You mean my life-long dream of a Dachs-infant, shall never come to pass?
My two angels are twenty months apart. One of each sex and they get along really well. By the end of the night they are on each others nerves, but for the most part and most of the time, they are great friends and help each other out. they are 6 and 4.5 respectively.
I hate that term. Why would you space a baby?
Anyway, I have to second the multiples thing. My SIL had twins the second time around and while it’s been hard, I think eventually it’s more ‘efficient’ ;). Maybe I’ll get lucky that way, too.
Good luck and have fun tryin!
That’s nothing. When my mother’s youngest cousin was born, he had three older siblings: a not-yet two year old sister, and 10 month old twins. That’s a lot of diapers!
My parents read this book when I was little that made the promise that if you have a large space between kids’ ages, they will get along much better than if there’s only a couple of years between them. I suspect this person did a whole lot of drugs.
There’s 6 years and two months between my brother and I. We got a long great…until he was two, and then from when he was eleven on (not concencidentally, that was when he began therapy and medical treatment for ADHD. Calmer was definitely better!) Those nine years in between, though :eek: Having nothing in common with a hyper, semi-violent, attention-seeking little boy didn’t do much to help us get along. That I babysat him after school and during summers from the time I was in 6th grade on was even more of a hinderance. Now we get along great, and have for years, but man, it was rough when he was little.
So yeah. 2.5 years sounds much better 
There’s 9 years between my brother and myself. I’m older. He and I have nothing at all in common. I was forced to be his mother a lot growing up and he resented me for that and he resented my parents for foisting their responsibilities onto me. I resented my parents for that (among other things) and I would get frustrated with him for the “you’re not my mother” crap. I know I’m not your mother but she told me to deal with X so you’re stuck with me.
We aren’t very close although we are working on it. Too big a space between kids is asking for trouble!
My brother was born in Feb '68; my sister in Feb '69 and me in Nov ‘71–so that is 3 kids in less than 4 years. My parents both grew up a lot older than their siblings, so they thought having us close in age would help us get along, etc. No dice. We pretty much hated each other from the get-go; we were constantly fighting for our parents’ attention and, being the youngest but so close in age, I was forced to grow up faster than I was ready to. (“She’s almost the same age as the others. She can handle what they can.”)
Fast forward 30 years later, and my sister and I get along pretty well (this began around the time she left the house for college) and my brother and I can occasionally have a conversation. (We just don’t have a lot in common; it’s not that there was some huge fight.) My sister and brother get along better than they ever did, but that isn’t saying much. They don’t hang out or talk to each other unless there is a reason.
Being so close in age was especially hard on my brother, who was of average intelligence while my sister and I did very well in school. She took AP bio the year my brother took regular bio, etc., and she did much better than he did. They even graduated college the same semester (her a semester early and him one late).
I am not sure if there is an optimal time to space the kiddies, but I think only one grade apart is really rough. What if the older kid gets left back or the younger one gets skipped a grade? Having seen what my brother had to deal with, I would be reluctant to risk this. It was an unspoken competition for years between them and my brother pretty much lost every time.
I think the ages between me and my siblings was ok–either almost 3 years or almost 4, but the 362 days between the two of them was detrimental to my brother.
Oh, plus, we had one semester with all 3 kids in college. I forgot that part!
I’m the oldest of three girls. C is 2 years 9 months younger than I, and L is 18 months younger than C. Because of the times of year we were born, we ended up being two grades apart in school.
I get along very well with C, but L and I have very little in common. C and L, however, are very close. It has been this way for years, and I think one factor is that C and I were in school together, and C and L were in school together, but L and I never were.
To answer your question about college tuition, yes, you can get more financial aid if several children are in college. C and I went to the same college. My parents basically got no aid for me, but when she started a few years later, about half her tuition was paid for in grants.
I’d like to give another pov. I grew up in a family of two, with a sister 6 years older. Both of us grew up to be very independent, best friends. My own two children are spaced 12 years apart. For me it worked well, I was able to give both children my full attention, and they are both intelligent, high achievers. I have read somewhere, sorry I don’t have a cite, that a minimum of 5 year spacing is good for this very reason. That is not to say that children in closely spaced families don’t or cant possess these qualities, it was just one theory. Personally, I could not have imagined trying to raise two or three little ones at the same time, I would have been so busy and tired none of them would have been given any quality time.
The argument for having children close together is either so they will be company for each other or the parents want to get their children over and done with early. Some children in a family who are close together get along well but it has been my experience that most do not. There is often a lot of sibling rivalry and on occasion great hostility, so I don’t think it is necessarily always a good thing to have children close together for either the child or the parent.