Varying age gaps between siblings- your experiences?

[Artechim]

I am 5 years older than my brother. We never got along (understatement lol). I suspect that a lot of it may have been that we were left to our own devices most of the time - no family bonding at all itms. Once we were grown up we started getting along better and we have a good relationship now (I just saw him today actually )

My kids are 2 years apart and I agree with the personality thing. DS and DD1 don't get along particularly well and never play together unless there is a parent involved. However he is very loving toward DD2. DD1 and 2 play together quite a bit, but DD2 is still at that snatching stage wanting everything that DD1 has so it goes pear shaped quite quickly. I think that as DD2 learns some social manners that those two will be quite good friends.

I have a friend with two early teen boys and a 1 year old girl and they all get along well - she has film of the 14 year old boy playing tea party with his baby sister lol.

Personally I don't think that a 5 year gap instead of a 3 year gap will make much of a difference. They will be who they are and that will be their family. I think there is a lot more to sibling bonding than the age difference.

[meow]

It's not that I don't get along well with my younger sister. She is my sister 100% and love and adore her and I played with her a LOT (and parented her for 4 years while she was in high school)... but it's not the same as the relationship I have with my older sister. It feels like we really did grow up as siblings in the true sense and we have a much stronger shared history and also connection due to being in the same life stage now. In many ways my younger sister was like an only child with extra mothers or something.

[raffy]

I have a friend with two early teen boys and a 1 year old girl and they all get along well - she has film of the 14 year old boy playing tea party with his baby sister

That is so cute! We went out to dinner a few weeks ago and in the restaurant a family was celebrating their 2 kids birthdays one was 18 and the other was 1 haha it was funny watching because the 18yo is having his first beer in a restaurant and the 1yo was scoffing down fairy bread haha

[Cass72]

That is so cute! We went out to dinner a few weeks ago and in the restaurant a family was celebrating their 2 kids birthdays one was 18 and the other was 1 haha it was funny watching because the 18yo is having his first beer in a restaurant and the 1yo was scoffing down fairy bread haha

LOL

I think every "grown-up" family needs a toddler....if not one to keep, then they should get to borrow one now and then!

[AnyDream]

The gap between my two is 9 and a half years. They adore each other.

[meow]

The gap between my two is 9 and a half years. They adore each other.

See, this is not my concern. If I only had my younger sister I would adore her as much as I do now. I'm more concerned about when there are three children and two of them are closer in age.

[Freya]

Ive always said the three kid dynamic is a bit tricky.

My boys can get along fine as a group of three most of the time. They do have times where two will pair off but because mine are so close in age the pairings change alot. It used to be a pairing of Ds2 and Ds3 because they were at home together while Ds1 started school but now it seems to be Ds1 and Ds2 now they're at school together. Ds1 and Ds3 seem to clash the most but Ds3 is at a difficult stage and annoying all of us lol

Its an amazing magic trick that they can all be fighting tooth and nail in the 3-kid grouping but as soon as you take ONE kid out, doesnt matter which one - it settles down! Its like that third kid changes the dynamic enough to make it chaos, but its not particular to a particular kid its just any third kid - even when I have two of mine and a friend's kid

[Freya]

double post again.

[Arimeh]

To be honest, thats another reason why we weren't having another after DD3 - we had such small gaps (4 kids in 4 years, 2 months) so I didn't want to have a huge gap - and by the time she was 1, I didn't want to go back to the newborn stage, I was enjoying my last baby growing up and moving past that.

I worry that this next one will be left out - DS is sometimes left out, not because of age, but because of gender. He doesn't want to play dolls and thats all the 3 girls are interested in. It took a while for DD3 to play well with the other older girls, but now she is 2, she plays pretty well with them (when they aren't shutting her out of the room because she can't open the doors on her own just yet).

I'm hoping that when DD1 goes to school next year, she will start bonding with DS a little more, because he is always feeling left out - and we feel bad for him.