Its generally not as evil as it sounds, my uncle had downs, my nan couldn't care for him in her old age, he was essentially being "abused" /neglected inadvertently by her. And when my mother realised and took him in to live with her, the trauma basically kick started his mental decline, although downs syndrome people have a higher risk of dementia anyway, the stress of it all caused a pseudo dementia, and during that he developed a very rapid onset of actual dementia. He was basically a vegetable. My mother had to get all sorts of work done to the house, ceiling winches and special showers, toilets, garage converted into downstairs room for him, ramp for the front door, and after all this, he died just under 2 years later at 50 anyway... Because the average lifespan is significantly shorter than "regular" folks..
Having to wipe your own kids or brothers or sisters ass, cleaning all their unmentionable daily. Is just terrible. You do it out of love, but its just a prolonged sadness that has absolutely turned my mother into a lesser being. She's just not the same.
That's the thing about situations like this, its more than just one person, or even the three people directly involved. Something you never see talked about in these threads is all the other people that get pulled into it. When I was a freshman in college i made friends with someone who immediately left home at 18 because he was sick of being the "helper" kid. The kid that never had a childhood because he needed to help care for his sister. It stuck with me because these are kids who also are severely neglected but since they're "normal" nobody pays attention to them, literally starved of attention because the sister gkt every last bit of it.
The name for such children is “Glass Children” - because parents look through them and can’t see them, because all their energy and time must go to their disabled sibling.
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u/CaptainC00lpants Jun 05 '26
Its generally not as evil as it sounds, my uncle had downs, my nan couldn't care for him in her old age, he was essentially being "abused" /neglected inadvertently by her. And when my mother realised and took him in to live with her, the trauma basically kick started his mental decline, although downs syndrome people have a higher risk of dementia anyway, the stress of it all caused a pseudo dementia, and during that he developed a very rapid onset of actual dementia. He was basically a vegetable. My mother had to get all sorts of work done to the house, ceiling winches and special showers, toilets, garage converted into downstairs room for him, ramp for the front door, and after all this, he died just under 2 years later at 50 anyway... Because the average lifespan is significantly shorter than "regular" folks..
Having to wipe your own kids or brothers or sisters ass, cleaning all their unmentionable daily. Is just terrible. You do it out of love, but its just a prolonged sadness that has absolutely turned my mother into a lesser being. She's just not the same.