I feel as though my ds has missed out on certain joys of childhood due to no siblings

[mindscape]

I am really not sure if this is all in my head and I am been silly.
However I have deep regrets about my ds being an only and not giving him a sibling close in age, and my state of mind has become gradually worse because of this.
I have never had mom friends and I suffer from terrible shyness.
There are no children within the family of similar age, my ds is 6 and for all of his life I have mostly done everything on my own with him.
Now he is older I have come to the conclusion that he has missed and is missing out on so much, there has never been anyone for him to take off to his room and play with, nobody to wonder off into the garden with for a play, or anybody to take a bike ride with down the street, nobody to bounce around with on a trampoline on long summer days or to lark around with in a paddling pool.
When we go on holiday I see groups of what looks like siblings walking around happily going down to the adventure playground together, and the clubs, and soft play together, and I feel awful that my ds is always on his own.
I have made plenty of effort to ensure he has had company during the 6 weeks holiday and I have noticed what a difference it makes to him when he has company and I just feel so much regret and sadness that I didn,t give him a sibling close in age as I feel it would have been beneficial to him.
These feelings for some reason have only surfaced with me in the last year or so.
Me and my dh do try to keep him occupied but its not always easy.
Does anyone ever feel like this, feel free to tell me I am been daft.

So you have a lot of feelings yourself to deal with here - grief at not having more children, guilt that you made the wrong choice in leaving it so long, guilt that you are responsible for him being shy... I think it's important that you work through those feelings yourself, and get to a point where you're ok about it.

I've got an only DS - though he's 14 now - it was a definite choice to stop at one, but I still had moments where I wondered if it was the right choice, wondered what our lives would have been like with a second, felt guilty that when we're old and frail he'll not have a sibling to share the burden with.

If your DS has inherited your shyness, there's no way to change that, but you can help him to enjoy things in company. It's also possible that he doesn't really feel unhappy by himself - some people are quite self-contained and don't want to be part of the hurly-burly.

Maybe try beavers again later, perhaps if he has a friend from school who goes too, so he knows someone? Or something more structured, where they are getting on with something and don't have to make so many choices about how to interact?

There are also lots of positives about having only one - there have been several threads about it, where people have listed all the advantages. With DS we've had far more time, money and energy for him. He has been able to do things which would have been a real struggle if we had been trying to juggle the needs and wishes of more than one child. You don't have to worry about being "fair". They don't spend their time squabbling and fighting. They don't grow up feeling that their achievements and personality are being compared with their siblings.

Shyness isn't inherited.

My mum (also an only child, same as me) is crushingly shy and still avoids any social contact. It never stopped me going out and making friends as a child, teenager or adult. I was also happy to entertain myself whenever I had to. There were times when I was lonely and bored, but I don't think that is a phenomenon exclusive to only children.

He sounds like a lovely child, who I'm sure will grow up with the confidence to take life at his own pace.

My six year old is an only child, although I am pregnant.

Yes, it would be nice if he had a sibling near his age, but it just didn't happen. Contrary to popular belief only children don't always get what they want. My son is very excited about having another baby, but it won't be a playmate for him.

The age gap is just too big.

Does your school have an after school club. Even if you don't work it might be nice for him to go once a week. My son goes to after school club every week day and plays with children there.

Shyness isn't an only child thing either. I know a very shy person who is one of 3 siblings.

I am an only child and have 3 v close together in age. At the time I was desperate for them all to have each other, and although I don't regret it, I certainly approached the whole sibling thing with rose coloured glasses on. I spend most of my day refereeing physical and verbal fights and they are very jealous of each other. I have made my bed,so to speak, so will not whinge about it, but from what friends have said, even if you do have more than one, there is no guarantee they will get on, and lots of my friends are not close to their siblings. Mine are defo happiest one on one with me, and as an only child, I have learnt over the years to get on with things, go out and find friends and now I will go into any new group and chat without fear. Also, my friends now are my siblings in a way and I am very tight with them. HTH - it's meant to.

Conversely, my dad is the youngest of 5 (10 years from eldest to youngest). They all hated each others as kids and have very little contact now as adults. He was strongly supportive of my mother's choice that I be an only child on the basis of his experiences.

My ds is 6 an an only, I ocassionally get only child jitters, I find what helps is I look at other 1 child families I know and those of famous people with 1 kid - Gail POrter, Liv Tyler, Liz Hurley, Zoe Ball etc etc and I think do they look or act like something is missing?

The answer is of course NO!

Mindscape, I think it is terribly important to remember that DS is not you. Even if he happens to be a bit shy, it doesn't mean he's experiencing the emotions that you experienced. Don't fall into the awful "I never had X so DS must have X" trap.

Your shyness has marred your life but in these days of the Internet people like you who communicate better in writing have so many new outlets and ways to break the ice. Life will be different for your DS.

mindscape, FWIW, I think ds1 would happily ship his 3 brothers off to a desert island tomorrow! It is tough for him in ways as, being the eldest, a lot of his time is spent in helping out with chores that wouldn't exist if he didn't have small siblings.

Mindscape

So much of your post resonates with me. Ds is only 3.8yrs old but I know I can't have any more children. I too left it too late to start and I strugggle daily with all the issues you do. What has helped a bit is being open about my feeling with my friends who have more than one children and as has been said earlier making the off joke about 'rent a sibling' etc.

Ds has no cousins his age, all of them are at least 10 years older than him and we have very few children living in the flats we live in.

I wake up in the middle of the night worring about him being an only child in this situation and if I'm honest I find the intensity of a 3 person family too much to take sometimes. Sometimes I long for a sibling argument and for me to be less obsessively focussed on ds. I know it is not good for him.

I wish I knew some advice to give you but I do know that a lot of these feelings are related to my grief and sadness at not being able to have another child. This sort of grief is hard to cope with because tbh in many ways it gets harder rather than easier with time. As children grow up they need to move away from their parents and I think siblings can help with this.

I can't really offer much advice as for me it is an ongoing source of so much sadness it is hard to describe. You also aren't supposed to say it makes you so sad as people keep telling me I am lucky to have one child. Whist this is obviously true it doesn't really help much tbh.

I too have an only child due to the inability to have any more.

I do think that a large part of the process is being able to come to terms yourself with not being able to have any more children, and once you can do that the guilt will become less as well, as the intense guilt is, IMO, also a symptom of the failure you feel at being unable to have another child, if that makes sense?

I also think that comments from other people don?t help. My mil for instance think that only children have ?only child syndrome? and recently my mum suggested we take my nephew on holiday with us so that ds would have come company. Not sure if she meant it like that but for me it felt like a dig at the fact ds doesn?t have a sibling. And yet both are fully aware of the circumstances.

But I think I have actually now come to terms with the fact that I?m not going to have any more children, and although I do have occasional wabbly moments when I wish for another baby, as ds will be 6 in November I?m not sure now whether having another child would actually be such a good thing any more as the age gap would just be too big.

I look at all my friends with more than one child and they all say how much harder it is with two or more. It?s a very careful balancing act between the needs of the older and younger children, and invariably they all have to make sacrifices, the biggest of which is individual attention with their parents, something which the older children have had to give up with the arrival of a sibling.

When we have children we always have something to feel guilty about. I know one of my friends does feel guilty that she had a second child as she feels her first child?s behaviour changed radically when he was born, and she feels that maybe she would have been better suited to being an only child.

Either way as parents we can?t win.

Speaking as one of four, (which i wouldn't change) i can say there are lots of downsides to siblings.

My brother closest in age and i detested each other for most of our childhoods, and so fought like animals for most of it, and i was lumbered with babysitting the younger 2 whether i liked it or not. We had far less money, so only went on one family holiday abroad, and i couldn't go on big school trips. My brothers always shared a room, so didn't have their own space...I could go on!

It's natural to wonder if he's missed out, but you sound like a great mother, and provided he feels loved, and is warm and well fed / educated, he's not missing out on anything i'm sure.

Dd (3) is an only because we can't have any more. We have made a lot of effort to make sure she has regular friends to play with and it sounds as though you are also doing that even though you are shy. We moved recently, and I have, somewhat shamelessly, introduced ourselves to anyone with dc about the same age and hope that we will build up some local company over time.

I do worry about it. She clearly loves company and even with regular playdates there is a lot of time with just us. She really wants us to play with her every minute which is difficult.

If you are arranging playdates then you are doing the best you can and any other school friendships are up to your dc - some dc need/want more company than others. We don't have any other family in this country.

You are still at the stage of coming to terms with probably not having another which is probably a lot of the sadness. That's how I was last year. We could certainly have had more if we'd had dd earlier, but we all do what we do for a reason.

Thanks so much.
Lazycow you really do sound so much like me, I have felt quite alone in dealing with my feelings and thought that maybe I was going daft or something.
My family who I have recently confided in keep telling me that my ds is fine on his own, but you know its not just the fact that my ds will have no sibling its also that I really wanted another dc for me.
Some days I am not so bad and then all of a sudden the horrible, ugly feelings come back with a vengence, I just don,t seem to be coping with it and cannot resign myself to having no more.
There are so many issues going round in my head about my ds not having the support of brothers or sister for lifes perils when he is older, the burden of elderly parents on his own, the fact that there are no siblings to play with.
I feel dreadful about the whole thing and even though I have arranged many playdates and even took a couple of his mates out with us to soft play, or a theme park etc, I realise that its only really possible to do this occasionally and there is far too much time that it is just me and my ds or the three of us when dh is about.
I wish I could build up a good group of friends to do things with more regularly but its something I have never managed to do, probably because I don,t converse enough due to being so shy. God you wouldn,t think a grown woman would struggle with shyness so much.

Thread may be worth a read in due course?

I am an only child, although not a typical one I suppose as I am very outgoing and not particularly close to my parents.

I never missed having siblings but I have been very lucky to have 2 best friends who have been my best friends since I was 5 (31 yrs now and counting!) so I always spent a lot of time at their houses. However, I remember playing by myself and really enjoying it, making things, reading and lots more. When we went on holidays, my parents would always find some young children and help me make friends! When I got a bit older, friends came on holiday with me and my parents (mid teens).
I think that only children's parents do make more effort for playdates than those with bigger families but it is not because your son is not wanted, just that the bigger families are trying to juggle lots of childre. One of my best friends has 3 kids and if the elder has a playdate round and the middle one doesnt, there is a fight so sometimes it is easier not to bother!

I would make sure that he joins some clubs to meet friends and be sociable. Just because you are shy, does not mean that he has to be. Keep inviting friends back to yours and he will be fine.

I have one dd (16 wks now!) and I want another. The main reason I want another is not because I felt lonely as a child but because my parents have always been so neurotic about me and I worry that I would turn into that.
That is the only problem I have ever had as an only child - my very neurotic, slightly odd parents - but that is a whole different story!

Don't worry, he will be fine.

This may sound quite icky but the serenity prayer is quite useful for things like this

Help me to accept the things I cannot change
(often infertility is out of our control)
Give me the courage to change the things I can
(It is possible to work on being less shy - How about investigating a course like 'How to be more assertive' or something'
And the wisdom to know the difference
(often the hardest part)

Easier said than done I know !

I am getting better about all this but I still have periods where I find the whole thing very sad and I get very jealous of families with more than one child.

hi it is so good to hear other peoples stories, i felt i was going mad with the same feelings you have been going through, i am a single mum with an only 5 year old boy, and feel he is missing out on a father figure as well as other siblings,he is a little shy and takes a while to mix in, but he usally does ,i found the summer holidays a nightmare as other friends were doing there own things, so didnt get to see many of his friends or me mine, i also get jealous of other families with more than one child and i hate myself for it , my brothers wife is due in oct and i dont feel like getting excited, i feel really bitter and its not like me to be this way..i am finding things quite difficult at the moment but sure it will pass, it does help to know i am not the only person feeling this way