Only child syndrome
Dec. 29th, 2011 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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plan_surviveDoes anyone else feel the stress of having the only child/being the only parent in view?
I feel this a lot with my friends, and all the time with my family: I am the eldest sibling and cousin, and much younger than all my uncles and aunts. (My husband is similar in a way: his sisters are childless and he rarely sees his cousins.) So at many gatherings there is exactly one child, our son, and one or two parents, us. It feels like parenting on stage. I find it very hard. Of course many older relatives remember parenting young children, but it's a little bit removed: I'm the only one who has to right then and there calm down a child screaming because either they're getting too much attention (eight adults all exhorting him to rock on his lovely new rocking horse) or too little (eight adults have suddenly switched their attention in unison to admiring someone's new earrings).
It also means that for days on end, he has two playmates, and they are us. Family gatherings are the opposite of the tribe-of-children experience they are in some families. (And I feel a bit bad for him as well, I hated being the old cousin too old for the tribe and too young for the adults, and he will have an even worse gap because at least I have a sister close in age.)
I don't know that I'm looking for advice (I can't imagine what it would be: casting fertility spells on our sisters?), but maybe commiseration!
I feel this a lot with my friends, and all the time with my family: I am the eldest sibling and cousin, and much younger than all my uncles and aunts. (My husband is similar in a way: his sisters are childless and he rarely sees his cousins.) So at many gatherings there is exactly one child, our son, and one or two parents, us. It feels like parenting on stage. I find it very hard. Of course many older relatives remember parenting young children, but it's a little bit removed: I'm the only one who has to right then and there calm down a child screaming because either they're getting too much attention (eight adults all exhorting him to rock on his lovely new rocking horse) or too little (eight adults have suddenly switched their attention in unison to admiring someone's new earrings).
It also means that for days on end, he has two playmates, and they are us. Family gatherings are the opposite of the tribe-of-children experience they are in some families. (And I feel a bit bad for him as well, I hated being the old cousin too old for the tribe and too young for the adults, and he will have an even worse gap because at least I have a sister close in age.)
I don't know that I'm looking for advice (I can't imagine what it would be: casting fertility spells on our sisters?), but maybe commiseration!
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 09:56 am (UTC)Some family combinations are easier than others, like his grandmothers and certain aunts & uncles who seem happy to take on distraction/play/childcare for a time on every visit. I probably shouldn't name+shame the ones who don't, who make me feel awkward and disruptive when my child is being a child.
I will say that over the last few years, I've learned to make less effort to spend time with the relatives that make me/child feel out of place, and much more effort for those who make us welcome.