Being An Older Sibling

"Sure, you can talk badly about your younger sibling for hours on end to anyone who will listen, but if they dare to pipe in with their own statement, you'll probably bite their head off." - Insider

I’m older than my sister by 1 year, 336 days and about 3 inches taller, but I’ve been told that we look like twins. Whenever my friends see her, I notice that they always look at her and then at me and you can almost see their minds calculating how close in age we are. I know that my sister certainly looks older than 5th grade but I really don’t think we look like twins. Maybe people just tend to overestimate in age. But it also leads me to the question of do I look younger than a 7th grader? I really don’t think so. I’ve even heard someone say that she looks like a ninth grader, which somehow makes me feel like a lesser human being than her. What makes her look older than me? I’m taller, wiser (in my opinion), and stronger than her but yet the age mistake still manages to occur. But when I see her next to her 5th grade classmates, I start to see the difference and understand why this mistake might be made. People thinking that my younger sister is older than me doesn’t really bother me that much. The only thing is that it deprives me of the “older sibling” title, the privilege and the power of being the elder child.

I think that the "twin" mistake is almost acceptable because 1 year and 336 days isn't that big of an age difference, really. The difference is small enough to make it so it was easy to play with her when we were little, also it means she's old enough to watch The Office with me (actually neither of us are technically "old enough"). It's nice to be this close in age so that we usually side together when we need to overrule our parents. Together, we can almost always convince our parents to get us dessert, or let us stay up later than usual on a school night.

Of course, being an older sibling, I think that the older siblings should be given certain privileges and rights above the younger sibling. That means that I can pull the "I'm older than you" card whenever I want. But I can’t really say which position is better, because I have not experienced being a younger sibling in any way. I think that being and older sibling is pretty nice but it doesn't mean that you kind of have to make the path for your younger sister to follow. I know that my younger sister might not appreciate having a older sibling at all times, but hopefully she appreciates me at least sometimes, because older siblings (sisters at least) are pretty great for many reasons.

Number one; I give my sister all my hand me downs, which she complains about, but then continues to wear all of them. I must say that the fact that she wears a lot of my old clothes probably doesn't help people who think we are twins. Number 2; We share similar tastes in TV, music and pretty much everything so we can geek out together about what we love most. Although, I have to say it is a little bit annoying when she likes everything I like, it's like she's copying me or stealing my identity. So that's a downside to having very similar tastes. But she CAN thank me for showing her everything she loves. Number 3; I gave her advice about dealing with annoying people. Even though she maybe didn't listen to me, I feel like maybe I was helping (and hopefully I was).

Even though she annoys me a lot (especially when she she calls shotgun before me), I still appreciate her, and I sure hope she appreciates me. Older sisters should be valued because even if younger siblings don’t think of us as the best person ever 100% of the time, they do benefit from us. I also benefit from my younger sister in ways I might not see now, but eventually we’ll both see that 1 year and 336 days is not that much of a difference and that we are important to each other.

Sources:

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Insider