The Lifelong Gift of Sibling Friendship

I’ve always been close to my brother. As the family story goes, I was very lonely as an only child. I watched all my friends in envy as they played with their siblings. “I really, really, want someone to play with, 24/7,” I thought. At the age of four, I started praying for another child in our family. It was all I could talk about for months. I even wrote a letter to Santa asking for a little brother to be delivered on Christmas. It would be a miracle! So when my parents announced that I would be getting a younger brother, I was over the moon.

True to my word, I loved my brother. I stopped playing with Barbie, and instead played with robots, cars, and superheros. When he grew a little older and could talk, I shared all kinds of secrets with him, like the school gossip and drama. For a long time, we were a team, a package deal.

Now, however, he’s seven, and I’m almost a teenager. We aren’t as close as we were before. Part of the distance is because we don’t share the same interests anymore. We never really did. I also feel that I’m more mature, but my brother is still young, and doesn’t understand me as well as he used to. We’ve started fighting more and more often about the pettiest things. 

Recently, after a big argument, I was in shock that our fights had grown this intense. Instead of the usual sulking I did after our fights, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the relationship between me and my brother. I remembered how he used to be my favorite person in the world. Just then, I really wanted to save our relationship-- I just didn’t know how. 

I felt constantly frustrated by my ‘childish’ brother who couldn’t understand or cooperate with me. I talked to several people, and they just said a noncommittal response, and quickly moved on. One of my friends said, “Whatever. Sibling relationships never work out in the end anyway.”

Finally, I looked to my mom for advice. She said, “Maybe you need to look at things from your brother’s perspective.”

I later learned that she said the same thing to my brother. It was good guidance. Since then, things have started to become better. I’ve started to be less and less demanding of my brother. Instead of trying to make him understand what I was going through, I tried to give him good advice about second grade. We’ve started to spend more time together, just like we used to. 

My family has ‘value days’ on Saturdays, when we play board games or go hiking in the morning. At night, we all watch a movie together. It’s an important weekly tradition for us, because we get to spend quality time together, as a family. When we were deciding on what to watch, my brother and I used to fight about who would get to pick the movie. He wanted to watch Minecraft movies, and I wanted to watch K-dramas. Now, we compromise, by selecting something that we can both watch. Recently, everyone enjoyed the new Super Mario Bros movie. 

My brother and I still have the occasional fight, but we’ve learned how to forgive and forget. I’ve realized that growing means managing your expectations and understanding limitations. I’m developing more mature relationships with my mother and my closest friends, as we discuss things that only teenage girls (or former teens) will understand. My amazing friends know what it feels like to want to experiment with makeup, and my mom recognizes how stressful middle school can be. 

As a second grader (like my brother now), I only worried about making friends and doing my homework correctly. Now, however, I’m faced with harder, more demanding problems. This year will be my first time as a middle-schooler at Oxford Academy (ranked #3 in California). It was my idea to try and go to Oxford, even though I knew their tough curriculum would be very challenging. I wanted to challenge myself, and reach my personal best. Although I was sure of my decision, I currently feel very anxious that I will fall behind in such a demanding environment

My brother is too young for such conversations, so we naturally don’t talk as much anymore. Sometimes I worry that in the future, we will talk even less. In six years, I’ll be in college, and my brother will be thirteen. I often wonder if he will be willing to talk about what he’s going through as a teenager, or if he will become moody and silent. 

In time, my brother may realize that adolescence and friends come and go; over time, even our parents will pass and the only person left from our childhood is us. Whatever happens, I’ll always be there for him, because siblings are a lifelong gift of friendship.