to think that 4 boys should not be a deal breaker

[ItsCagain]

We have 4 boys 15 13 11 6. i can’t help but feel so jealous at people who go to Christmas markets with their kids. We can barely go out for dinner without them killing each other or be so difficult you just want to leave. This morning i saw some pic of a friend with their son and daughter last night and it makes me so sad that we can’t do that anymore with ours or at least not without complete despair

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. Are you suggesting that the reason you can't do stuff as a family is because your children are all boys? Or just because having four kids in that age range things makes things difficult?

The fact that your kids don't get on and/or behave like arseholes is absolutely nothing to do with them being boys. You could easily have a mix of boys and girls, or all girls, and have exactly the same problem. My brother and I couldn't be in the back of the car together for 10 minutes without some kind of furious row breaking out. My sister once hit my brother in the face with a plimsoll.

I also think that the age range of your kids is probably an issue for family days out. A 15-year-old generally doesn't get a huge amount of enjoyment from the company of younger kids, for instance. When I was 15, my friends had younger brothers in the 11-13 age bracket and we basically LOATHED them and considered them horrible little embarrassing pests.

It changes sometimes. DS2, while not into crafts as a toddler, now loves loom bands/ Hama beads/ drawing and modelling now he is 8. In fact, he keeps nagging me to sit down and make a pomander with him at the moment. This is taking a little readjustment, as DS1 has always been a "typical boy" and largely disinterested.

Regardless of whether they're boys or girls, I'm not sure that I would expect that 4 children with such a spread of ages would all want to go on happy family days out together. Surely when you make the choice to have a big family like this, you recognise that some compromises will need to be made and that your lifestyle will be a bit different from that of people with fewer kids?

But the boot is on the other foot now....

For example, packing for school camp (5 days every year from age 8 in this country, it's a fairly routine thing) I go through the list provided, send my son to gather the required item, show him how to fold/pack them, he puts them in the bag and we're done in 15 minutes. My friend with a daughter in the same class spends more than a week negotiating which clothes, how much new stuff she needs, whether or not she can pack various things that are not on the list, not to mention which bag or suitcase she is going to take...

We’ve got three ( 2 girls and a boy), there’s lots of arguing whenever we go anywhere tbh. The girls are actually worse than the boy