11 Year Old Wants a Closer Relationship with Her Older Sister.

Not all siblings are best friends. You can't force that. I think your best bet is to insist on a level of respect and consideration. It seems like you feel the older one needs to do all the changing - not hurt the younger one, be more mature, keep cool, stop being selfish and oblivious, share secrets, etc. But what do you expect of the younger one? All you've said about her is that she lashes out when she's hurt - but that really says that the older one starts the problem.

Just because the younger one and you want for them to be close doesn't mean that the older one should have to change her personality and her style.

It's really up to you to not wish for a relationship that isn't there or force a closeness between 2 kids who are so very different, but rather to teach each of them to make equal effort to understand the other. The older one is an adolescent, and you'd have issues with her even if there weren't a younger child! The younger one will give you a run for your money soon enough. It's time to teach them some diplomacy and some ability to not incite or tick off the other one, and to work out their differences with respect. Neither one of them needs to go to every fight she's invited to, you know?

13 is not mature.

One thing you can do to help your daughters get along is to never take sides. Unless one blatantly does something terrible to the other one, always give them equal consequences, and treat them as if they are both equally responsible for the fighting. Don't expect the older child to be the "mature" one. That usually has the effect of making the older child resent the younger one more. The more you tell your older child that she should appreciate and be friends with her sister, the more that is probably going to backfire.

You write: "The younger one will say something nasty at the older one because she is hurt, and the older one will talk back because she isn't mature enough yet to know how to be kind and cool in those situations. "

If the younger one says something nasty, why are you expecting the older one to be mature and kind about it? You may inadvertently be making your older child take the blame for these arguments more than you mean to.

Make sure you spend equal time with them. Mirror their feelings when appropriate.

Mainly, you have to let their relationship develop on its own. They might not become buddies until their twenties, or later.

My little sister is 4 years younger than me, and we shared a room until I moved out.

We never really became close until I was 22, then we started getting along better. Now we are super close. :)

I will say to try not to force it... My mom used to make me let my sister come along when I wanted to go out with my best friend (who happened to be our cousin....) we HATED being forced to accommodate her, and as a result we were never very nice to her and it just killed our relationship further.

I am the older sister by two years and those ages are hard for closeness. The older is trying to be a teen and doesn't want to be around a child. I would say to continue to be close as a family and do things with the kids. Go on vacations as a family. Then your daughters will have these great memories that only they share. I would say my sister is my best friend now but it probably wasn't until we both had babies the same year (when I was 30) that we got really close. As teens (maybe around the time she was 15 and I was 17) we were also close then. But then I went to college and she was home, then she was in college when I was working and then got married. It's hard when your lives are at different stages.

I have a rule in my family. If you are ugly in your familial relationships, don't expect me to let you practice on your outside ones. I believe if you're not nice to your family, more work is needed. My kids were at each other one day and I told them if they had one more issue we would have to cancel going to see their friends play at a ballgame we were invited to. I kid you not, those words were barely out of my mouth and they were at each other again. I called our friend and let her know that I was so sorry we wouldn't be able to make it to the game because if my kids weren't behaving in private I wasn't chancing in public and apologized. Both my kids were disappointed and begged to have another chance. I told them I was sure it was an off day and there would be other games.

Bottom line, our house is our refuge. Every person in our house is to be treated with respect and love. You may not be able to force a relationship, but you most certainly can require mutual respect and peace.

Blessings!
L.

Wait til the 11 yr old is 13.....

You and the 11 yr old can't make the older one be more interested in her tween sister. You may see more pulling away as she heads on into the teen years, with little sis lagging behind. I did not get along well with my sister in our teen years, but we repaired our friendship as adults.

What I would do is just do things to promote family and allow the girls to be close...or not. My DH is not close at all to his only brother. Siblings are often good friends, but not always.

Thirteen is still quite young, and teen brains are like race cars with bad brakes. I would not automatically expect the 13 yr old to show some deep maturity toward her sister. If you notice that the 11 yr old is snotty to the 13 yr old and it is the 11 yr old who wants to be closer, then perhaps talk to her when you see this and remind her that she isn't going to get this close relationship by being snotty.

Further, I would encourage the 11 yr old to make other friends if Big Sis just isn't going to be her BFF.

I also agree not to force it. My sister and I had a falling out as young adults and the more people pushed us to reconcile, the farther apart we got.

My younger sister and I were about 2.5 years apart in age. We were playmates fine when we were little, but we picked at each other and fought quite a lot starting when I was 12/13. We were not close until we were both adults and out of our mom's house.

You can't force sibling relationships. Just give them what space you can manage and try to keep them from killing each other. Don't try to make them be BFFs. It would only cause resentment and push-back, and possibly make it so they never get along in the future either. Don't make the older one hang out with the younger. Do make sure the younger know she isn't entitled to her sister's attention.

Both girls need their own friends and social lives separate from one another.

You cannot make people (even people who share DNA) be friends. I love my sister. I would throw myself in front of a speeding locomotive to save her life. But we were not close as kids. Our interests were completely different.
Siblings are going to fight. It's part of being siblings.

That's about the age difference between me and my younger sister. I also didn't like hanging around her. We shared rooms until I was a junior in high school. Totally different personalities and totally different interests. She was always trying to hang around me and I couldn't stand it. NOTHING anyone did made a difference. I always *loved* her, she's my sister, but I didn't really *like* her, we certainly weren't friends.

Fast forward several decades. Now, we're 43 and 41 and she's my best friend and has been for a long time. But it took HER having a baby for us to finally get there. Now that we're both moms, we finally have something in common. I have since apologized to my mother for how we were as kids. Poor mom went through ____@____.com trying to get us to stop fighting.

On the other hand, my best friend growing up was really good friends with HER younger sister. They just liked each other so much with no effort from anyone to push them together. They've had more "sister" issues as adults than they ever had as kids. My OWN girls (12 and 14) also somehow get along pretty well without any effort from me. They run in TOTALLY different social circles and have different interests, but I often find them giggling together in corners. They fight, too, of course, but not too often. They just simply get along. Don't know why, I'm just thankful for it.

It really comes down to personalities. So possibly, there's nothing you can really do but give them time. You can't force the 13yr old to suddenly become the 11yr old's best friend. You CAN expect them to be civil to each other and to be respectful of each other. But you CAN'T expect them to be best friends huddling in a corner sharing secrets if ONE of them doesn't want that sort of relationship. Give it some time. Things might start changing once they're BOTH teens.

Sometimes, siblings are just not friends.

My brother is 6yrs younger than me. We've never been close. In fact now as adults we are further apart.

I'd swear he is not my bio brother but my mom and dad (divorced) swear that he is. We are so different it's not funny. I mean different in looks, drive, education, ambition, and etc., absolutely ZERO in common.

Hopefully that's not the case with your girls and they will mature in time. They are both young and going through awkward stages of life. Sharing a room adds to the fire but I'm betting that they work things out together in time!! Good luck.

you can't force this. you just can't. and you kind of need to get out of the role of would-be facilitator.
could someone else manage a friendship for you?
siblings aren't automatic friends. sometimes the personalities don't mesh. in your daughters' case it could be age, but if the younger has longed for this 'forever' it's probably just that they're not kindred spirits.
what you can do is listen impartially, don't try to fix things, and make sure they each have plenty of opportunities to hang out with friends.
the dynamic may change drastically when they're grown. the brother that i loathed most during my childhood is the one i'm probably closest to now. but being forced into closer proximity with him when we were kids probably would have led to his body being buried in the back yard.
;) khairete
S.

As one of 4 kids, and with 2 of my own... My suggestion is to facilitate family experiences. Left only with each other, kids start to bicker. But put a parent in the equation, and the dynamics are totally different. Growing up, we took camping trips, went hiking, spontaneous picnics, etc. As teens, I'm sure we did our share of eye rolling at being dragged along to this kind of stuff. But as we got past those teen years, those are the things that bind my siblings and I together. We laugh over the times we were stuck in our tent camper in the rain, playing cards. And the way we bickered in the car on the way to a day hike but then posed smiling for pictures 2 minutes later. The time dad did that crazy thing that embarrassed us all.

My kids are still small, but I notice it already. Left alone, they will run out of patience with each other, but if I'm in the mix (not telling them how to treat each other, but in the mix as an additional person doing what they are doing), it's totally different.

You have a role to play here, and you can make a difference in how they interact and what foundation they have to build a relationship when they are ready.

ETA: I was reading other responses, and I want to comment that my post and those saying you can't force this are not mutually exclusive. I'm NOT saying that you can or should make your kids be friends. You can't require your older child to be the younger child's confidant. But you can make sure your family dynamics, as a whole family, encourage having common experiences, because those are what will allow your kids to build relationships with each other as adults, even if it doesn't happen as teens.

I think lowering your expectations is the first step. They may never be very close and that's ok. You can't force a friendship or a bond on kids. I would just strive for respect and being considerate.

I've never intervened in my kids relationships with each other - unless someone was being very mean. When they had friends over, I never forced them to include their siblings, etc. I've seen families who do, and nothing seems to drive a bigger wedge between siblings than expecting the older ones to somehow be responsible for the younger one's feelings.

I am close with my siblings, but I think having families, being involved with my nieces and nephews, etc. was a common bond, and my mom was very fair (no favorites).

Ultimately I think your 13 year old would have to see something of interest in the 11 year old to want to hang out with her, and sometimes that is hard if they don't have common hobbies or sports or something. Mine play sports together, so it's nothing for them to go outside and do that all afternoon.

It will likely get better in time .. I think tweens and teens is a trying age, but don't force it and I would advise your 11 year old to not *bug* her sister too much :)

Good luck :)

I think the most insight you've given to enable us to answer this question is in your SWH- that you are an only child yourself. I totally see why this worries, in that context.

Us folks with siblings know that this sounds totally normal for sister relationships at this age! Also, you won't be able to control how close they are when they get older, but odds are good that they will be closer than they are now. Their relationship sounds like it is developing normally to me. there is actually a big gap between ages 11-13. Your older daughter may embrace the younger more when she joins her in teenage-hood (say, when they are 14 and 17).

I remember my older sister seeming so remote, and cool, and uninterested in me when I was that age (I was 11, she was 16). I thought she was just the epitome of cool, but I worshipped her from afar because she did not ever take a break from her important teenage activities to include me in ANYthing. So when I became the teenager and she moved out, I made a point to spend a little more time with my younger sister because I had felt so ignored when I was her age. But it was hard, she was still "little" sister...

But I really became close to my older sister when I went to college, and we kind of evened out. She loved being the cool older sis living by the beach and having us visit all the time. Now, I kid you not, all 3 of us live in the same neighborhood. I live walking distance to each of them, and they actually live across the street from eachother!

Aside from the 2 sisters I mentioned, we have another one who is older than all 3 of us, and 2 more (twins) that are younger. So consider myself somewhat of an authority on sister relationships! We are all 6 of us very close, despite all the age differences and the fact that the oldest and youngest didn't even grow up in the house at the same time. We all share the same parents... no halfs or steps or anything.

I will definitely say that the teenage years are probably the years of least closeness- because teenagers are by nature completely self-involved. School and friends are everything at that age. they don't have the appreciation for the family unit. But that grows as they mature and so does the closeness among siblings.

Plus things have to transition among siblings from being playmates to being confidantes and actual friends. Your girls are in transition for the next few years. They'll get there.

You need to step back and not micro manage every argument. They will eventually work it out.

I think you need to see this for what it really is, one child asking you to get the other child to do something they do not want to do, should not have to do. If the younger girl was saying she wished she had her sister's bed would this be so difficult to work through?

I have four kids and they can be their best friends and sometimes at the same time worst enemies. The younger ones take this dynamic differently than the older ones and that causes fighting but that isn't my children's fault nor is it anything I can or should try to fix. My younger two will mature and better understand social dynamics and they will normalize. My older two who are 25 and 27 now became friends when the oldest was 16. They found common ground, he had a car, she had gas money. Hanging out their dynamic changed and they are very good friends now as adults.

The younger two are 13 and 15 and both have birthdays next month...and then things will change.

If you start getting in the middle of this you become part of the dynamic. I speak from experience, watching friends go through this and make different choices, you do not want to get in the middle of that dynamic!

So I was the 11 year old and my sister was 13, almost exactly 2 years older than me. We were good friends for most of our lives, and still are (now 32 and 34). We shared a room always (military family with 5 kids) and we had very different interest. She was always wildly popular and athletic and I was neither.

My parents never forced a relationship on us and it just blossomed I guess. I know being military likely makes my relationship with my siblings somewhat abnormal, all 5 of us are VERY close, but it was never forced.

My daughter now is 11 and I can see why a 13 year old may want to be left alone. These are tough ages and you can't force a relationship here. You have to let THEM figure it out and stop picking sides. The 13 year old is not the devil, I'm assuming she is the oldest of all of your children? Is the 11 year old the baby?

They don't need to understand their different ages and interests because they aren't adults. We very clearly understand why this is a challenge whereas I also understand why they don't. Step out of it, let them work it out. If you don't, you may cause life long damage by picking favorites - even if you don't actually say it.

In our house my older daughter is more of a loaner. She grew up an only child and was perfectly fine with that.

My second child would love to snuggle and cuddle with her sis, but it's not happening. I just tell them both to respect each others personality.