Best age gap between children?

[EdinburghFirstTimer]

What do you think the best age gap between young children is?

I’m thinking about many things: kids getting on well, recovery after labour, having your body to yourself for a while after pregnancy and bf, free nursery hours.

All things considered, personal and financial, what is the best gap?

There is no right or wrong answer, each child is different they will not interact, grow, learn or play with any other child the same way. It can not be predicted, you need to go for it when you are comfortable and see what happens. Children are not an exact science.

Some of that is true, Pink, but I clearly want to hear of other people’s experience and advice.

There are some l things that are more exact eg planning the free childcare hours so parents aren’t overburdened by childcare costs.

If pushed, I'd say 3 years looks pretty good. None of mine are, but if I was starting again, I'd aim for that.

There are 4 years between my oldest 2 and the youngest. It's too big a gap. If I were gasping it again I'd aim for the smallest gap possible.

No idea from personal experience but we are planning a gap of minimum 34 months, it could obviously be many months bigger depending on how long it takes to TTC. Our DC is nearly 2. I absolutely couldn't have coped with two little ones with a small gap, I had PND and have a long history of chronic MH problems and our DC screamed for most the first 7 months of her life. The older she gets the more enjoyable I find parenting and the less overwhelmed I feel. I wish I could just skip the newborn stage entirely tbh as no desire to go through that again but we both definitely want another child so it's a necessary evil! We also couldn't have financially afforded a smaller gap and a big reason for that is childcare, DC will get 30hrs free childcare from September 2021. Although we will still have to pay about £10 a day top ups at our nursery I think.

roughly between ~18 months and 3.5yrs works well for us.

I had my children less than 2 years apart and so did my daughter. Both around 22 months. Both lots of siblings were the same sex which may make a difference, but they were and are best friends. No idea if this had anything to do with the age gap though.

Obviously that meant 2 in nappies for a while, but I would do the same again despite the hard work involved. My daughter is happy with her choices too.

I've got 2 years between one and two and 18 months between two and three. It was a bit full on really.

Around three years might be good because, to my mind, three seems like a watershed in child development. By then they're usually walking, talking, feeding themselves, out of nappies and can get themselves dressed/undressed so they need you to do less for them when you're looking after a new baby too.

Can’t answer, would love a second by now, 7 years after having my 1st but Mother Nature ain’t playing ball and have t been lucky to have a 2nd, so all those things you’ve listed are irrelevant in my case, it’s actually being able to have a 2nd.

Are you researching for a study? Or are you trying to plan your own life?

I have 2y4m between my 2. It has worked pretty well - toddler was a bit more independent when I had a newborn and also loves to "help" e.g. getting wipes/nappies for the babies. Also ds1 won't remember being an only. The baby is 7mo old now and loves his big brother - always laughing and clapping at him! Now considering a third - I'm keen not to have too much of a gap but also don't want everything to descend into utter chaos as the leap from 1 to 2 has been ok and I don't want to ruin it!

Mine will have a 15m gap. I'm hoping to get the baby years of crap sleep out of the way asap and then be able to enjoy them growing up together and (hopefully) being similar enough ages that they really enjoy playing together.

Pixie - my DC wasn't even walking at 15m which isn't unusual at all. I can't imagine the extra difficulty that would have caused having two carry two of them around all the time, my back was/is knacked as it was!

There was 2 and a half years between mine. Worked very well. Dear was toilet trained and in a bed. So only one lot of nappies and no need for a new cot. He was old enough to be included with looking after his sister and also happy to watch a DVD if l was busy.
They played together really well when DD was older and days out and holidays were easy to organise as they both into same things. They still close now 20 odd years later.
I was probably lucky though.

17 months was a dream. My eldest was young enough to go with the flow and never suffered jealousy. Once they moved out of babyhood they became the best of friends. They are teenagers now and still the best of friends.
There was 2.5 yrs between dc 2 and 3 and dc two was jealous and they fight like cat and dog. Dc 3 is now 11 and gets on well with DC 1

Meadow, I agree that older babies and toddlers are more appealing than the newborn stage. The nappies and lack of sleep were quite something. Thinking about when we should TTC again, but perhaps coronavirus will be the deciding factor.

I have 2 years 5 months between mine. They don’t really play together (3 and 1 at the minute) but they love each other. We got free hours once my maternity leave ended so only have to pay 1 lot of childcare which worked well.

My girls are 33 months apart. I decided to have them relatively close together so they would play/entertain each other. In hindsight I would have had a smaller age gap and then they could be closer together at school and probably do similar activities after school together, etc.

Ah yes Mother Nature too, my second never appeared

4 or 5 years

We had hoped for two years between each child but the fertility gods didn't agree - so we have three years (almost to the month) between them. Currently just turned 12, almost 9, just turned 6. It's a good gap but as they get older I actually wish the gap were 2 years rather than three. Things like choosing movies that they can all watch, or camps they can all do together. Minor things really! Agree completely though that personality is a more important factor than age in terms of their relationship.

There is just under 3 years between my first 2, and then neary 6 years between the second and third. If I had my time over again I'd have all three of them as close together as I physically could. That said, we were aiming for a much smaller gap between 1 and 2 anyway and TTC for a year, so I suppose you don't exactly have much control over it.

Had two under two, they now play really well together. Then a 3 year gap (bigger than I wanted but was ttc for a while). I'm glad though, that gap work really well, older two love helping and are independent enough that I'm able to enjoy baby snuggles etc

6 years between my two girls. Perfect for us. They get on really well, and it was lovely having a sensible 6 year old helping out with a baby, and then as they grew older together, the eldest spent a lot of time with her younger sister. It also meant when the eldest was in secondary, and we still had all the younger playthings at home, her friends used to love coming around to play with our youngest, the pretense being that they were playing with her, but actually they loved being able to still play with dolls and kitchens, without being judged. It was lovely.

Now I have a mid/late teen and an early twenties, and they meet up in London for weekends, and go to museums and plays and musicals.

I wanted a small gap (2 years or less) but after baby one OH needed a lot of persuading that we actually wanted a second one, so we're only TTC now and shes 3y4 mths! So assuming all goes to plan there'll be julst over 4 years between them which is a biiiig gap. But in general I'm glad. She was a very high maintenance, cranky baby, and as a toddler she is lovely but SO bright and intense that she takes all my focus and time to keep up with. I can't imagine having done the last year with another baby in tow. And it may mean I will have half my mat leave with her and baby, and then she'll be off to school allowing me some down time with baby 2. So only ever one set of childcare fees, and only supporting one child at a time through Uni (presuming they choose to attend) - I can see benefits in terms of spreading the load. And hopefully with a four year gap eldest will consider it a bit beneath her dignity to scrap too much with youngest!

However, if it starts looking like my birth would coincide with her starting school we'll stop trying and either wait a bit before starting again or give up - I definitely don't want to give her the impression she's being pushed aside and replaced, but I also don't want to add another 5-6 years of in-house parenting on after her... not sure OH could survive it! So I've left myself a bit of a fine window of opportunity... here's hoping my poor battered 35yo body has still got what it takes to get knocked up!

Everybody has a different idea of the best age gap, my two are three years apart and i think it’s perfect, I’ve had no jealousy between them, they don’t argue or fight but they do play together for ages and they love each other so much that they want to share a room even though we have a four bedroom house so could easy have a room each.