Whether you're the oldest or the second youngest or anything in between, being the older sibling is hard. Not only is being a role model thrust upon you the moment someone younger is born, but you become the test monkey for certain decisions parents haven't had to make for your sibling(s) yet.

There are a lot of responsibilities that come along with a younger sibling and, although it seems appealing to neglect them sometimes, we take our role as the older child very seriously. So, here are a few things we’d like the outside world to know.

1. When we say we can't stand our younger counterparts, we don't mean it (most of the time).

Of all the things I regret saying to my friends, one of them has to be "I hate my younger brother," because it's not true. There are things he does that I wish he'd never do, but I wouldn't go as far as to say I don't like him. Part of the role of being the older(est) is pretending that you don't like the younger(est) so you can swoop in like a hero surprising a villain when something goes very wrong or very right for them. Families as a whole are dysfunctional at times and part of that dysfunction is the rocky road of having siblings; we can be at each other’s throats for 75% of the time, but the 25% that everyone gets along is far more meaningful and memorable.

2. We hate it when our siblings think we're "the favorite."

Although the evidence where the thought originates has it's perks (like getting a kitten for Christmas!), it hurts us a lot when the person who is supposed to look up to us thinks we're more loved by our parents. We can all remember the time when our sibling was first born, no matter how young we were, and we felt like we were getting replaced (although that thought fizzles out very quickly) and the youngest can never understand that pain. But the pain they do understand is watching the older child get the opportunities they have yet to receive because of their age. From our perspective, we’re finally getting it good in the household because we’re “mature,” but all our siblings see is special treatment.

They don’t remember all the forced unpaid babysitting, unjust blame, or all the things they got at the same time as us, even though we are older and they should have to wait until they’re our age. They don’t see that it took us leaving the house to get our well deserved special treatment, they just see favoritism, and it still hurts us big kids.

We grow up thinking that the sibling(s) below us are the favorite and, as soon as the tables turn and the rest of the kids in the family think our parents love us more, we don’t understand it. We’d much rather they know they’re the favorite, especially if we’re leaving for college. As much as we’d like everyone in the house to feel equal, we prefer the little guys to be just a teeny tiny bit happier than us, because that’s part of our job.

3. We have double standards for the way we treat our siblings and the way other people can.

I can't count how many times I've screwed with my brother and I'm not ashamed to say it, it comes with being brother and sister. I can count, however, how many times someone else has messed with my baby brother and I've been okay with it, and it's a number I can count to on one hand.

Older siblings are like dogs: we're allowed to mess with our people, but outsiders are not. It may be confusing to the objective eye, but it makes sense to us. Our job is to protect our younger sibling(s) from everyone but ourselves.

4. It actually hurts when our younger siblings don't like us.

We try to act like we don't care whether or not our siblings enjoy our presence, but it really does matter. Regardless of the number of siblings or how far apart everyone was born, the older ones can remember a time without the younger ones. No matter how many times we try to deny it, the life before siblings was much less fun.

For the younger siblings, though, they’ve never known life without their elder brother(s) and/or sister(s) and if they ever find themselves wishing that we’d never been born or they were the oldest, we take it very personally. We feel like we’ve failed our job, our only job to them. Being older is hard, and sometimes we slip up, but we still like to feel wanted by our siblings, no matter how hard we try not to care.

5. It’s hard to grow up when you’re the oldest.

There are small differences I can see between myself and my friends that are the youngest child, and one of them is that it feels like I am a couple years behind, probably because my brother was born a couple years after me. I grew up with a smaller boy in my house and I think that caused me to alter the way I grew up, so that I stayed alongside him and didn’t leave him behind because that is part of the job.

Older siblings know more of the world and we want to do everything in our power to help our younger family members tackle obstacles. Becoming an adult is scary and we’d rather not do it alone; separating from the person we’ve had stuck to our sides for our entire lives makes the whole of it even scarier. And it doesn’t make it any better when we move away and feel like we’re no longer taking care of our siblings like we should be.

In short, us older siblings feel that we have a responsibility to take care of our younger family members, whether we decide to do it or not is day to day, but, be assured, you don’t want to test our loyalty to our siblings because we will prove you wrong (unless they eat the last piece of dessert, then they’re on their own).