My step nephew

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I want to preface this post by saying as someone who works with children and a lot of low income kids who don't have the best lives and deal with a lot of neglect, I understand that there is usually a reason why children act the way they do. Children who seem mean or annoying often have a reason for acting that way, that said empathy can only go so far. They still need boundaries and to be taught certain behaviors aren't okay. Other children don't deserve to have to put up with those behaviors. It's important to teach empathy and understanding but it's also equally important to teach them they don't deserve to be treated a certain way and it's important to teach the children being mean that it's not okay to act that way regardless of their circumstances and to teach them healthy coping methods for anger etc. As some people may remember I told the story of how I had a step nephew that died. It completely turned my brother's entire world upside down and my brother who was once a functioning alcoholic went off the deep end but that's a different story. My step nephew was in our family from the time he was three years old and he was not the best behaved child, far from it. I was 10 years older than him. He was 21 when he died, which was a difficult thing to process. I still remember the text message I got telling me. I remember feeling like I was punched in the gut. I feel like when someone dies we often make them seem like they were these great people and my step nephew grew up a lot from the little brat I used to deal with. My ex SIL is a nurse and when he was little she made up for her long hours by giving him everything he wanted and spoiling him with things instead of attention. She worked long hours and he didn't get that time or attention he needed and his biological father was tough on him from my understanding I still don't know all of the details on that but my step nephew was definitely not an easy kid to deal with at times. I used to babysit him and my niece sometimes when they needed someone in a pinch. I didn't mind for the most part but he could be a lot. I remember once at a party one of my sisters was having when he was probably around seven and my friends and I were around 17 and he was being just downright bratty and there wasn't a whole lot we could do about it. He started just hitting us and spitting at us and we weren't about to hit the kid so we decided to just ignore him and act like he wasn't there instead of feeding his need to pester us and that worked, but he went and told my sister who then chewed us out telling us to stop being mean to him and that we had no clue what he was going through in his life. This still hits me. I still get angry thinking about it because she wouldn't listen to anything we had to say and cut us off whenever we tried to explain. He was made into this victim which he definitely wasn't in that moment. We told him to stop, we did nothing to provoke the attack, he was going for negative attention and we decided we weren't going to give it to him. My sister acted like we were being physically mean when we weren't. We weren't about to ask a kid who was hitting us and spitting at us to come hang out with us. Looking back we actually did do the right thing, because we could have been mean back and we didn't because we knew he was a kid. I have always treated him well when he wasn't acting like a holy terror but I refused to let him think that acting that way was going to get him the attention he wanted. My sister just hung onto his words and assumed we were being mean to him, which we weren't. It always irked me. I just remember the way we were made like we were the bad guys who did something wrong and she wouldn't listen to us. My mom believed us but I don't think she ever told my sister about the whole thing. I love my sister she has a good heart, and I think she meant well but the way she refuses to listen to someone else's side of the story often irritates me. She did the same thing with my brother and refused to believe anything bad about him until she actually had to deal with it. She loves her family and would do anything to protect us but sometimes I think she just needs to stop and listen to both sides. My nephew lived a troubled life and I always feel bad that he felt that desperate in that moment that he decided his life wasn't worth living. I know my brother holds a lot of guilt about my step nephew but at the end of the day my step nephew was an adult and made his own choices. My brother was definitely not a good influence. My brother has a good part to him but it's buried in there and only comes out off and on. I know he could not have been an easy person to live with but that said I don't think my ex SIL was always easy to live with either. I feel like that marriage was destined for failure from the beginning. I still hope she's doing well and that my niece is living a good life away from my brother. My brother loves her but doesn't know how to be a good dad, but I know my ex SIL didn't really know how to be a mother either, she was more about being a friend and between that and my brother drinking and going off the handle I don't think she had it the best. I know she loves her mom and her mom is her best friend but I don't think she ever really experienced what a real parent should be. My brother adored her when she was little and he really did try at first but I think eventually his demons caught up with him, much the same way my step nephew's demons did. His funeral was probably the most difficult one I've been to. I kept seeing that little boy I used to babysit. Far from a sweet innocent kid but one who wanted attention no matter the means. The little boy who had the potential to be something more if only he had better adults in his life to give it to him. He was failed on so many levels. I just wish he knew the amount of people he hurt by doing what he did.