Is this abuse?

[unsure204]

I've namechanged for this as I'm embarrassed about it.
I've just been reading another thread which referred to abuse by an older sister to her younger brother and it got me thinking about my own childhood. I have a brother who is 2 years younger than me and when I was young (I'd say about 4 or 5 years old) I remember us kissing on the lips. I can't remember what I said to get him to do it but I remember having seen people kissing in films (I never saw my own parents kiss).
Then I remember when we were on a family holiday when I was 12, encouraging him to get in bed with me and we were hugging. My older brother came in and saw us doing it and asked what we were doing, giving us a weird look but he didn't tell either of us to get out of the bed.
Would it be considered that I abused him? There was never any touching of any sexual areas that I can remember at all, and I don't know if he even remembers it, he's certainly never mentioned it.
I was a bit of a bully with him (as some older siblings are) and I've always worried a little about what I did because I did push him into doing lots of things so I wouldn't get into trouble. Not that it worked, he was so well behaved everyone always knew that I was behind any of his bad behaviour.

No - it doesn't sound like abuse. All sounds fairly innocent to me.

No lovely deffo not abuse.

no, I don't think so, not as you describe it

Not sure but what else did you do to him in terms of bullying him?

No not abuse as far as I can see.

I think most kids "explore"!

I remember my Dad catching me and the lad next door showing each other our bits when we were about 6.

Thanks everyone, reassuring to know that the concensus is that I didn't. I'd be devestated if I had have done.

jifnotcif Just the usual sibling stuff really, I remember coercing him into stealing ice lollies from the freezer for me to eat because if he got caught in the act he'd get into less trouble. I used to be naughty and blame it on him, fighting physically with him (although not once he grew taller than me ). I once told him that he was adopted and we only kept him because we felt sorry for him . I got into big trouble over that one but my DH also did that to his younger brother and I've heard of others doing it too. Not very original stuff and nothing that I haven't heard of others doing. It was just the things I mentioned before that I was worried about but my mind is more at ease now. Thanks everyone, will namechange back now.

Sorry to say that I don't know people who did things like that to their sibs and I and my own dcs would also not do those things either. It sounds as though you really had it in for him but there's usually a reason for this. 'Exploring' is one thing, but doing stuff to deliberately hurt or upset your sibling is not right in my book - although I do see it about in much younger children, but by 5 you should have stopped.

jif - that all sound pretty normal stuff to me. I did the same sort of stuff with my younger brother, including the adoption thing and physically fighting (also stopped when he outgrew me!)!

Sounds like a completely normal sibling relatiosnhip to me.

You're probably right Queen, I'm just not very tolerant of bullying in any form but my dds do punch each other on a daily basis, but that's not really bullying, it's a two-way thing - bullying is persistent victimising of one person by another.

Yes, all sounds rather normal. My older sis did some awful things to me too ruddy cow She still apologises to this day and we have a good old laugh about it.

jif, all that stuff sounds normal to me

I used to bully my younger sister, I used to lock her in the airing cupboard

I would punch her and make things out to be her fault with our parents when we were younger

I also used some horrible psychological techniques to scare the fuck out of her

we laugh about it now (yes, really, we do)

because in the midst of that, I stuck up for her at school, we regularly ganged up on my mother and we were a tight force to be reckoned with amongst the neighbourhood kids

normal

The sad thing is that the abuse frenzy has got to a level where you would even think that was abuse.

"abuse frenzy" WMW ?

what's that then ?

you need to stop eating those cheese toasties so close to bedtime

do you not "believe" that some people get abused, and it should be called that ?

jifnotcif that sounds really normal, you're overreacting a bit thar.

I can sort of relate to whatmeworry here to be honest, there is a bit of a thing going on whether things are abuse or not hence the "abuse frenzy" line.