Anyone have a large 5+ age gap between kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have two girls - older DD was a few months shy of turning 6 when younger DD was born. Older DD adored her little sister from the moment she was born, and it hasn't changed 3 years later. DH and I also both work full time.

What we do differently than you, OP, is we totally embrace divide and conquer. We carve out sometimes that we all spend as a family -- weeknight family dinners, brunches on weekends, outings like a hike, stuff like that. But a very substantial amount of our time is one parent with one kid. Everyone is happier -- the interactions and the outings are all more fun. I don't even understand why folks are resistant to it.

We have the same approach for our two boys (5.5 years apart), and it’s worked well. My sister and I are almost six years apart, and this is what my parents did with us, too.

DP here. Because I don’t want to spend that much time apart from my husband.

Is this a joke? You can easily have an hour or two a night with your DH after the kids go to bed. And hire a babysitter every weekend for date night. How much more time do you need?

NP, but that’s absolutely not a joke. I didn’t want to spend that much time away from my kid or spouse. Doing things all together is fun and what family is really about to us. Not an exhausted hour in the evening and date night. Evenings and weekends spending time together. I grew up with a big age gap and didn’t want divide and conquer parenting for my family. That’s why we stopped trying after the age gap got too big (6+ years) due to secondary infertility. If it works for you, that’s fine. But some of us want a different dynamic for our families and that’s okay too.

It’s weird that you made your child an only bc you didn’t want to attend a few soccer games apart from your husband, but w/e.

The divide and conquer approach still allows for plenty of time together. All meals, game nights, movie nights, outings and vacations etc.

I know, I grew up with it. But games, movies, and outings are hard when your kids are at radically different developmental stage. The big one (which I was) is bored, or the little one is lost (which is what my sister remembers). Outings and vacations are like going with two only children. You bring a friend or play by yourself and make random friends. Two of my close childhood friends had big age gaps too and we ALL had the same experience as kids. The reason that divide and conquer works best is because with a big age gap the other alternative is ignoring one kid (and deal with the whining and boredom that entails) or deal with the fighting and jealousy that OP described.

. . .

And *I* didn't make my child an only, infertility did. What *I* did was stop years of IVF and other hormonal fertility treatment to try to force my body to successfully conceive again. If we could have frozen a 2-4 year age gap and continued treatment forever, I probably would have. But that would not have been healthy for me physically or any of us emotionally, and certainly less healthy than not giving my child a sibling. But thanks for the judgment, our family certainly doesn't get enough of that...

[Anonymous]

We have a 7 year age gap because of fertility struggles. We handle challenges by spending time with each kid separately doing age appropriate things. It's not ideal, but I can't imagine not having my second child.