Hey OP,

Your description of your husband paints a picture of my father perfectly. I don't have special needs and in my case my brothers achievements are supplemented for your day-to-day achievements, but otherwise identical.

The first time I really noticed was before high school, when my older brother "needed" my slightly larger bedroom for the desk space since he was about to start high school. I pointed out that I too would be starting high school soon, and well before he finished, so what then? Didn't matter, he was the high achiever and came first.

Every accomplishment was compared to my brothers or his own, and deemed inferior, no matter how relevant or true it was. But this is only apparent in hind sight. At the time, and during formative years no less, it is soul crushing to be doing your best and told you're a turd and not X instead of Y, so why do you even try and so on. You need to protect your daughter from this.

Even with logical hind sight it still affects my self-esteem.

I went to university and hated it, dropped out after 1 semester and entered the public service at entry level, and did vocational training while working full time and got internationally acknowledged diplomas, top industry standard certifications, and an advanced diploma. All as a completely independent young adult, paying for my education, rent, and working full time. Also while smoking lots of weed and drinking lots of alcohol because fuck my dad and the issues he gave me.

Guess who didn't turn up to my graduations because its "not real education" if it only takes 12/18/24 months?

My brother went to a somewhat prestigious university, and passed with a useless degree he still cant get a job with (even 10 years later), and cost a lot of my parents money and his time achieving little benefit. His job is effectively driving a bus now. He's still the favourite.

It took a lot of years to realise that these comparisons were blindly illogical and coming from an asshole. But as a teenager you don't see that, you just get your self worth hurt like hell. You take it as truth, and it stunts your growth because these criticisms don't make you want to do better, they make you want to give up on trying. They also made me a very angry person for the longest time and that's something I still have to work on too.

|He's damaging our daughter's progress.

In more ways than you can even begin to imagine