switching roles from sibling to a parental role can be quite a challenge in many ways. It can also make you feel very isolated from others, even from your family and other siblings sometimes because there can always be those who question how much control you should have, among many other things. Most of my friends have babies or small children so it was hard to find someone I could relate to who could at least understand what it's like to have a child in high school who would soon embark on all of the excitement of senior year - senior trip, prom, graduation. I can remember heading to the bookstore shortly after my mom passed away, pouring through the shelves, looking for any books that would help explain how to handle the transition from sibling to parent... how to raise your teenage brother. There was nothing. The best I could do was buy a book about raising teenage boys and even that wasn't much help because my brother wasn't just an average teenager but one who had been through an enormous amount of trauma and loss. I found that working through the school was a good place to start. His guidance counselor recommended an excellent therapist that some of the other parents had also recommended. This therapist has been wonderful and I am so glad that I thought to ask for resources rather than just trying to wing it on my own. My brother has gone through issues with depression, substance abuse, and thoughts of harming himself. Just recently, he reached a very low point and we were able to find a wonderful treatment program for him and he's already sounding like his once happy, comfortable self. I am so thankful that this program has been so helpful to him and has been teaching him the coping skills he needs to help him get through the rough times which tend to fall around holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries of their passings. The 2nd anniversary of our mom's passing was earlier this week in fact. In spite of the difficulties, my brother graduated from high school and went on to start college, then realized after his first semester at that school that he wanted to transfer to a school where he could follow his passion. He is an incredibly talented musician and wanted to study recording arts. Once he was settled in a new school, learning and studying in a subject matter that he loves, he really began to excel. There have been bumps in the road as he and the rest of us try to pull together as a family and create our "new normal" but there have also been wonderful milestones accomplished and experienced too. In spite of everything we've lost, we are still very blessed! My thoughts and prayers are with you both Erica and Josh. I am so glad that you found one another! I too come online to try to find other people who have experienced a similar situation because it always feels good to find others who you can relate with. Take care and may God Bless you and your families!!

I also can understand the *feeling* and the emotions (hurt, betrayal, anger, etc.) it might dig up. But I also think it is so important as parents to not project OUR feelings and emotions onto our children. Our children are separate individuals, not extensions of ourselves. They are entitled to form their own opinions and relationships with family members, independant of what our feelings might be. This reminds me so much of how BM has behaved in the past. She has never liked the fact that DH was with me (even though I didn't come on the scene until over a year after their breakup!) and I think she's always felt threatened by our family unit. She's admitted in the past to feeling jealous. And those feelings are hers, and that's okay. I can empathize with them. But what isn't okay is to project them onto her son, which is what she did for many years. Thankfully, she's better about it than she used to be, but she spent a good 3-4 years reminding SS that I wasn't his mom, that it was so sad that his dad loved me and DD more than him (TOTALLY UNTRUE) etc. She projected HER feelings of hurt and anger onto SS and that did a lot of damage to him over the years. KKNY might FEEL displaced if a new sibling is referred to as a sibling and not a half-sibling. But at the end of the day, isn't it up to her daughter to determine a relationship with her father, and any subsequent children he might have? Ditto Silver. KKNY's DD, I am sure, knows the dynamics and understands who her mother is. A sibling vs. half sibling debate doesn't change that fact.

Child experts say six is one of those really tough years where bad behaviour is common. In fact the three worst years, according to our family therapist, are 2, grade one, and grade 7. Something to do with the start of grade 1 , and all day school with responsibility tends to short circuit the kids for a while. I remember every one of my kids being a total brat in grade one, after being "angels" ha ha at younger ages. BY the time they got to grade 2, they had learned how to control their own behaviour to be socially acceptable. Just as an afterthought, the main problem in grade 7 seems to be refusing to complete things, whether that be homework, or getting self dressed, or being responsible for their own stuff. THats the most common issue at that age. Anyone else have a kid that lies about homework? What we did when ours were picking on their younger siblings...if it was confrontational or violent, an immediate time out. What also helped was never reacting to the whining, but giving extra attention whenever good behaviour was there. IN other words, when the child is whining about little bro having an extra cookies, ignore it. BUt when the child is playing nicely with little bro, or even coexisting in the same room without any problems, make a point of doing something nice for the child. Kids that age want attention and they arent particular if its positive attention or negative attention. Of course, any direct confrontation has to be stopped. Be careful that you dont just seem to punish the six year old, even if it seems they are causing it. IF they really ARE the ones causing it, then time out for them, but sometimes six year olds can convince themselves that the two year old is doing something to them. IN that case its better to just separate the two for a while, and work on the positive stuff. Six year olds cant reason like an adult can. Their problems with their siblings seem very big to them, even though we as adults cant see what the problem is. It takes about three weeks to change a bad habit of a kid in that age range. IN the meantime, just hang in. This too shall pass.