To stop opening door for sister

[thegroundskeeper]

My younger sister (22) and I live with my mum.

Sister can be unbelievably rude, unreasonable and aggressive so we don't have much to do with each right now to keep the peace. However, she keeps misplacing her front door keys!

I always let her in, but she is so rude I don't feel inclined to keep doing it. This is what happened last night:

Bell rings, I open door
Sister stomps past me and slams her bedroom door
Me, quietly: Are you going to say thank you?
Sister, screaming: OMG I just got home. FUCK OFF!!!

AIBU to go on strike and stop letting her in? That will just get me in massive trouble though. Putting a key under a plant pot or welcome mat doesn't work as that goes missing in a day or so as well. Mum won't do anything. FWIW yes I suspect she's neurodiverse but that's no excuse for the really personal insults and aggression. She doesn't reflect/apologise later.

So your solution is for OP to incur massive costs and move out?

The OP should absolutely ignore her sister first. No more door opening.

This. Opt out of getting involved.

@Picklestop the woman can figure out how to enter her mother's house. Nothing to do with the OP.

She won't stop until you stop letting her in and your mum won't see it as a problem until you make it her problem.
So yes, put headphones on and claim you never heard a thing. You've been sleeping badly recently so you bought this and you play white noise. 🤷
As an aside, does your mum change the locks every time your sister loses her keys because if not and you get burgled, good luck getting insurance to pay out if they get a whiff of a possibility there were umpteen keys floating around.

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Well if I didn’t have a key to my house, I would call a locksmith, but I think you need to be the homeowner for that. So the only other option would be to break a window or kick a door in? Is that what you are suggesting?

You have a mum issue and a sister issue. As PPs have said, stay out of their (fucked up) dynamic.

Yes to the keysafe.

I think this must be the sister. Incredible that people infantilise their adult offspring to such an extent that they don’t even expect them to open the front door themselves.

I think you should ignore her. You are not obliged to worry about the reasons for her rudeness, only that it is directed at you and is making you unhappy. Even if your sister is neurodivergent, you are perfectly entitled to find her hard to live with and to let your mum deal with it.

She's 22!

So she knocks on the door and OP ignores her.
So options:
sit on doorstep until mum comes home.
go and find a pub/cafe until m,um comes home
go to Mum's workplace and borrow her key
go round to a friends house until mum gets home.

Honestly, she will be fine. Even if it is raining, she will be fine, she isn't made of sugar and she can always go and find a cafe.
It is called being an adult.

She is a fully functioning adult, and she can make choices.
What is perfectly clear is that after a few times of OP not letting her in, she will amazingly remember her keys

Ok, from a different angle, she sounds like my 16 year old daughter who is autistic. After a full day of being with people, work/school, they need to come home and recharge. Your sister goes straight to her room, so it sounds to me she has had to cope all day, maybe masking, and just needs to take the mask off for a while. I know she is taking her aggression out on you, which is not nice, but try to remember, its not really you she is angry with. It is just you who has to take the brunt of it because you are the one opening the door. If it were me, I would just open the door, maybe say 'hi', or no comment at all, then let her go to her room for sanctuary.

It's a sad day when you can't stomp past your sister and tell her to fuck off!

I also have an autistic teen, who does exactly the same thing, needs to go to her room to recharge.

BUT

1. she doesn't tell me to fuck off.
2. she is perfectly able to say thank you and knows that that is a social convention that she is expected to use. While I might just open the door and let her stomp off ot her room, she knows perfectly well that she should say thanks
3. she has a key, and manages to use it. When she forgets it, she knows that is on her. Last summer she had to sit in the garden for an hour until I got home. She has had to walk round to our friend who has a spare key, and she TAKES RESPONSIBILITY for the fact that it is her fault as the one who forgot their key

I give her a lot of grace as a teenager and also autistic.
OPs sister is 22, not a teen and even if ND, she is capable of remembering a key and saying thank you

@Picklestop what? 😆 No. The woman can figure out how to not lose keys and/or plan how to open a door.

How does your sister cope with other life demands? Does she work, have qualifications, go out with friends?

I'm trying to gauge if it's rudness or if the level of neurodiversity means that your sister is on high alert and in fight or flight mode a lot of the time which is causing the volatile temper.

If she coping with everything else and just useless with the key, then the rudeness and carelessness is unacceptable.

If she's not coping with life and her day is constant chaos and stress and this is just one more element of her struggles.

My ND child is younger and if she arrived home and panicked because she couldn't get in she would probably either try to break in or call the police. To her it would be a major emergency (and nothing would persuade her otherwise).

We have a keybox. I make sure that the key is put back every time it's used. She doesn't have her own keys at all. That could be a solution.

Moving out is also a solution. If she's your younger sister then you're at least mid 20s. If the dynamics in your mother's house don't work for you then you have other options. I don't think it's inappropriate to suggest that.

You can't make your mum or sister change but you can express your own independence and decide not to be part of it.

If you think she is autistic I think you should just leave her alone when she comes in instead of passive agressively saying "are you going to say thankyou"
I get so overwhelmed a lot of the time I easily and just need to be alone and not spoken to or have to try to think of the things I am supposed to say I could and have forgotten to say thank you to someone opening the door.
obviously she shouldn't be rude. But when you're incredibly overwhelmed and someone criticises you it really can feel like a much bigger deal at that time and feels like an attack and just way too much.
i think people like to think they are accepting of autistic people until really basic things happen like autistic people struggling with social communication- which is literally the main thing about autism, and they they get offended.

It's in between. She's working, has lots of friends and goes out a lot.

However wasn't able to complete her qualifications.

It's constant meanness though and not limited to stressful moments. I understand what you're saying but I don't think being autistic is a reason to be as mean as she is.

@moonfacer

the OP's sister is suspected of being ND.

could you please stop calling her a twat.

Her sister’s mean behaviour is not a symptom of neurodiversity.

YABU for conflating the two.

It's literally impossible to know what. Without knowing exactly what the mean behaviour is, what's going on in general, how the people around her react to her when she is struggling etc but people don't always struggle in ways that are healthy and people with a social communication difficulty are very likely to... struggle with social communication. And struggling with emotional regulation is very common.
It's literally seems like people only think it's ok to be ND if the difficulties as a result of that are palatable.

She sounds a nightmare to be honest and as some have said she is 22 not 2. She must know right from wrong she works and has lots of friends. I think she is just taking the mick out of OP and is a nasty women who has been left to be so.
What happens if OP isnt in?
Does the mum answer the door then. The mum isnt nice either leaving Op to answer the door alm the time.

@moonfacer

i didn't say it was did I?

I just asked you if you could stop calling her a twat. There's just no need for it.

I wasn't conflating the two.

Just open the door

Don’t interact or demand thanks.

It will take up less of your energy.

And take less energy than listening to her banging and yelling til your Mum does it.

Just open the door, don’t give it head space. Focus on saving to become independent and move out.

Don't put any keys out. Let her screech and bang all she likes. Repeat as required.

But she does sound like a twat.