My sister- Aspergers

I thought I'd tell you a bit about this because it's such a big part of my life. My sister is a year and a half older than me (18), and she has Asperger's syndrome, and a bit of cerebral palsy. She's always struggled with academic subjects at school (English, Maths, Science), although she's brilliant at spelling, and her memory for number plates and phone numbers is second to none! I was always an imaginative child, whereas she really wasn't. I would always think up these amazing role-play games, and she would just go along with them, but she could never think of anything to play except school teachers. I never really minded this, because that's just what I was used to.
As she got older, she often found it easier to befriend adults than people her own age, and especially throughout high school she got bullied a lot :( , so she went to a boarding school for year 10 and 11. Needless to say, she didn't do very well in her GCSE's, although she got the same grade as me for art and she didn't even want to do art.... (we both got E's.... I can actually draw, but I have no motivation for drawing thing that I don't want to, and there was sooo much coursework {which I didn't do enough of}). She's now at college, and the first year she did childcare, and this year she's doing health and social care. She really wants to work with special needs children, because she's so good with them! I think they don't make her nervous like some other people might be because she's in the same boat.
It can be hard living with her sometimes because of a number of reasons:

• She has no volume control on her voice. She talks very loudly!
• She's very light and touch sensitive so she hates bright fluorescent lights, sticky things (like selotape), and wet tissues.
• She can get very anxious at times, like if she's in a restaurant and she didn't know in advance that she was eating out, she sometimes completely closes up, and wont decide what food she wants to eat, then gets really hungry and stressed and generally starts crying or hugging my dad.
• She doesn't understand a lot of films because she cant perceive what people are thinking or feeling when she looks at their face, so she complains if me or my mum watches films frequently. Its the same for a lot of T.V programmes.
• She's never found reading books easy, whereas I've been reading everything I can get my hands on since I've been able to read. Because of this she gets jealous, and sometimes moody.
• Sometimes everything just gets too much for her and she wants to get away from everything, and not talk to anyone. Slight problem if we're in a public place.
• She often doesn't know the right thing to say to someone, like if she's paying for something in a shop, and she gives up if something doesn't work after the first try..... like unlocking the front door. Because of this, she cant be left to her own devices much unless she's with a friend.

Reasons why I love her:

• She can be really affectionate and lovely when she's in the right mood.
• I'm not great at talking to strangers, but she's great at it, so if I'm in a situation where I have to talk to new people, and she's there it just makes it so much easier for me.
• I feel much more empathetic for other people, including people with special needs.
• She can be very generous with food. I'm not because I love food, but she will happily share half what she has with me.
• I've had the chance to be a little sister, and a big sister at the same time, which not many people with one sibling get to experience.
• She's AMAZING at sign language. She has nothing wrong with her hearing, but she has a really close friend who has downs syndrome, who is hearing impaired and uses sign language frequently. She learnt enough sign language to be able to converse with a deaf person in less than a year! I did French for about four years at school and I still couldn't converse with a French person! She made loads of friends because of it, and became involved with a community that most hearing people don't.