I can't deal with it, it's literally driving me insane.
So the story is that my dad married my stepmother 9 months ago and through her we inherited a 5 yr old I'll nickname Henry. Now my brother [M18] and I both love both of them very dearly, for the most part they are gorgeous and we all get along well. However, after a little while of them moving in it became clear that there's a big issue with noise and clutter in the house because of, primarily, my stepbrother.
He has an amount of behavioural problems but as far as I can tell, he's just kind of a noisy kid (no diagnosed issues). He is constantly making noise. If it's not him yelling it's him running through the house or making random animal noises or complaining at TOP VOLUME. He will also try to climb on people and bang himself about on the furniture. At meal times he constantly interrupts people and it really feels like no one can have a conversation when he's there a lot of the time because he will interrupt with a loud complaint or some random bullshit. He fake cries to his mother to get attention and to get out of doing things. The works.
My stepmother's been somewhat good about it and steps have been taken - for instance, he can only use noisy toys in his room and he has to use headphones when he's watching TV on his ipad, etc. However, he is pretty badly behaved around his mother as she has a softer, attachment parenting style of discipline with him. She basically won't lay down the law with him until he's gone absolutely batshit. She can parent him as she pleases and I'm not here to criticise it but it affects the rest of us because he just goes untethered until me my brother or my dad snap and tell him to stop. Being calm and reasonable with him does not seem to work. In addition to that, when she does discipline him her method is to VERY LOUDLY TELL HIM IT WAS NOT OK. So more yelling, yay. I'd estimate that there's someone raising their voice in one way or another at least every 2 minutes, usually more. All day.
As neither my brother nor I are able to move out for various, valid reasons, we need to figure out a way to cope with this. Before you suggest it, yes there's been sit down family meetings, multiple times in fact. We've been honest, and we've been mostly heard, but nothing has changed. My brother hides in his room after he gets home from school and I use noise cancelling headphones basically constantly. I've noticed it's affecting both of our relationships with our dad particularly as we've withdrawn from family life as a whole to get some peace. We've also been criticised by both my dad and stepmum for this, as they don't understand.
I feel like I come home every day in a pretty good mood but by the time dinner time comes around I'm on edge and cranky - I'm usually pretty sound sensitive as it is and it seriously affects my mood. This in turn causes fights with other family members yada yada yada.
I want to be able to participate in family life and sit in my living room without having to literally block my ears the whole time. Has anyone got any tips that we're missing? I'm kind of at my wit's end.
TLDR: Inherited a 5yr old step brother who we love but who screams, yells, complains, and invades personal space almost constantly. I and my brother are being made out to be the bad guys because this annoys us, and it makes me not want to be home. How can we fix this?
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