My Diary

I have two paternal twin nieces who are 12 about to turn 13, and my brother has raised them in my opinion, horribly.  I feel they are being abused through ignorance and silence of elephants inthe living room if you know what I mean and I don't know what to do about it.

 I recently commented on the fact that my one niece only eats pasta with butter sauce on it and the center of bread or a roll and refused to eat anything else.  Oh, she eats compressed chicken nuggets from the microwave.  This is just one of many things that my brother has screwed up on with raising them and they are going to be teens soon.  Alcoholism and drug addiction run in our family and I can see that they're already headed that way.  Any time I bring anything "controversial" or "emotional" up to my brother he either gets very defensive and starts stating a bunch of facts that have nothing to do with what I'm talking about (like they're doing well in school) or he just doesn't respond.  Usually doesn't respond.  He didn't talk to me for 15 years once because I told him I was molested by my father.  It was not until I lied and took it back that "everything was okay again."  He wouldn't even let me near my nieces until they were eight.  I never even met them.  (They live in NC but come up to NJ every summer.)  He's raising them just like my household.  If anyone shows any negative emotion that including anger, crying, sadness, deliberate silence he pretends it's not happening.  Anger gets yelled at.  Crying gets ignored, sadness gets ignored and silence gets pretending that it isn't even happening.  I'm not explaining this well. 

 They're both headed for all sorts of problems with alcohol, drugs and eating disorders and he's ignoring all the signs.  He just pretends everything is fine or he REFUSES to talk about it, or once in awhile becomes ridiculously defensive of his parenting skills.  And their stepmother is already in competition with them for his attention and she takes it out on the nieces.  I'm really loosing sleep over this and I don't know what I can do.  P.S. - I don't pray because I don't believe in it, so that's my decision.  He wont let them have anything with the word God on it.  He has left religious teachings completely out of they're life and last Christmas when asked who Santa Claus was he told them he was Jesus' brother and that the Easter Bunny was Jesus' pet rabbit.  I'm not even Christian and I can't believe that.   It's funny for an adult, but you don't tell your child something like that!

 S$%#&%(&