By Beza Kifle
For most of us who have siblings, we’re only a couple of years apart. This is like me and my brother Nahom, who is a year and 7 months younger than I am.
But other times, siblings can be separated by larger age gaps, and I relate to this too because my youngest brother, Yacob, is younger than me by almost 9 years, and he is currently in 3rd grade.
Our age gap surprises me every time I really think about it. For example, I want to go to med school to be a doctor, and if everything in my life goes to plan, I will graduate in 2033, but he will just be graduating high school.
It’s definitely weird coming home and seeing my little brother playing and running around, especially because I don’t see or talk to any children for the majority of the day. It’s kind of hard dealing with someone who is on a completely different maturity level than me, but at the same time, it gives me a break from what I have to do during the day. Instead of dealing with pre-calc, I can help him with multiplication tables. Instead of chatting about PDC, we chat about what we’re going to do at our aunt’s house and his obsession with drawing.
Knowing that I am not the only person that experiences this, I decided to look for an US student that also has a large age gap with their sibling. I found junior Sarah Turner, who has a 7-year age gap with her younger sister, in 4th grade. “Her name is Eva Jane, but we call her Eva or EJ,” Sarah told me.
Their “sibling” relationship is a little different because of their age gap. “We really don’t relate about stuff because we’re so far apart,” Sarah told me. “We do things together like I drive her places, but when it comes to social life and personal things, it’s hard to relate.”
It is getting easier for them to relate as Eva gets older. “The other day, we were driving, and she was telling about her friends,” Sarah said, “but in the past few years, it was hard to talk.”
Just like every sibling, Eva takes Sarah’s things and they fight a little. “It’s a little annoying, but it’s because she’s not on the same maturity level. There’s not really anything you can do about that,” she said.
Since Sarah’s older, I asked her if she has to help her sister a lot. Her sister just got her laptop, so “she’s asked me how to use it and I can help her with that,” Sarah told me. As usual, she helps her sister with homework, but “it’s not really a problem,” Sarah explained.
But most of the time, Sarah has to drive Eva basically every day to school, and sometimes Eva asks to go do things. “Yesterday, she asked if I wanted to go get ice cream, so I did because I’m not going to decline ice cream,” Sarah said.
Since I have two very different relationships with my brothers because of our age gaps, I asked Sarah if she thought their relationship would also be different if they had a shorter age gap.
“It definitely would be different. I’m friends with Phallen, and she and her brother are really close,” Sarah told me. “Her brother can cover for her with their parents, but I can’t really do that with my sister.” She did say that Eva covers for her for little things.
Nahom and I definitely relate to this with Yacob because he loves to find things to snitch on us for, but he hates it when we find things to snitch on him. Over the weekend, I saw that Yacob hadn’t finished his homework, so I told him that I would tell on him if he didn’t do it. He proceeded to tell me that he doesn’t like it when he gets in trouble, but he also doesn’t like to listen. I just turned around and left.
It turned out I didn’t need to say anything because our dad came home and Yacob scrambled to go finish. Fortunately, he didn’t hold a grudge about my threat to tell on him. It helped that I gave him some candy. Which is a useful strategy no matter how wide the age gap.
