I've got 99 problems and being the eldest sibling is definitely one…
1. You weren’t allowed to watch a 15 film until you were actually 15, and then you had to take your younger sibling even though they were only 12 and a half. Fair?
2. When you tried to sneak into the pub aged 17, you got stopped by the bouncer and asked for I.D while your 15-year-old sister waltzed through unchallenged.
3. That night you were so drunk you threw up in your mum’s flowerbed, you were banned from going out for a month. Your little sister did something similar and everyone just found it hilarious!
4. You live in fear of your younger sibling doing something before you. You got engaged? Thrilled, I’m thrilled. Buying a house? How lovely for you.
5. You benchmark everything against your younger sister’s birth year. Consequently anyone born after the year 1985 makes you feel old. Really old!
6. You may have fought like cat and dog when you were little, but you still can’t shake that sense of protectiveness you have over your younger siblings. Annoying right?
7. If you have a younger sister, you’ll know the torture of her borrowing your stuff and looking better in it that you. Gah!
8. Your mum made you take your younger sibling with you everywhere. ‘A nightclub at 14, really mum?’ ‘Take your sister!’
9. Having to leave said nightclub early because your little sister was way freaked out! Not fun.
10. You’re secretly embarrassed about how mean you were to your little sister, when she wanted to hang out with the ‘big girls’. *shame faced*
11. And their little face when they tried to make up after a fight and you refused on account of the fact you needed some space! Not big, not clever.
12. If you did something naughty, you got in trouble because you were ‘old enough to know better.’
13. If they did something naughty, you got in trouble because you are the eldest and therefore should have stopped them. Er, what?
14. On the plus side, you sometimes got away with blaming the little person who wasn’t quite as good at wriggling out of things as you.
15. You got the biggest room because you were the eldest, if not necessarily the actual biggest person. Winning.
16. No matter how brilliant you’ve been, it will pale into insignificance the minute your younger sibling does something even remotely good. Your success is old news don’tcha know.
17. Keeping the knowledge that Father Christmas wasn’t real nearly killed you! Particularly because your parents only told you so that you could help make Christmas more special for them.
18. Your dad let you sneak down and watch telly when your little sibling went to sleep.
19. You’re not proud of the fact you pulled your baby sister off the kitchen table, for attention. But how could you compete with a cute, gurgling bubba?
20. You feel a whole spectrum of emotions towards your little siblings - affection, resentment, protectiveness, envy and at times genuine hatred, but they will always be your little brother or sister and as such it’s the law that you have to love them. Or at least suck it up.