Growing up with higher functioning younger sibling(s)

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I did a quick search to see if this has been posted lately and I didn't see any threads that quite fit so I'm making one.

I am the middle child in my family. I have a brother not quite three years older than me and a sister four years younger than me. My brother was a always trying to bend the family rules to get away with stuff and he teased my sister and me often (chased us around the house with fire once and a knife another time. He just wanted to scare us not hurt us and he did grow out of doing those things and has a fairly good life now at 29). My sister and I shared a bedroom til she was 10 - 12 and I was 14 - 16 (ie when our brother moved out, freeing up the only other bedroom basically).

When my sister and I were little we play together all the time and had lots of fun. I remember those times quite fondly but since she was much younger at the time she doesn't remember it as well as I do. When we went to the store with our mother we were always told to stay together so we wouldn't get lost (when were were a bit older that is). My sister and I would look at things as we walked around the store/mall, but I would always want to stop for longer at things that interested me than just glance and keep walking as she seemed to do and she was always trying to get me to keep walking or she would leave me behind to continue walking around. If she walked off I would get upset and hunt her down since our mother had said for us to stay together and being four years older than her I thought I was supposed to be watching my little sister, which I couldn't do if she wandered off. At age 25 I was informed by my mother that in actuality it was my little sister that was supposed to be watching me all those times which I was blissfully unaware of then. I remember telling my sister back then that I was supposed to watch her and she never countered my protests with the information that things were really the reverse, maybe she wasn't told and our mother just assumed it would the way she wanted. I don't know. My brother moved out of the house at 19 and my sister became a teenager not long afterward, she also got a part-time office job at our Church a few blocks from home and so was often gone during the day. When she was home I sometimes tried to share things that had happened or I was thinking with her(as I always have liked to share my thoughts with others though by that point I had been trained to keep quiet around my parents) and she would look at me and ask "Why are you telling me this?" and walk off. If I did explain why, which I often did she would get more annoyed with me. Since toddler-hood my sister has been the type to debate with people and twist an argument to her favor and this got worse when she was a teen. As she got older I interacted with her less and less as she was always off at work or with friends. My dad was off at work til dinner time and my mother for a while had a job as well so I was at home alone for some time and got so used to it that when my parents do come home(mom doesn't work now but is looking for work and often busy anyway) when they do come home it annoys me since I'm not used to people being around much anymore. I have considered leaving the house to take walks or go places but there aren't many places to go to and I quite enjoy Role Playing over the computer(which I've done for the last two years).


This was supposed to be about sibling relationships but I got a bit off topic.

How do you get along with siblings, mainly younger siblings that are higher functioning than you and did you know they were all along or find out later?

(I was only diagnosed in 2010 so I grew up not knowing why I was different, I'll be getting a second opinion on my diagnosis at the end of Dec 2011 and was self diagnosed for a few months(after reading about AS after someone mentioned I might have it) before getting diagnosed).

I tend to type like I talk and I ramble and stuff when I talk. I hope some of this is understandable.

(I read fiction and was reading at a, if I remember right, 9th grade(14/15 yrs) level or something by 6th grade(11/12 yrs). I read a lot of stories about fictional girls and their siblings and was upset that my family wasn't like in the stories where the little sister always looked up the older sister for guidance and stuff. Both my parents were the youngest in their families and were each spoiled to a degree and my sister was also spoiled when she was very small since she was the youngest and my brother being the oldest got things first usually due to age and sometimes due to gender. I have many older cousins, all female save one so while my brother sometimes got things handed down from a cousin I got many things handed down from many different cousins that had outgrown something which later passed to my sister. I understand why I got hand-me-downs more, but as I got older I didn't like how my brother got new stuff and I got old stuff from my cousins or sometimes from my brother(mainly shirts and jackets til I got older).

I had a similar relationship with my brother who is younger. He has got ADHD (I have as well with AS and Tourettes) but he was always the more 'sensible one'. When we were younger we got on really well. I didn't really realise that he was anything more than a toy for a number of years, there for my own amusement, but that's autism for ya! When he hit the dreaded teens, he became a different person. Suddenly he didn't want to listen to me, I was the embarrassing one (whereas he embarrassed me before!) and suddenly it was like I was dead to him. He would tell his friends I was 'weird' but never told them that I was autistic even when we knew. Maybe our younger siblings kind of resent having to spend their younger years looking out for us and thats why they are like that? I have no idea really!

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I have HFA, ADHD, OCD & Tourette syndrome. I love animals, especially my bunnies and hamster. I skate in a roller derby team (but I'll try not to bite )

I think I get on ok with my siblings. I don't hate them or fight with them. But I don't really know them that well. Doesn't help that my brother's behavior prompted our mother to hold him up to us girls as an example of what not to do, though he has matured greatly since then. My sister and I were close I thought as children but drifted apart when she got into her teens and was more social and stuff. I did go out with her to Church things to socialize but looking back I can see how I probably wasn't the best company. I would get anxious when it got near 8 PM (when I used to take a shower each night back then) and ask her when we were leaving. I didn't really socialize at the events either since I didn't know the other people aside from my sister. They were people from our Church but mostly in her age group or friends of people her age. All the 'kids' my age had married and moved away from the area by then or left the Church to attend other Churches else where. Sometimes I feel depressed when I see girls younger than me now with husbands and kids either visiting Church or in class (I'm taking a collage class).

I used to know my sister's likes and stuff when we were little and now I don't know any of that stuff. When she was little her favorite color was purple for years and years then sometime when she became a teen it switched to red or some shade of red and being me I always think her favorite color is purple if asked(which doesn't happen often.) I failed most of the 'how well do you know x and x' quiz at her wedding shower I'm sure, but the prizes were smelly candles and I was there as family not really a guest so it didn't matter as much.

My sister is two years younger than me and she is not nice to me at all. She treats me horribly and constantly verbally puts me down. When we were younger she'd always try to fight with me physically and she was stronger so it would hurt and she'd tickle me no matter how much I reacted to it because of the excruciating pain it caused. Nowadays she only is mean to me with her words and gestures. She always talks about how "weird" and "abnormal" and "stupid" I am and how she thinks it would be better if I didn't exist. She insults my physical appearance and my interests and mannerisms and it is not a kind treatment at all. She complains that I have too many specific needs to be met and she always says that she wishes I were more like her. Someday I hope to actually have a conversation with her where she actually speaks to me like somebody worth being spoken to.

My sister is 7 years old and I am 17. We get along fine. She has a different father so we are a bit different. She is A LOT more socially inclined, yet not as smart as I was at her age. She has many friends and is willing to make new friends where ever we go (It gets to the point of escaping from our table at restaurants and interrupting other family's dinners just to say "Hi!" to their kids). I was shy as hell at her age and only had 3 or 4 close friends and never did anything like that. She throws tantrums if she doesn't get what shes asked for. I didn't even ask at all, so there's a huge difference...
But I love her, and she oddly enough loves me and greets me with hugs and kisses despite the sh***y older brother I am.

I'd just say that your sister has better social skills as a neuro-typical, but you appear to be a lot smarter than her albeit easily distractable.
People are different, even in the same family, so it's not something to fret over. Worry about your own self. Try to be less insecure about it. Maybe do what she did and get a job too, so that you can get a place of your own like your brother and not even have to see her except on holidays and what-not.

Good Luck.

I sympathize in having a younger sibling surpass you in areas. However I was told to watch/take care of my sister (honestly) when I was younger. It was only when I was older/couldn't handle life that it would sometimes be said the other way (also honestly, my parents are usually straightforward).

My sister looked up to me until I was bullied in high school. That's when I stopped doing things. There was nothing to look up to then because I didn't get my license or a boyfriend. I would say when my younger sister became sexually active before me is definitely when she started acting superior to me. We are still good friends and everything but she has mentally abused me at times.

My sister still resents the little professor type of mentality that I had back then. I was always trying to learn in historical areas/museums (reading everything) and she was playing on artifacts. I have home movies as far back as me being in 3rd grade where I found that embarrassing and told her to behave. Sometimes she still says that I didn't let her be a kid.