To have a 10 year old, 8 year old and… a newborn??

[SconesOrScones]

DH and I would both love to have another child. We have two daughters already who are 10 and 8. We don’t know anyone IRL with this sort of age gap so would be interested to hear from anyone who has this age gap and can tell us how it has worked for their family.

Would it be unreasonable of us to have another with our existing children being older?

If you have plenty of space for the children to have their own rooms then I don’t think it’s a problem.

My sisters are 8 & 16 years younger but we had to share and it was awful.

It really depends on your kids - my DC have a 14 year age gap and when DS was born, people kept asking if his big sister loved babysitting him!? Um, no. I wouldn't have expected her to for a start and I also wouldn't have trusted her! She could barely keep herself alive never mind a baby.

They have a great relationship now (though they bicker a LOT) but she wasn't into him as a baby and had limited patience for him as a toddler.

My friend had a baby when her DC were 11 and 9. The 11 yo was unimpressed with a baby sibling (went so far as to suggest termination when mum announced the pregnancy 🙈) but the younger child adored the baby and had so much time and patience for them. That outcome was very much reflective of the DCs personalities.

I have a 5 year age gap between mine so not so large. It has been good so far as my DC1 needs less attention than a toddler and is more self-sufficient. They've also had me to themselves for 5 years. They love having a little sibling and absolutely dote on DC2 although we are now reaching the stage where DC2 is on the move and into everything, which DC1 finds slightly annoying. We have sectioned off a bit of our living room for DC1 to have "big kid" toys like lego/playmobil in and that seems to be helping.

I would go ahead with a third in your situation so long as you have sufficient resources for all DC to have their own rooms. Also to spend time with your older kids independently of the little one. Obviously they are very dependent on you for the first year, but I have started leaving DC2 with family/a babysitter now and then so I can go and do more challenging activities with DC1 on their own, which they like. DC2 gets me to themselves when DC1 is at school/clubs. If you go ahead, definitely be prepared to 'divide and conquer' or pay for help so that all the kids get to do things they enjoy rather than things being pegged at the youngest.

9 years between my girls. It's lovely for the most part. Eldest was a bit jealous at first. Doing days out that everyone likes isn't easy but also not impossible

I have a 10&9 year old then 2 much younger ones.
it’s lovely but I was also getting used to having more ‘freedom’ and some sleep so going back to that again was harder than I could have imagined.

It's not unreasonable, but it will make your life a lot harder and it will impact on your older DDs lives a lot. If they're already 10 & 8 you're now in a stage where you have a lot more freedom as a family to do more interesting days out, not be stuck going to the park and the playground, not limited by naps and tantrums, potty training and having a baby/toddler with all their paraphernalia. TBH, I can't think of anything worse than going back into the trenches of having a baby when you've left all that behind!

There's about 8 years between my eldest and youngest. They have such a lovely relationship.

I can't comment a lot because I'm about to have a big age gap but the baby hasn't been born yet.

What I can say is that after years of focussing solely on getting pregnant I hadn't given much thought to anything past that and carrying a baby past x point. However a really lovely but unforeseen bonus has been how excited my kids have been. They're really on board; have asked to help prepare the baby's room, have drawn up a (sensible) name list and love talking to my bump. If I'm being honest their excitement has been the highlight of my pregnancy.

My parents had three of us then two more after a few years. There’s a 10 year gap and a 14 year gap between me and my youngest siblings. We’ve always had a great relationship - in a parent/child way when they were young, to being a trusted adult for them when they were teens and now they are in their 20s and we are just great friends. They were late teens/early 20s when my children were born and they have a fantastic relationship with them.

Obviously everyone has different experiences but for me it’s been brilliant.

Well you aren't being unreasonable, but I would think hard.

Having children at massively different ages is a lot of work. It will be less time for your daughters, which might be OK now, but might be a problem when they are teens and have troubles that need more of your time.

They may or may not have a close relationship across the age gap, so don't be led by thinking they'll be one big gang, it may feel like two gangs. Even if they do get along, your younger one will be an only in terms of shared experiences (not that that's intrinsically a problem).

Also money and the planet.

I have large age gaps between by three DC.
8 years between the eldest and second and 12 years between eldest and youngest. It definitely has it's benefits- they all had a considerable amount of time being the youngest, there's less fighting for attention and bickering/arguing than I have observed between kids with a smaller age gap. Downside is you will feel like groundhog day doing the school run!!

I should add all my three are incredibly close and have a lovely bond despite the large age gaps. The two younger ones absolutely worship the ground my eldest walks on.

I have 6 kids, who are presently-
15y ds
10y dd
7y ds
5y dd
2.5y dd
7month old ds.

All works fine and people always tell me or ask me:
'You're mad'
'You're crazy'
'Are you going to have any more?'
'How do you afford them all?'
'Do they get along/fight/help clean/make a mess?'
'You have your hands full'
'You clearly don't care about the environment/global warming'.

Are you sure you’re not my mum posting from 1981. This is the exact age range between me and my siblings!!

As one of the older 2, I found having my own children much less worrisome than some of my friends because I’d already had experience of a baby without the responsibility.

I have cousins like this, the older children were 9 and 10 when the third was born. They are now adults and have always got on very well. The only thing I've noticed as an outsider is that the youngest has always, and continues at 28, to be very babied by his parents and older siblings. He is very immature and expects a lot from the others. I feel that this is due to the rest of his family's treatment of the situation rather than a direct result of a gap, the age difference and him being "the baby" is still regularly bought up in discussion

However I think this is avoidable, there's a 6 year gap between me and my next oldest sibling and it's never been a big deal. Apart from unavoidable things like my siblings being allowed to do things years before me, I was never made feel different to the others. Whereas my cousin has always been treated like he's in a special separate category of "the baby".

My sister and I have this age gap!

Obviously we didn't grow up playing together, but we started to really build a relationship when I was in my teens and we are very close, both as sisters and friends: we have a lot of common interests / views / hobbies.

I had boys aged 6 and 9 when my daughter was born (she's now 18m). There were loads of reasons why we ended up with that gap, it wasn't what I'd originally wanted or planned but was what it was. I was worried they'd have nothing in common and boys wouldn't be interested but I couldn't have been more wrong. They absolutely adore her, are incredibly caring and loving with her and all 'play' together although, reading books, jumping on trampoline etc etc. They are hugely invested and proud of their big brother roles and take such care of her, it's been one of the unexpected joys of my life to see! Things may change in the teenage years but luckily personality wise, they both are kind-natured and easygoing boys on the whole, so it's been great.

Saying that, Miss 18m is a very intense, loud and hyperactive whirlwind of a child who sleeps poorly, is by far my hardest one and I've found it absolutely exhausting going back to the baby and toddler stage again. She is hilarious, extremely affectionate and cute, we all love her very much but my goodness, does she shred my every nerve at times. No easy chilled out third child who just slots right in here! Being 10 years older now doesn't help. So I would definitely advise not romanticising the idea of another since you're so far out of the trenches now. It is hard although fun, and personality and how much sleep you get plays a huge huge part, not things you can necessarily plan for or control. If I was younger, I still would have gone for a fourth though so can't be that bad 😉.

I have a brother who is 9 years younger than me and a brother who is 21 years younger than me. Mum had me at 18 and baby brother at 39. We’re close but we only lived in the same house for a year!

Personally, I couldn't. I had a pregnancy scare recently which focused my mind (thankfully, for me, I wasn't). It would have taken my time and attention away from my 2 DC and there would be no time for me. I'm just rediscovering things that I want to do, just for me, now they are a little older. I was also worried any new DC might have additional needs as I'd be a considerably older mum. Plus I found the lack of sleep and the baby stage very hard.

I know a couple of people who were the oldest in this situation and absolutely loathed it (sorry). They ended up basically being sidelined/ignored as they went through puberty and they were trying to revise for GCSEs in the middle of the toddler and pre-school tantrum years. Their parents like to say they loved to help out but they’ve both told me they didn’t feel like they had a choice as the parents were so stressed out with it all.

Once they went off to uni they never went back even though the youngest was a bit older by then.

I’m not saying this is everyone’s experience but I do trust those who’ve been in the children’s position more than the parents.

I was the youngest child in this situation as my sisters are 6 and 8 years older than me. I’ll be honest and say that in some ways it wasn’t ideal for them (money issues, less parental input during their teen years) and they did resent me at times (they were expected to babysit etc).

The main issue for me is that they always have been much closer to each other than they are to me, though we all get on well, and I felt like an only child due to the age gap. I always wanted a sibling near my age!

I think if I just had one older sibling it would have been different, but the dynamic of two close in age then a big gap wasn’t ideal. Would you consider having a third and a fourth close in age?

I have 14,8 and 19m personally I find it hard to please everyone. Everyone is different though

I wouldn't. You are describing my family set up and it didn't work for us on so many levels.

I have a sister 10 years younger than me and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. We were incredibly close, we had 'sleepovers' and I took her out shopping and to the cinema a lot. She was absolutely perfect and made me so happy.

This is exactly the age gap between me and my sisters, when I was born they were 10 and 8.

Obviously the age gap was too wide for us to play together, as such, but they were great big sisters and I think they enjoyed having a much younger sibling. Most of the time! Things like Christmas I suppose it kept the magic going a bit longer having a much younger child around.

In some ways I suppose I also had similar experiences to an only child because a lot of the time I had to amuse myself while they were doing there own thing. Then at others it was a bit like having extra adults around to indulge me! I remember going around everyone in the family to read to me until I virtually knew the book or comic by heart. Maybe one of the reasons I took to reading so quickly. And of course all of their old books and toys were available to me.

My elder sisters both left home in their late teens so my older childhood and teenage was again, a bit like being an only. However it was often handy having these young adults for advise and help. Sometimes they would have me over to stay at weekends which was always a great treat.

I think in later adulthood, since our parents died, we have become closer than we have ever been.

Obviously I can only really give the child's POV, don't know how it was for my parents. One thing though. I can remember sometimes my DM looking back with rose tinted spectacles to when my sisters were little and how good things were then. As a child I felt a bit slighted, why wasn't it as good with me? I suppose my parents were ten years younger then with more energy and having two small children close together was fun. Perhaps it all felt a bit harder second time around...