to not know how to be around my sister?

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I am 27 and my sister is 17. We are absolute opposites. I mean, we are so completely different we are like a storyline from a mediocre chick flick.

I have always been very academic, I am 'typically' girly in that I have long blonde hair, love make up and fashion and I live in what my sister calls 'suburban hell' with my husband and daughter. I have my own business and my husband is a lawyer.

My sister on the other hand currently has green hair and considers herself a 'punk'. She is in a band, not academic at all and flat out refuses to get a job. We have absolutely nothing in common and she is very disparaging about mine and my husband's jobs as we are part of 'the capitalist cycle' apparently

I do realise that much of this is just general teenager stuff but we've never seen eye to eye.

So despite her apparent disgust at my lifestyle and endless commentary on it - she does still want to spend time with me. But I find this tricky. She finds it funny to get my daughter to say things I don't like, she wears clothes that she has 'decorated' with fake blood and she owns a t shirt with a swastika on it which does say 'fuck the Nazis' but still,I don't want to go anywhere with her when she's wearing this stuff - but the worst thing is she just slags off absolutely everything about our lives and if you question her on it, she loses it and feels 'bullied'.

My mum says she keeps on about coming to mine but I'm avoiding her because I find it so difficult. I do try and take an interest , I buy her tickets for concerts and organised a friend to let her band record in his studio but when it comes to being around her, I struggle.

Can anybody offer any advice? I know it makes my mum sad that we aren't particularly close so I would like to try and remedy this.

I think it's the age gap tbh. My brothers are 5/6 years older than me (so less of an age gap) and they are late 20s, I'm early 20s. Until recently we were world's apart, they'd done uni , got decent jobs and moved away. I was still in the uni bubble. We were extremely close though because I was always quite mature and we had things in common (uni, similar sporting interests etc..) I know we weren't as close when I was a teen because I was a typical moody teenager. What I think you need to do is find some common ground. There must be something you both have in common, then work on this. e.g. If it was a particular band, film etc. .. go to watch them and spend some time alone. She's still young and naive/ childish? so you need to be the big sister who she can look up to. She obviously wants to spend time with you, which is nice!

I would try to keep the lines of communication open. She will grow out of it.

Are there things that you could do together that don't involve having to talk too much or that you could talk about the activity rather than your differences (see a film etc, go bowling etc)? Or would she hate all those things too?

It's the age gap. Ten years is a long way apart and u two probably weren't into the se things growing up either. I look at my youngest brother dispairingly too and it's almost 8 years between us but then I remember I was a twat in my own way when I was young. Think you might have to just ignore it and not rise to it. Not give her attention for it

Embrace your differences. I know that's easier said than done but do you really want a clone of you as your sister? How dull! Try laughing it off and agreeing with her when she's disparaging. Also your disapproval of her choices is tangible so she's probably responding to that in her own way. If you start accepting her you'll probably find she gets bored of raging against the machine and you'll get on better. I love people who are totally different to me. I reckon you can both learn a lot from each other - even though she is a lot younger and has a lot of maturing to do!

She's 17. You should have seen me at 17, teenage Goth. I'm a lawyer now though

I was probably more selfish between 17-23 than ever. I think it's a combination of your age gap and her age but despite all that I think I would be tempted to talk to her about her apparent disrespect for you and let her know that it hurts your feelings.

A fab book for dealing with children is "How To Talk So Kids Listen And Listen So Kids Talk" but I actually think it's great for establishing good communication with anyone not just kids, so might be of some use.

Give it a few years. There's 5.5 years between me and my Dsis. When she was 17 i was 23, you couldn't have paid me to spend time with her nightmare trendy hipster before being hipster was a thing she was Now, she's 23 and normal I'm 29 and apart from my dh, she's my best friend.

Could you go and do something just the two of you where you could kind of both be out of your comfort zones? Go free climbing? Go over the O2? Go ice skating?

Sometimes you've got to meet not in the middle, but in some weird place where both of you aren't the ones on 'home turf' to bond and build a sister bond.

I do feel for you, my little sister is a proper party girl, shops and does her makeup and little else, and I find the best times we have together are when we do spontaneous weird stuff so I don't feel like she had the edge on me, and she doesn't feel I'm boring her with my dreadful grown up life