Community Chat

[missy1]

On 11/8/2014 Skylands said:

On 11/8/2014 stargazer said:

Only child here. Hated it all my life and was not spoiled, almost the opposite. I have two grown daughters. One east coast and one west. They hardly ever speak and see each other. Makes me so sad.

Yes, well having a brother +/or sister is no guarantee you will be close or even like each other. Life is a lonely journey with or without siblings.

So true.

[RainCityGirl]

On 11/9/2014 Plaid Pants said:

On October 24, my dad had an appointment with a cardiologist, that we had to travel about seven hours to go see. He's participating in a clinical trial to replace his heart valve, by going up the femoral artery, instead of having an open heart procedure, which he is too high risk for.

(http://www.elcaminohospital.org/Heart_Vascular_Institute/About_the_Heart_Vascular_Institute/Heart_Va...

If you click on the video, you'll see my dad's doctor explain the procedure.

That day, they did a procedure where to make sure that they could do the procedure, they went up his femoral artery. The path way looked good. He spent the night in the hospital recuperating. I never felt more alone, than I did seeing him laying there in the hospital bed, weak from the procedure.

It scared me. When I got back to my hotel room, I cried.

I had a glimpse in to my future, and it broke my heart.

The same thing happened to me when my dad had his first surgery for an abdominal aorta aneurism. That was 10 years before he died. I looked at him in the bed just out of surgery and suddenly the giant in my life looked so small and frail. I cried all the way back to Seattle with a horrible foreboding.

[Foggy morning]

Only child here. My mother passed away last year and I'm finding out my father and I are strangers. Probably always have been.

[JuJu Squeezie]

There are 3 of us, all 10 years apart.

[shesallthat]

i have a brother and a sister - but my mom was an only child and she hated it! she had a brother but he did as an infant and since my grandparents were older that was the last baby. yes she was spoiled and had everything she wanted BUT a sibling. she said that when my grandparents died and she had to take care of all the funeral arrangements by herself - first my grandmother and then 2 years later my grandfather - she never felt so alone in her life. i did not realize that until we found out we were expecting a second boy - she said she was so glad because she did not want her grandson to grow up alone. she never spoke of it before then. she always had lots of friends of course but she said that it was not the same as a sibling.

i always wonder about my niece who is an only child. she is always has two or three other people with her no matter where she is going. i wonder if she just did not like growing up alone and just does not like being by herself.

[dmod nj]

Some of you have expressed you wished you had a sibling. I have a brother I am more than willing to give away for free. Once he is your brother....no refunds, exchanges, credit or backsies.

[Burnsite]

I am from a big family, as were both my parents. That didn't prevent them from spilling a searchlight of attention over each of us, though. They didn't miss a fault or a virtue in any of us.

I remember my kindergarten teacher going up to my mother once and saying "Burnsite is like all your children--she acts just as if she is an only child."

My mother was chuckling over that as we drove home, saying, "That is 'code' for 'You're spoiling your kids!'"

There is extra responsibility in a larger family, esp. for the older children, but I was lucky in having very sweet and tractable younger siblings to supervise.

[shesallthat]

On 11/10/2014 dmod nj said:

Some of you have expressed you wished you had a sibling. I have a brother I am more than willing to give away for free. Once he is your brother....no refunds, exchanges, credit or backsies.

i felt that way about my baby brother! i told my mom that if i my sister and i could have stuck him in a box and shipped him to china he would have been gone! but i adore him now. so glad we did not pack him up. we were all spoiled but since he was the baby and the only boy - OMG! he was horrible to us and he got away with anything.

[JuJu Squeezie]

On 11/10/2014 dmod nj said:

Some of you have expressed you wished you had a sibling. I have a brother I am more than willing to give away for free. Once he is your brother....no refunds, exchanges, credit or backsies.

And if you always wished for twin boys, I'll gladly throw in my brother with the same disclaimer.

[mima]

Even though I'm not an only, this thread was very interesting. I had one brother (he died at age 47). My husband was an only. We was not spoiled. I was given way more than he ever was. He never even had a BD party. He got jeans for Christmas or BD. Never fun stuff. He worked from about age 10 or 11. He mowed yards until he was old enough to actually get a job somewhere. Back then, you could get a job at age 14 or so. He saved for a few years and had a really fancy car in his teens. It made me so mad when people said he was a spoiled only kid because he really wasn't. He wasn't given anything.

I had 3 kids. My best friend had one daughter. My friend's daughter was one of the spoiled brats (for real). My kids were always sad because "Mary" constantly got new clothes, toys, etc. Mary would rub it in to my kids really bad. I would have to explain to my kids we couldn't buy all that stuff. I'll never forget my oldest daughter saying "I wish I was the only kid so I'd get all the things she wanted".

My friend only had one child because she told me she loved her so much that she didn't think she could love another child the same. I thought that was strange thinking.