I'm curious whether anyone here found they had a typical dynamic with siblings (if you've got any) of your target gender, back from when you were basically too young to have understood the full effects and implications of being trans.
By typical I mean the sort you see in others around you in your particular country or culture, of the gender you ID as. I know there's really no "typical" way for kids to behave with their siblings, but where I am, it's fairly typical for two sisters to be close, for example. And how did you feel about your siblings?
I was a "divorce kid" and all my siblings are half siblings. I haven't even met the last one because they're on my dad's side but I was raised with my half-sister and I was the oldest kid of both my mother and bio father. They expected me to get along with my sister right away, which I didn't really do. I figured she was my "replacement", and my parents were in the mental doghouse for that for a while. As she got older, she followed me around everywhere and I guess I acted very much the typical tyrannical older brother, playing pranks on her, raging when she went in my room and walked off with my stuff, and annoyed she had to hang around with me when I went out to play. But we did have a lot of adventures together and I knew I was basically responsible for her safety. That didn't stop me doing some real stupid things like climbing into abandoned buildings and letting her ride a strange horse because she really, really wanted to and I figured I could befriend it. But we're both still here, so it's all good.
I think it kinda hit home that I wasn't really "the sister" one day when I was complaining about her as usual, and then she said some kid was bullying her in her new school. Not even sure where it came from but it was like "who? when? tell me who they are and I'll kill them." It was very much a case of nobody rags on my sister but me. Very typical brother behavior as I found out later. She drove me absolutely nuts (and still does sometimes lol) as kids but I still react the same way now if someone was bothering her. We didn't get along much at all for the first 16 years but now we're probably the closest family members left. I still tend to be very cocky with her and mess with her a bit, but I'm actually surprised how protective I feel. She has her own family now and that's a weird feeling, almost a little like competition.
My half-brother I wasn't sure what to make of back in the day because I didn't see him much, on my dad's side. There was favoritism for him there, but I put up with it and learned to get along with him. It was a strange situation because I never really trusted my dad, and my bro adored him.... he got hugely upset one day when I said I didn't know what to think of my dad, given the bad stories from my mum's side so I felt like I was the stranger there and the one that didn't fit. We used to play console games together, read comics and talk about stuff we weren't supposed to. Even found my dad's not-so-carefully hidden French "art books" which were hilarious. It was very much an older-younger brother kind of thing.
The other siblings I don't really know. I left the city my dad lived in when my mother's family moved and I never saw them since. Was kind of awkward. Talked to a couple of them a few years back. One's in the military now I guess.
The more I think about it, the more obvious the dynamics seem to be. Being the oldest kid does place you in a position of power, so to speak. You can influence your siblings rather than the other way around -- I wonder if it would have gone anywhere near as smoothly if I'd had an older brother telling me what to do (hell, there might have been hospital visits), or an older sister's influence. It's hard to imagine; I think the order you come out and the place you have in the family does affect your personality to a degree. Your parents expectations are heavier when you're first; you have to look after the others... or you can be somewhere between a guardian and a terrorist like I was, lol.
And then I look at my friends who are only children, and how different it is for them. I wonder how being a trans only child feels? Or the youngest trans child? Or the middle one?
As the eldest I was pretty much free to do whatever I wanted; and I did. But they also couldn't wait to get rid of me and since I have no kids of my own, I'm kind of ... forgotten now. I guess freedom is lonely.
