Weaker Relations with Siblings?

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Why do many people think that if you're on the spectrum, you will have significantly weaker relations with your siblings than those that are neurotypical? One person that I know (who has Asperger's) is extremely close to his brother (neurotypical) and they do almost everything together.

Are weaker relations with siblings really common on the spectrum? Is this true among every degree of ASD? For those of you on the spectrum with siblings, how close are you with them?

Well, to make it brief.....

My sister - let's just say that I think as much of her as Hitler did of Jewish people.

My brother - we had our issues while growing up, but we get alone fine now, just don't get together as often as I'd like. I actually have more in common with him than I do our sister.

I have one sister and she's basically a higher functioning version of me.

She doesn't have AS but she's more BAP than NT.

We get along extremely well, have very similar interests and do almost everything together.

In this regard I got extremely lucky and I can't even express how thankful I am for it.

My sister is NT. Talkative and popular. I'm an embarrassment to her, apparently. She's younger but is always patronizing. Doesn't like me to be around her friends because I'm weird. It's a disappointing relationship.

That's about the same way my sister felt about me when we were growing up......I can relate.

This is similar to me in a way, in that my sister is also younger and like yours in those respects. At the same time however we have a deep underlying relationship, which I think is due to her core personality being similar to mine. A lot of me rubbed off onto her growing up and she helped me in certain situations also. I sort of clung to her for my fun when I was younger as I didn't have many friends, and neither did she.. though that changed later.

I think the patronizing and all that on my sister's part is MOSTLY because of puberty (not sure about yours). She was always far more 'advanced' socially than me in almost every way. She would always complain about my choice of clothes, not washing, wearing socks with thongs, being sensitive and not wanting to ever go out etc. She is definitely far more popular than me, and certainly sees me as very embarrassing at times. As for the talkative part, it depends on the situation. If the circumstances are right I can be more talkative than her (if I'm excited or bored and just spurting out random things that don't even make sense), but in general she talks a lot more and seems to enjoy it.

I wonder.. if you see this, what do you think is the reason you are so apart from your sister? Is it because you were never doing anything with her when young or is it purely because you're 'embarrassing' and whatnot?

I think that it's because I was a 'burden' on the family. So there is always that resentment. I feel that she wants me to grow out of my weirdness, but I can't. So she is always trying to dress me, paint my face with makeup like a clown, change my personality, etc. I just want to say to her "the square peg does not fit into the round hole, NOR does it want to!"
Sometimes I think it would have been more fun to have a brother to hang out with

I don't have any sibs, but I have a cousin my age that i am with all the time since birth.
I would say its possible that we are closer because of my autism, because he has always taken
an active role in looking after me as a special needs kid, so there is a very deep bond.

That's really sweet, made me very happy reading that. XD

Throughout our childhood, my little sister and I hated each other, fought like cats and dogs. I really wasn't very nice to her, for reasons I can't remember, though she tells me now she wanted nothing more than to be like me when she was young. I got along far better with my stepsisters, who were one and four years younger than me, the younger one being the same age as my biological sister. As we grew up, I started hanging out a lot more with my younger stepsister, as we were very similar; both quiet, we shared similar interests, and I was emotionally and developmentally on par with her, while the sister who was closer to my age grew past me and became too emotionally and socially savvy for me to keep up with. Sadly my mother got a second divorce almost five years ago, and I've barely seen them since. Fortunately my biological sister and I get along much better now that we're both older, though even she at 16 has surpassed me socially and emotionally, dealing with peer interactions at school I was never even aware existed at her age. I've been told her friends ask her what's wrong with me rather frequently, to which she responds, rather to my disappointment, "It's a long story." Not especially, it consists of three words: "she has autism."

I have 2 younger sisters.

I have AS and I think it has made the relationship with my siblings just different.
When we were young I was very close but as we got older I am much different from them. Me and my youngest sister can't even be in the same room for more than a couple of minutes. though that could be because of my misophonia (noise sensitivity). She is my biggest trigger at the moment.

My other sister just doesn't get me. She likes to tell me I have "Slow kid tendencies" and i'm wierd.

I have step-siblings too and it took me a long to to get to know them. One of them I still can't stand, one I think of as my brother and the other one is just my step-brother. Though he thought I hated him for the longest time because I wouldn't touch him. The first time I sat close enough to touch him, he was really shocked lol.

So I think it has weakened my relationship with them some what but I couldn't know if I would be closer if I didn't have it.

Yeah I have very weak relations with my siblings. When I was a child, my relations were ok. Somewhere along the line, I started growing into adult, making huge changes, while my siblings were away in college and lost it with them. I seemingly have forgotten how to interact with them. Its a bit weird.

I was very close to my siblings until I was ten and developed Misophonia. I think some of my Aspie traits started to get more prominent then as well. From then until college age my relationship with my siblings was a nightmare. Now we have learned much about each other and have talked through our past and we have dealt with many things. So now I feel very close to them. I also have a sibling, the oldest one, that I did not grow up with. I am extremely close to him as well. We did not have the drama that I had with the siblings that I grew up with so that kind of spared us all of that stuff. He is also the one who understands my Aspie issues the best and he helps me and supports me the most with that. So now I am very close to all of my siblings. But growing up it was pretty bad. And I think not knowing that I had Misophonia or that I was on the Spectrum because those things did not exist when I was growing up, or they had not been recognized yet rather, that made it so much worse because people could not understand why I was different and weird and that caused a huge amount of tension and stress and strife. But now I am very close to all of them especially the oldest one.

My only brother is older than me and has LFA. I don't have a close relationship with him. It's pretty hard having a close relationship with a non-verbal person.
My father has Asperger's and has had close relationships with his siblings until he went to live on his own.

Ezra, that really is great.
Norny, I have seen this (XD) a couple of times on WP. What does it mean?

I am the youngest in my family and I have 4 older siblings. One brother, whom I don't see much, but for the most part, we don't fight much. I sometimes think he might be on the spectrum. I have another brother who treats me in a condescending manner just because he thinks he's better than me. He once damaged piece of my other brother's property and tried to blame it on me and my brother believed me. Only when my sister had a fight with him did she turn him in out of revenge.

The other brother I just mentioned was physcially abusive towards me until I was around 8 and he was 18 and left home. He's a petty dictator who thinks everyone should do as he says. He and the brother who damaged his property and tried to blame it on me often got into fist fights with each other. This brother went to one of the service academies and eventually became a colonel.

My sister is closest in age to me(a year and a half older) and she has always treated me badly. She, like my abusive brother, likes pushing me around and worse, her and him were the family favorites so our parents often turned a blind eye to it or even if they knew it was happening did nothing.

She was always more social than I was, and never had trouble making friends. The few times I did make friends, she always managed to steal them from me, meaning they'd spend more time talking to her than me. She could always find some commonality they had and I didn't, and took it from there. She read all the "right" books, listened to the "right" music, saw the "right" movies, etc., and eventually, these friends would prefer her over me.

In addition, she aways liked pushing me around whenever we tried doing anything together. If we'd try to play together, instead of just having fun, she'd do whatever she could to irritate me. Sometimes she'd agree not to, but of course she was lying. Everything had to be her way or the highway. If played a board game and I lost, which I usually did, she'd ridicule me and if I refused to play, she'd start calling me chicken and such, to the point where I'd cry. What was worse is if we did play a game and I started winning, she'd insist I was cheating or making moves that were against the rules or to her just weren't right, so she'd get mad and say "I automatically win."

At one point I finally decided I'd had enough of her and would refuse to spend any time with her anymore, preferring to play by myself, and I was much happier as a result. But later our parents tried forcing us to spend time together and she'd do the same sort of things I already mentioned, and if I wanted out, our parents always took her side. This mentality lasted for many years even through adolesence and early adulthood. The general attitude was if she is doing something, going somewhere, etc., and wants me along, I have to go along. She would even accept party invitations for me and our parents supported that saying I didn't get out enough. I got dragged to parties, sporting events, movies, shopping, and all sorts of othing things I had no interest in, with our parents starting fights with me because I didn't want to go and even threatening to have me institutionalized because not wanting to go out with my sister was to them a sign of some sort of mental illness. Even if I had some sort of going out interest of my own, to them, since it wasn't an activity chosen by and done with my sister, it was the same as staying in the house.

Today none of my siblings live in the same city with me. I'm married now to someone who accepts me the way I am, and we're happy. She's NT, but not a partier or anything like that, just enjoys being at home.