agonyaunt | Two letters about much younger siblings, from two perspectives

Two letters about much younger siblings, from two perspectives

1. DEAR HARRIETTE: I have a sister who is 20 years younger than I am. I’m 30, and she’s only 10 years old. Because of this huge age gap, we’ve never really had a chance to bond or develop a close relationship. While I love her dearly, every time it’s just the two of us, the conversation feels forced and awkward. I don't think either of us is necessarily to blame. She's so much younger, and we’re at completely different stages in life, but it leaves me feeling sad and disconnected.

I go to visit her and my parents often so that we have plenty of opportunities to become closer, but sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever have the kind of sibling bond I’ve seen other people enjoy with their brothers or sisters. I want to find ways to relate to her better and make her feel comfortable around me, but I don’t know where to start. She’s my only sibling, and the thought of us not being close upsets me. How can I help us become closer in our relationship so that we have a stronger bond in the future? -- Sibling Disconnect

DEAR SIBLING DISCONNECT: Your sister is a child, and you do not live together, so you will not have much in common now. Don’t look for that. Instead, be with her when you are together. Listen to her. Invite her to share her world with you. Find out what interests her. Try to remember what you cared about at her age. Share appropriate connecting stories as you remember them.

Expose her to your world. What do you like to do that might interest her? Arts activities, music, books? Show her who you are as she does the same for you. Allow your relationship to grow naturally. She may seem more like a daughter or niece than a sister for a few years, but that’s fine too.

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2. DEAR HARRIETTE: I’ve been an aunt since I was 9 years old. I am 29 now, the youngest of five sisters and an aunt to 11 nieces and nephews. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the default babysitter. I live at home with my mom, which seems to be a prime location for all of my sisters when they need parental relief. Sometimes they show up unannounced or with short notice and simply tell me they need someone to watch their children for a few hours -- or sometimes overnight. I think because I do not currently have a partner or children, they assume I am always home or available. If I tell them otherwise, they ask if my social engagements are as important as my nieces or nephews. I don’t like that they always expect me to cancel plans at their behest, but I’m not allowed to expect them to plan ahead.

Lately, I’ve been saying no more often. Even when I am free, I’d prefer to be alone. I’ve noticed that sometimes they plan outings without me and say, “we thought you wanted to be alone.” I’ve tried explaining to them, for years now, that all my free time being dedicated to child care is overwhelming -- especially when I am not yet an actual mother -- but they tell me I’m insensitive and say I’ll understand how they feel when my time comes. I think this dynamic has pushed me to be defensive with my siblings and not as joyous with my nieces and nephews. I want all these relationships to be more amicable, and I want my sisters to understand my boundaries. How do I get them to see my side? -- Tired Auntie

DEAR TIRED AUNTIE: Speak to your siblings. Remind them how much you love them and their children, but point out that you have your own life. Explain that as much as you like to help them -- sometimes -- you do not appreciate their assumption that you are always on call to care for their children. Ask them to take a more respectful approach this year, where they inquire about your availability and schedule child care ahead of time rather than treating you like their on-call sitter.

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1. I don't often say this, but LW might have felt more like she understands her younger sibling if she'd done more babysitting.

Well, it's not too late to start asking to take Sister out to do things together that they should both find fun - a trip to the movies, a museum, camping, or even just board games at home.

2. Harriette's advice is useless.

The problem is that LW is hung up on getting her sisters to understand her. That's garbage and will never happen. All they need to understand is that she's not going to be their last minute babysitter anymore unless everybody else is literally in the hospital or prison.

LW ideally needs to move away from home with no forwarding address. If that's not possible, she needs to spend as little time at home as possible. "Can't babysit, I'm five hours away - and yes, this is more important than your children!" is not something that the siblings can argue with.

I feel like LW 1 may also have an easier time relating to little sis if s/he drops the idea of having the kind of idealized sibling relationship they want. 20 years is a huge age gap, and there's a good chance that little sis sees LW more along the lines of an aunt/uncle than anything else (especially is little sis is also comparing the relationship to what her peers have with their siblings). I fully agree that having A Designated Activity for time together will probably help a lot

Yes, I think the complaint isn't necessarily "I do not know how to relate to a 10 year old child" as it is "I am envious of the sibling relationships of people who grew up together."

Wow, the answer to Tired Auntie totally missed the boat.

She can't make them see her side. They are happy with the current arrangement and berate her for daring to have a life.

She just needs to decide her own rules for babysitting and impose them. These siblings will never see her side and will probably go to their graves thinking she is selfish.

Yuck.

Re LW2, the minute sibs show up with nibs in tow without warning, she needs to leave the house whether she has a social engagement or not. Sibs need to realize LW is not their on-call babysitter and LW is not accountable to them. (I bet LW is also unpaid for her labour.) Sibs' lack of planning on their part is not an emergency on LW's. When they ask LW whether her social engagements are more important, LW should say yes and that's not negotiable.

(This applies to LW's mom too. If Mom wants to babysit, that's her prerogative, but LW must not get involved if she doesn't want to babysit.)

LW2 would do well to find some local places - coffee houses, bookstores, casual restaurants, even a friend's place - where she can take her laptop or a book for a few hours, and just start being out of the house when her siblings arrive. It sucks that she can't be in her own space, but hopefully, a few months of her just not being there (and not answering any calls or texts beyond just, "Sorry, in the middle of something") will get the message across. Or at least buy her some peace while she does whatever she needs to to move out.

"Gosh sister, you're so right, your wonderful children are more important than any social engagement, which I'm sure is why you're going to cancel yours today to stay home with them."

Right!?

Dear LW #1,

Realistically, you are never going to have the kind of sibling relationship you want with your little sister, and that's okay! You're in completely different stages of life right now and you likely always will be. You didn't grow up together, it's entirely possible that you never even really lived together for more than a couple months during summer break or immediate post-grad. And she's not going to remember those times anyway. In terms of relationship, you're probably more along the vein of a young aunt/uncle - so why not try to go with that? Find something you can do together once a month - go bowling, have lunch at a diner, check out a children's museum, etc. Make yourself available as a Trusted Adult that she can come to with questions or problems. You don't mention if there are any other siblings in between you, but if there are, see if you can make use of those stepping stones to bridge the age gap.

As she gets older, you may have an easier time finding things to bond over. For example, my mother is 14 years younger than her oldest sister, but they both worked in healthcare and they were the only siblings who had children. In my generation of the family, my cousins are 21 and 24 years older than my youngest sister; we would do a group cousin outing a couple times a year, whether it was bowling, seeing a movie, getting dinner, or even having a game night.

You and your little sister will very likely never feel like peers, but you can try to meet halfway to still have some kind of relationship.

LW #1 - twenty years and never lived in the same house is too big a gap to have the kind of sister relationship you're imagining: you can aspire to cool aunt right now (but cool aunt is really cool! Go hard in for it!)

When you're in your seventies and she's in her fifties you may actually get something closer to a sisters relationship. But don't let what you want it to be now spoil what it could become later - until she's also an established adult who feels secure in her own place (so, at least another twenty years) you won't be able to have a relationship of peers, and that's okay.

LW #2 - "I’ve noticed that sometimes they plan outings without me and say, “we thought you wanted to be alone.”" Holy passive aggression, Batman.

Step one, LW, is probably move out of your parents' house, which isn't something I'd always recommend, but you need to not be dependent on keeping things in harmony with these people.

LW #2 should stop justifying her no. "I'm doing X instead" gets her pushback on how important X really is; "I need to be alone" gets her pushback via passive aggressive snark. They aren't going to consider as valid *any* amount of justification; they can't be reasoned out of "I deserve a break".

The petty, burn-bridges part of me thinks LW should a) tell them she's not available and so if they leave the kids with her she'll call CPS for child abandonment, and/or b) at the end of each forced visit, give the kids take-home goodie bags with glitter and plastic recorders...

I'm 16 years younger than my sister (and 15 years younger than our brother) so I grew up with nearly that kind of age gap. (I'm now in my late 40s and they're looking at retirement age...)

One of the things we've talked about as adults is how different the houses we grew up in were - starting with state, but also economic security and the way our parents were in the larger community. (Our father was a professor, my siblings were born before he was tenured, I was born after he'd not only had tenure for about 15 years, but had been chair of the department multiple times).

He was able to be a lot more present in my day to day life in some ways because of it (he could set a schedule that meant he was able to be the one picking me up at school a lot - he'd then do more work while I was doing homework or in bed.)

But also, differences in parenting, because by the time I got them, our parents had an idea what they were doing, what they wanted to prioritise in various ways, and all that.

Just. What I got was really different (and, um, my parents also made some things much easier for me than it was for them.) On the complicated side, our father died when I was 15, and whoo boy is that whole lot of difference, because I never got to know him when I was an adult and they did.

What's fascinating to us is that all three of us went through similar phases as adults in terms of particular interests (we *all* had a breadbaking phase which has never quite stopped, though I started earlier in my life than they did.) We've all had bits of very similar crafting interest. We all read different corners of genre fiction, but with enough overlap to enjoy conversations.

Anyway, my advice to the sister here is to figure out a way to keep the connection open independent from their parents whether that's some sort of fun correspondence, a distance-friendly game night, or just plain being curious. Little sister's not going to be a companion-type friend for a while, but maybe in 15 years, she'll be able to offer great advice about something she knows well that you don't. (Maybe sooner.)

(My sister calling me up a couple of years ago for some personal advice completely blew my mind, but she was very "Look, you're an adult, you're sensible about this thing, why wouldn't I ask you?")

And on an entirely practical level, the thing about seeing different sides of parents can be really handy when you start thinking about elder care or how to handle specific issues. (My siblings and I figured out when I was a relatively young adult that our mother was telling us all different pieces of some things, and we have now learned to share information routinely about the relevant topics.)

Edited (Typo) 2025-01-29 01:39 (UTC)

I'm the oldest of 5 (born in 1985, 1987, 1988, 1993, and 1996) and even with that relative closeness, there were still a lot of differences between how The Big Kids and The Little Girls grew up - some of that was because of technology, some was Mom switching to overnights instead of evening shifts, some of that was the difference with getting outside babysitters versus paying your teenager (my parents paid me to babysit my sisters because they knew if they didn't I would get a paying job elsewhere and they'd have to pay one of my friends instead). What's been really interesting to me is watching the way that my relationship with my youngest sister has evolved over the years: 6/17 she was my excuse to see Disney movies in theaters, 13/24 I was her trusted adult, 21/32 we were the unmarried "bookends" who'd both experienced feeling "othered" from the rest of the group, etc. Out of my sisters and brother, I really consider myself closest to her these days. And also, yeah, I think it was probably a little weird for both of us when I was like "Heyyy, so I'm thinking about becoming a single mom" and she was like "Here are the things you should know based on my experiences being sole practical parent to a baby while my husband is overseas."

(I've also been lucky enough to land a therapist who's the youngest of 6 and therefore understands the way that Big Family Relationship Dynamics will fluctuate!)

The family deal on babysitting was that the first three people who were not me to put things on the calendar did them, and the last one had responsibility for me (barring other negotiations - my father had a lot of evening-related work stuff, but an irregular schedule of it).

But they also paid my brother and sister for babysitting, which was fair. (Half the going rate of what they were getting for babysitting for other people. But they were home, could do whatever they wanted so long as I was taken care of, and could have friends over. And I was a generally really easy kid.)

1. Aw 🥺 if LW keeps it low-pressure, fun, and supportive, I'm sure the bond will develop with time.

2. "Understanding" is not going to develop here, I reckon. This sucks though because the well-being of small children is being pretty much dumped on the unsuspecting OP. Lacking other options, I'd consider finding refuges outside of home and taking up partial residence there - a favorite cafe, the library.

Otherwise perhaps start teaching the children swears? (not serious... unless...........)

I feel like "the sibling bond I see other people have" is almost certainly "me projecting on other people's sibling bond." Because even if you just pick "people who grew up under the same roof as their siblings and are within five years of them in age," sibling bonds vary SO MUCH. So no, siblings 20 years apart aren't going to have the same bond as, say, my bestie has with her sister who is three years younger and grew up in the same house. But also she doesn't have the same bond as my husband has with his sister who is three years younger and grew up in the same house. Siblings are a beautiful rainbow. (Also sometimes an ugly rainbow. Because that's how it goes.)

Seriously. I kind of want to offer her my sibling bonds in exchange for hers, because, well, y'all know that story.

Exactly, plus, sibling bonds fluctuate over time - I consider myself emotionally closer to my two youngest sisters due to shared interests/experience now, but when we were younger I was definitely closer to the siblings who were in high school the same time as me. There's no such thing as a cookie cutter sibling relationship!

This absolutely! My parents intentionally planned four kids close together because they wanted us to have that kind of sibling bond. I was 5 1/2 when my youngest sister was born, two brothers in between. And we were certainly physically close in that we were pretty much constantly together throughout our childhood. But also we didn't have some magical fairystory "sibling bond"; some of that closeness was really quite vicious fighting, sorting out different dynamics of jealousy and finding younger sibs annoying and finding older sibs overbearing.

I did get really lucky in that my siblings all grew up to be people I like and respect and would want to be friends with even if we weren't related. But we're not close-close. We cross paths every so often, we text each other when we feel like it, it's definitely good that we have that shared past to link us together. But I'm much closer emotionally with chosen family and people I met as adults, especially now that I'm middle-aged. Two decades or more of actually being adult friends is a stronger bond than just, we happened to grow up in the same house for somewhat less time than that.

On the other hand, my partners' children are 25, 16, 12 and 4. The oldest and the youngest basically have no relationship. I mean they have general positive feelings towards each other, but they have met a handful of times; that doesn't magically create a "bond" just because they happen to share parents. The middle two have always been in proximity, but like with me and my siblings that has been a mixed blessing. At times, their interaction has been much much worse than simply awkward! At the moment 4 and 16 have a really lovely, deep connection, but that's just a snapshot of where we are right now, and it's partly based on the fact that they are in the same house, but the age gap is such that there's no real expectation they are going to have the same interests or want to interact as peers, nor that the older is going to be a co-parent of the younger.

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Two letters about much younger siblings, from two perspectives

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