I (20f) have a friend group and we've known each other since middle school and since then, we've always hang out whenever we can. There would be times where I would bring my younger sibling ( currently 16f) along. But every time I bring her, she doesn't really interact with others and often feels like there's an awkward tension whenever I try to involve her into conversation with my friends.
At the beginning, I thought it might be because of our age gaps and differences on what my friends and I like to joke around and talk about. But I also knew that couldn't be the case because we both have similar interests and humor so whatever I was joking about with friends is the same I would've joked around with her at home. Sometimes after our hangouts, some of my friends would often ask and wanted to check if they perhaps made my sister uncomfortable because of her quiet presence and when I do check in with her to have a reply, her response is just a shrug. Due to this, I always felt bad that maybe I was just dragging her along without her consent and that she was just coming along because our mom told her too. Now this is just the beginning part, and the part that I'm more conflicted about is when I say that I got plans to hang out with friends and my mom is the one always asking if my sister will come along.
In the beginning, I would always ask but after some time, there would be times where she would say she'll go but then last minute cancel on me. And this would be an occurring thing for every time I hang out. At some point, I was getting ready to leave and then out of the blue, she asked if I was ready to go. Being genuinely confused, I asked her "Where are we going? Why are you dressed up?" Now, I'm also known to be a forgetful person which is why I always write down notes for events I might go to. So when she asked me that, I genuinely believed that I had probably forgot that I was supposed to go out with her somewhere and had made plans on the same day. But instead, she got mad at me for asking and took it as "Why are you coming with me to hang out?" And it became into a huge problem afterwards with both her and my mom for "prioritizing my friends over my sister."
After that day, whenever I tell my mom about the group hangouts, she always asks if I'm going to take my sister with me and its under the assumption that I should always say yes. But at the same time, I feel more conflicted on the fact that whenever she does come along, she just stays by my side and doesn't talk with anyone unless they try to make small talk with her. Whenever we go out, if there's a request she has, I try to make sure that we complete and sometimes I would separate from the group to complete it. Other times, we all go as a group. Although there isnt any type of weird interactions that may have my sister feel uncomfortable with my friend group ( I also say this because im also protective of her and there has been some fucked ups between my friends and I, but never with my sister because they all know that messing with her is like messing with me. So my friends knows better than to try to upset me) , I often feel like she tries to isolate me with her to do things that she wants to do and tries to separate us from my group. When I told my opinion about all of this to my mom, her response is that I should just follow along because my sister has no friends and the only person she has is me. She'd get mad if I mention that my sister might not be interested in going out and she gets even madder if I mention that I dont want to bring her along because of how she acts in front of my friends.
At some point, whenever I bring her along, I often feel like im just taking care of her instead of just enjoying myself and having fun. I don't know, maybe I'm just being selfish and maybe my mom is right. I mean its nice and all to hang out with both my family and friends but I don't know if feeling this way is right or that I'm being selfish for wanting some alone time with my friends.
I dont know, what do you guys think?